A new campus opening in La Baie des Moustiques this summer will offer a safer home for staff and a hub of sorts for new development initiatives. An update from the campus director there.
Curtis Rogers lives in La Baie des Moustiques with his wife, Danielle, and manages NWHCM’s facilities there.
By Curtis Rogers, Community Development Coordinator
Since the hurricanes and tropical storms of 2008, our entire staff at the mission campus in La Baie des Moustiques has been excited to move to our new campus “up the hill.” We were blessed to be spared from any major storms in 2009 and we do not plan on taking any more chances this year, as we expect to be operating from the new campus by the end of June.
A panorama of NWHCM's new campus in La Baie des Moustiques, which is nearing completion (click to see larger image). Andy Olsen / NWHCM staff
The new campus will be home for both Danielle and me, and also the Cius family (Michelet, Gernide, John Terly, Geneva, Rose Madjie and Michael). It will also be the site of a new children’s home, and we are excited to bring Maxi Iphraim, who grew up in the mission orphanage in Port-de-Paix, onto campus to live with the kids and help run the house. We have spent significant time assessing a number of needy children to possibly bring into this home. We’ve been praying over each one. We expect that there will be quite a few children living with us by the end of the summer.
We want to make sure people know that we are not forgetting about the “old” campus down the hill and all of the important work that has been invested there over the years. The main building, which we call “Miss Pat’s House,” will continue to serve as the group home, where visitors and short-term missionaries will stay while working in La Baie. Our current house on the old campus will be the site of a new clinic after we move out. We hope to employ Haitian nurses there to meet the medical needs of the town. This building will not only offer a clean and safe place to receive medical care daily, it will also serve as a base for medical teams from North America as they serve outlying communities in the Far West. The church building will retain its current function as both the church and the school, although we will need to build a new school in the near future. Michelet’s old house will serve as a classroom as the school grows.
As you can see, the work in La Baie is growing exponentially. One of the primary roles for the campus is serving as a laboratory for many differing development projects and ideas that we hope to duplicate in the Northwest. Whether through farms, composting toilets, micro-loans, or fishing supply stores, the campus at La Baie (like all of the NWHCM campuses) strives to meet the needs of the community in a holistic fashion, partnering with community members for real change. As a staff, we truly believe that the move to the new buildings has already and will continue to open up many opportunities for us to assess the needs of, partner with, and reach the goals of the small part of Northwest Haiti that we serve.
