April 6, 2018 at 1:53 p.m.
GLOBAL CONNECTION
Loudonville parishioners helping Haitian children
Families live in one-room straw huts, sleep on plywood and bathe in muddy rivers. There is no running water or electricity. Cholera spread around the region after the 2010 earthquake.
Despite these living conditions, the Haitians are grateful people, said Christina Costa, a parishioner at St. Pius X parish in Loudonville who visited the region last summer.
"They just deal with so [many] problems," she recalled. "And their spirit - they're so proud. No complaining. I marvel that they have so little, but their spirit helps them with the hope."
Heading to Haiti
Ms. Costa, a nurse at St. Peter's Hospital in Albany, decided to take the 10-day journey after meeting Esperandieu Cenat, a Haitian who attended St. Pius while enrolled at Siena College in Loudonville for a year.
Mr. Cenat and two other Haitian students whose Port-au-Prince university was destroyed in the earthquake lived with a Siena professor while they finished their schooling. Mr. Cenat sat next to Ms. Costa one Sunday and told her of his dream of building an orphanage in his hometown. He wanted to create a place where a child could receive food, clothing and an education.
As Ms. Costa listened, "There was something tugging in my heart to do more, to give back," she said. "I just felt like God had put him" there.
Since then, Ms. Costa and others formed both a parish committee with 35 members and the St. Francis Xavier Haitian Orphanage Foundation, which awaits non-profit status.
She has also enlisted the help of schools and colleges, other parishes and community organizations. St. Pius parish has raised $75,000 and is holding a coin drive by religious education students and others.
Ms. Costa wants to return, with others, to Haiti this summer. Students from Temple University in Philadelphia and Penn State University have gotten involved in her efforts.
Where it stands
The orphanage is in its infancy; it currently takes care of eight children in a rented building. Mr. Cenat aims to find land and construct separate buildings for boys and girls.
The next goals are to get running water and install solar energy panels - which the Troy-based Let's Share the Sun Foundation has offered to do, according to Gayle Bouchard, secretary of the St. Xavier foundation and a St. Pius committee member.
"Every time we turn around, someone else is jumping on this train," Mrs. Bouchard said. "It's been a real community-builder."
The orphanage already sponsors the children's Catholic school education. Mr. Cenat is also looking at fixing a well, starting a mobile clinic and ensuring access to education for the other residents in the region.
"The children are happy at the orphanage because they've never eaten so well or so often," Ms. Costa said simply.
She wants to spend more time researching and helping the orphanage.
"It touched my heart, and I'm just so connected to that place and the people," she said. "Every day I wake up and think of that orphanage and the children."[[In-content Ad]]
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