April is a special time when we get to host the Annual Mission-Haiti Banquet! This year's banquet was made extra special by two incredible guests, Julie and Sarah from Deux Mains. Deux Mains is a business in Haiti that makes all of the shoes for the students in our sponsorship program. We are so grateful and encouraged by this partnership!
The banquet is our biggest opportunity to raise funds that go toward our general budget expenses and other budget line items we don't meet. This year, we were able to raise just over $182,000 and continually feel so blessed by your generosity and support. We still have around $70,000 to raise before the end of our fiscal year in June. Please visit https://mission-haiti.kindful.com/ if you feel led to help us reach our goal. We love hosting the banquet each year and it's made that much more special to have all of our Mission-Haiti family together in one space.
If you missed the banquet, a couple updates:
1. You can rewatch the event: follow this link: https://moltenaudio.com/v/haiti/.
2. Future plans- we took a survey from all of you, hosted some focus groups, and heard your feedback. We want to move Mission-Haiti forward in a way that can best steward the ministry and we are excited about the future. In the next couple of months we'll be discussing 4 key areas-
>JAK and Lines High School Expansion
>Post Secondary Education (University and Vocational School)
>Health Care
>Communication and Sustainability
We will be sharing more in the coming months about where the Lord is leading us forward to best serve the southwest region of Haiti. Please be in prayer for our leadership team as we do so.
2. Sponsorship Fee Increase- This year, in June, the sponsorship fee will be increasing (Excluding JAK Academy Students). We have debated and prayed about this decision extensively, here are some of the main reasons why this is needed:
>To cover the expenses of Haitian made shoes ($35/pair) and to sustain our partnership with Deux Mains. We have felt such encouragement about the reality of stimulating the Haitian economy and helping to create jobs through making shoes.
>To increase our school staff salaries. We feel an urgency to be paying our teachers more to offset the inflation across the country which has increased to more than 50%.
>To offset rising operational (food, school supplies, etc.) prices across the board.
You will be hearing more from us about this as June approaches!
