Mitch Albom's orphanage offers hope amid Haiti's gang violence

Port-au-Prince is a city where most of what happens is bad. Gangs control nine-tenths of the metropolitan area. Rapes, robberies, murders—these are the ordinary news of the streets. Over a million people have been forced from their homes by violence. The government has essentially stopped governing. And yet, behind thirty-foot concrete walls topped with barbed wire, in a seven-acre compound guarded by twenty-four armed men, sixty-three children are going to school, eating regular meals, and learning to believe they have a future.

The orphanage is called Have Faith Haiti, and it is run by Mitch Albom, the bestselling author of "Tuesdays with Morrie" and eighteen other books, along with his wife Janine. Albom first came to Haiti in 2010, after the earthquake that killed hundreds of thousands and left more than a million homeless. He found an elderly pastor struggling to keep an orphanage running with no money and no help. "I don't have any money to run this place and I'm 84 years old," the pastor told him. Albom, in a moment of either confidence or recklessness, said he could probably do it. The pastor handed him the keys. That was sixteen years ago. Now, every month, Albom flies two hours from Florida to Cap-Haïtien, then takes a helicopter into the capital because commercial flights no longer land there. He arrives in a convoy of bulletproof vehicles, escorted by security. Before the gangs became a problem, two guards were enough. Now there are twenty-four.

The children who live here are the ones nobody else wanted or could afford to keep. Some were abandoned as infants. Some were left by parents who had no food to give them. Some were found starving under trees. Bettinie was a year and a half when her father died in the earthquake and her mother, desperate, brought her to the orphanage. Lorvens arrived malnourished at three years old. Gina was left here at five by her father; she now wants to be a lawyer. Not all of them are orphans in the strict sense. Many were brought by family members who simply could not feed another mouth. Albom has to choose who gets in. The criteria are brutal in their clarity: only if there is one parent, not two; only if there is no home, no actual structure to live in; only if there is sickness or some other catastrophic circumstance. Even with these limits, the applications far exceed the spaces available.

Inside the walls, the children attend school eight hours a day, taught in both French and English, with small classes and customized lesson plans for those who struggle. There are no cell phones, no computers for personal use, no television. Albom believes this allows childhood to exist in what he calls a purer form. The children play, do chores, go to church. They call each other brother and sister. Yonel, the Haitian director of the orphanage, was left here himself thirty-six years ago when he was five. His father had three other children and could not afford a fourth. "I thought that they hate me back then because they just kick me out," Yonel said. "But later on I would understand why they did that. That's why I forgive him." Now Yonel runs the place. When the children arrive, they call him father. "They need that connection," he said. "Almost all the kids when they come, they all call me 'father.' I put myself there for them."

The security measures are constant and exhausting. Yonel conducts surprise emergency drills where children grab "go bags" and rush to a concrete bunker with steel doors, its own generator, a month's supply of food and water, and cameras to monitor the outside world. During one drill, a baby was left napping in the nursery. Yonel was not satisfied. "Not good. Not good. Can't leave no one behind," he said. The danger outside is not theoretical. In the last twenty-four hours before the reporting of this story, there were three shootouts between police and gang members in the area surrounding the orphanage.

Seventy-seven students have graduated from high school at Have Faith Haiti over the past eight years, and all of them have received scholarships to American colleges and universities. But they are not staying in the United States. Before they leave, every student agrees to return after finishing their studies and work at the orphanage for two years without pay, giving back to the community that raised them. Four of these students—Widley, Bianka, J.J., and J.U.—were staying at Albom's home outside Detroit during winter break. They spoke about what they had seen in America: opportunities, the workings of an actual government, relief from violence. But they also spoke about what they intended to do. Bianka wanted to bring better education back to Haiti. Widley dreamed of becoming an ambassador for her country. J.U. said his end goal was to be a senator. When asked if politics scared him, given that Haiti's last president was assassinated, Widley acknowledged the fear. But J.U. was clear: "Haiti isn't just my country. It's like my home where I was raised, and I have deep, a deep connection to Haiti, so yeah, my future is with Haiti."

The orphanage's budget is paid for mostly by Albom and his wife, supplemented by public and private donors. After security and fuel, education is the largest expense. Albom says it is very hard to fundraise for Haiti. People assume the money disappears or that the government takes it. "These children, they don't deserve to be ignored because Haiti has a checkered history," he said. But Haiti's future is uncertain. In September, the United Nations, with U.S. backing, authorized a multinational force of fifty-five hundred troops to help the overwhelmed Haitian police fight the gangs. So far, about a thousand have been deployed. Meanwhile, the U.S. has cut its financial obligations to Haiti by nearly fifty percent. Six more students graduated from the orphanage this past spring. They will volunteer for a year of service in Haiti before applying for scholarships to study abroad. But it is no longer clear whether they will be granted visas to leave.