Beyond Borders

A Few Words from Martin Luther King, Jr.

I was on an airplane with my five-year-old daughter last year when we got to talking about clouds. “We don’t look like clouds,” I said, “but we are all made mostly from clouds.”

She turned to see if I was serious. “It’s true,” I insisted. “We are made mostly of water. That water started out as clouds that turned into rain. The rain watered the plants and gave us the fresh water we drink.”

I thought about that conversation when a friend recently sent me words she saw etched on the new Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial on the National Mall. They were words he wrote from a jail in Birmingham.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.

Isn’t this what Jesus taught? “Whatever you do, even to the very least, you do it to me,” he said. Just as clouds and human beings share a common substance, so too are all our individual choices part of a common moral fabric. When we feed the hungry, Jesus says, we’re feeding him. When we visit a prisoner, we’re visiting Jesus.

This is why it should matter to us if even a single child in Haiti is trapped in slavery--beyond the shock or pity we feel, we are morally present in this child. Some part of us is enslaved as long as this child is enslaved. To struggle for this child’s freedom is to struggle for our own freedom.

Our Fall 2011 newsletter talks about how powerful this awareness can be. To cultivate this awareness, we bring thousands of typical Haitians together in small groups of twelve or so. A typical group includes parents who have sent children away into servitude, adult survivors of child slavery, neighbors who’ve felt powerless to help enslaved children, and even individuals who have children enslaved in their homes.

We guide each group through a six-month process where their awareness grows and they develop the practical skills to begin fighting child slavery. Even adults who formerly enslaved children become vocal advocates and leaders in the movement to end child slavery.

Nearly 5,000 Haitians have participated in this program so far. Many have gone on to form local Child Protection Committees that work on the front lines in the struggle against child slavery. The demand for this training is huge, so our goal is to raise funds to enroll 10,000 more adults by this time next year.

It costs just $70 to train a new child rights advocate.  Think about it; a monthly pledge of that amount would cover a brand new group of 12 Haitians who we will equip to free and defend children.  Will you make that pledge today?

Flying through the clouds that day, my daughter pondered a miracle—our bodies are mostly collections of distant and disparate clouds coalesced into rainwater and infused into living flesh.

It is no less a miracle that a decision you freely make now can coalesce into the freedom of a child in Haiti, and we can say with the prophet Isaiah, “let the clouds burst open and justice rain down.”

Thank you for sharing so freely,

David Diggs

Here is a story from our Child Protection Team in Haiti-

"During the first six months of 2011, ten (10) groups of 10-15 camp residents in the IDP camp at Place Sainte Anne in downtown Port-au-Prince gathered weekly to discuss child rights issues, guided by the story-based ‘Education is a Conversation’ dialogue module. They talked about stories of children and related them to the real-life stories they were living and witnessing each day in their lives. They role-played ways they would intervene in the lives of children suffering abuses. At the end of the sessions, these ten groups each nominated a delegate to serve on the Child Protection Committee, a committee established to serve the role of promoting child protection in the community, and of intervening in cases of abuse of children. In July, eight such committees were trained and inaugurated in different IDP camps in Port-au-Prince.

Below is a report from the committee serving the IDP camp at Place Sainte Anne, issued just six weeks after their inauguration.

At 4 p.m. on September 5, 2011, after we had completed a large awareness-raising activity in the camp, a gentleman came to us with a child who had run away. He had been living in restavèk with a woman who cooks food and sells it on the street. He was being mistreated by the woman.

This twelve year-old boy talked with us about his situation. He told us the names of his parents and shared that they live in the Kenscoff area (mountaineous region to the south of Port-au-Prince). We asked for advice from (Limyè Lavi staff) and we were advised to refer the case to Zanmi Timoun (a local organization working in collaboration with the Haitian state and IOM to reunify restavèk children with their families).

Since it was late in the day, Zanmi Timoun advised us to hold the child in a safe place, which we did. Zanmi Timoun staff came to see the child the next morning and conducted an initial interview. Later that day, two other staff came and did a more lengthy intake with the child, and then visited the woman where the boy was in restavèk. They asked us to hold the child for one additional night and to care for his needs.

The next day they (Zanmi Timoun staff accompanied by an agent from IBESR -Institut du Bien-être Social et de Recherches) came to collect the child. They thanked us for the good work we are doing. We feel this work was a success.

We have since confirmed that this child is now living temporarily with a trained and monitored foster care family while Zanmi Timoun conducts the search to find his family. The presence of the child protection committee within the camp community at Place Sainte Anne ensured that this boy received the appropriate response from trained individuals in his own neighborhood. They were able to refer him to the appropriate social services agency."