Tom Fackender
Email:  tom.fackender@gmail.com
Phone:  850-509-5438
 
Betty Serow
Email:  bettyserow@yahoo.com
 
Art Wright
Email:  artnole@aol.com

Almost all of the work is done here at home.  Very few of us go to Haiti!

 Please consider doing one or more of the following:

• Join a working group

• Buy a goat on Goat Sundays or donate online

• Be part of a team that goes to Haiti

• Help plan future projects

• Join our mailing list

The Haiti Outreach Ministry has partnered with St. Dominque Parish, in Marigot, Haiti to help the people of that area.  

St. Dominque is working to develop sustainable avenues for supporting their families. Their first undertaking is a livestock program, where trained families are given a goat, and the first female offspring is given to another parish family, creating a continuous cycle of income and new goats to help support more families.

They are also starting a youth leadership development program to train young people to carry on this project and other self-sustaining activities.

In the coming weeks, the parishioners of Good Shepherd will have the opportunity to assist with this projects by assisting with the purchase of these goats.

The Mission of the Haiti Outreach Ministry is to help the Catholic families of Haiti become economically self-sufficient.  

• Local people identify the problem and determine the long-term solution.

• We undertake no project, nor fund any service or activity that is not sustainable.

• We require full accountability and stewardship so recipients know their responsibilities and donors know their gifts are being used wisely. 

• Our commitment to any one parish is time-limited.  "if they are still dependent on us in 5 years, we've failed."

How Does the Program Work?

The livestock committee at St. Dominique has decided on goats as the most appropriate animal for their parish. They will start with 40 goats for the main Church and one outlying Chapel.  The cost will be $180 per goat, this will include inoculations and the cost of training families on the care of their animal. They will share the training they receive, and pass on the first female offspring to the livestock committee, which will maintain a waiting list of interested families. At that point, 10 new families will become part of the program.  This extends the impact of the original gift, allowing a once impoverished family to become donors and full participants in improving their communities. 

After this effort, the plan is to expand to the other 10 chapels that are part of the parish, each of which has 300-400 worshipers.
 
 

Giving a family an animal is like setting them up in a small business, providing meat, milk, and more. Through our donations, we will provide families a hand up, increasing access to medicine, school, food and a sustainable livelihood. This is a parish to parish partnership, with no middle men and no government agencies involved, so everything collected goes directly into the local economy.