La Gonave, Haiti
Well, that sounds ominous to some, but for me, anytime in Charleston is a treat. Never more so than when we have our annual meeting there on July 22-23. We are being hosted by First (Scots) Presbyterian Church and the program looks compelling.
While we are on a calendar year fiscally, the partnership uses the annual meeting to present what has happened during the last year in the partnership and on the island of La Gonave. So, this may sound a bit like a January post, but we have a lot to be happy about as we end this school/partnership year.
Up until about 3 years ago our partnership was a loose confederation of dedicated churches who support schools, health care, and a goat program on La Gonave. There we other programs and endeavors, but we were not formally a partnership in the structural sense of the word.
While is has not always been easy to “get all the camels under the same tent” we have made great strides. This year the board has been especially active in working to assess the programs and focus on reaching each community equally. Our partner churches, who have chosen a community to be involved with, have been the mainstay of our support to the Diocese. And now, through the partnership work, we are seeing an island wide approach to furnishing an umbrella of services that help in that work.
In the last 12 months we have provided a hot lunch to over 1700 children each day, raised emergency funding to combat the food insecurity caused from drought, and applied for and received funding for a garden for each community from Presbyterian Disaster Assistance. All the while continuing the work that was already in place.
I hope all of you will attend the meeting in Charleston, SC. If you have not made reservations you can still register by contacting us through this website. You do not need to be a member of the partnership. You can just have an interest in the work we do to attend and meet with us.
For those of you who may have missed it I am including a link to our Annual Report.
https://lagonavepartners.org/Donatenow/annual-report/
It is such an honor to work with the people of La Gonave and to have such wonderful partners and supporters. None of this would be possible without you.
Join us if you can and, if you can’t, keep the partnership in your prayers as we gather.
Deb Griffin
For the Partnership