After the earthquake in 2010, Love A Child found itself in the position of trying to help over 1200 new “refugees” rebuild their lives. God gave Bobby the vision to build Miracle Village, a new community of 600 clean, safe, and brightly colored houses for families to begin a new life. But the new families had no jobs, nothing to sustain their daily lives other than the support from church services and Love A Child. Immediately, Bobby and Sherry were inspired to build the huge new marketplace, Gwo Maché Mirak, as a place to host commerce so the people could have a way to make a new living. The Marketplace (gratefully donated in large part by Pastor Jentezen Franklin and the Free Chapel Church) would provide a safe, clean, Christian place for businesses such as banks, Western Union, restaurants, clothes stores, and fresh produce vendors to create a new economy for the new people in the Fond Parisien region. It would also have a meat processing and butcher shop, a gas station, and would even host community events like Crusades for the Lord and popular music events.

Building the new Marketplace provided some employment, some training opportunities, and eventually would have many spaces for small merchants (marchands) to have a safe, clean Christian environment to have a small business. Our first training and skills development project was Pastor Mark’s new construction crew, where, under his capable instruction, men learned new skills in concrete work, masonry, carpentry, painting, and welding. This training program continues today.

Next, we started the Agricultural Training Center (ATC) with demonstration gardens to show the methods and successes of sustainable gardening and offered training courses for Haitians to learn ways of sustainable gardening to provide fresh food for their families and to sell at the Marketplace. Then we added supporting businesses like Farmer John’s Abatwa (butcher shop), said to be the finest “USDA-quality” butcher shop in all of Haiti, the Poul Mirak chicken co-op, and the gas station. Now, the new residents of Fond Parisien could have an economy to support the many new residents.

– – To Be Continued (Part 2 of a 3-Part Saturday Post.)

Rad Hazelip, Assistant Executive Director