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Feb 01, 2011

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Sep 23, 2010

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Sep 23, 2010

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February 11, 2010
Message from Kobe,
A friend living in the Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Carrefour. He is working to interview and assist people living in an encampment of several hundred people there.
"The worst has begun because last night it rained. Most people are living under sheets, not tarps. I'm trying to build some better shelter, and need waterproof material. At the moment we need $200 US. I'm supposed to buy some fabric so we can cover them. It's very dark and it is going to rain more."

- PINP is sending money for the tarps.

Feb 11, 2010

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Good morning Marci, my dear partner,

How are you doing this morning? I hope that everything is doing well for you. I thank you a lot for that nice pretty message that you have sent to me.
I want to tell you don't too tired, you must rest month before the baby arrives. Be careful don't do lot of work at home, take rest.

For my asthmatic, now I know, you're will be helping me to be in health I am going back to visit the doctor, it's my biggest problem as you said if I am in good health I can take care of my family better than I am doing it now.
About the electricity, everybody in my area have it, only me because of money I can't afford.
I thank you a lot because you think of me, how to help me to have a better live with my family, that's make me very happy. You take care of me like a mother will do for her child.
I forgot to wish you a happy birthday when it was your birthday now that I know the date, I won't forget it.

May God bless you and your family in everything you're doing.
thank you, and have a nice day and a good week end.
I love you, Christine your dear Partner
Oct 23, 2009

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Click button above (near bottom right of screen) to view in full screen.
Aug 26, 2009

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See Haiti for yourself with a Reality tour by Beyond Borders. And visit your partner while you're there!

Transformational Travel to Haiti focusing on the Restavek System in Haiti
Dates: October 17 - 24, 2009

Click here for details
Click here for information about Beyond Borders
Aug 08, 2009

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Here's an informal announcement about an important new kind of project we are making possible at People in Need Partnership: Proposals. Through Proposals, any group of people in need can create a proposal on any community project - Carefully thinking it through, adding photos and details, raising funds, building and maintaining it, and interacting with the group of contributors to the Proposal.

Our first two Proposals are now open for your participation. One of them is a Goat proposal, which is a way to help very poor Haitians avoid the exodus to the slums of Hait. I met the Coordinator of this project, Ronald, while walking late one night in downtown, Port-au-Prince. Click here to see the Goat proposal.

-- Geoff







Feb 17, 2009

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To partners and friends of People in Need Partnership:

Last week in Port-au-Prince, Haiti we held our first meetings to explore the dreams of people in need. During the meeting for children I noticed a girl who was particularly enthusiastic about her hopes to become a business owner and nurse. Then I noticed the fresh wounds on her arms and face. It turns out that MadMadelene St. Vilelene, a restavek (child slave), received the wounds from the woman she is living with and who abuses her.




It has always been a mystery to me why extreme poverty exists. We care so much for ourselves and our own children. Why should we not care for others, who in reality are the same as us? Surely the explanation is ignorance, and lack of insight and courage. If this is so, there is no logical reason that any problem that has at its root broken relationships could not be solved through direct, healing human action. This applies not just to poverty, but violence of any kind, as well as loneliness and depression. Dependence on large organizations (or medications) to resolve these global issues is an escape and fortifies the problem. The solution is hearts that are more open and courageous, and minds that are more clear and insightful.

At People in Need Partnership we are on a mission to see this theory through to its conclusion, beginning in Haiti slums. To that end, we have recently added several new programs that can help make your partnership more alive.

We are in the process of creating a new Digital Storytelling program. Each partner will create a 6 - 10 minute video, telling their own story of what matters most to them, including events from their childhood, their present life, and experiences with People in Need Partnership. They may include drawings, photos, or songs. Our video director Myriam is assisting each partner in creating the video, and will also be producing a monthly 5 - 10 minute video on an aspect of our programs, which you will receive. We hope that these videos will provide you with another window into our work and the life and realities of your partner.

With our new Coordinator system (each group of 5 - 8 partners has a Coordinator chosen from partners) we have been able to improve the ability of partners to send messages, and you can now expect to receive at least two per month, in addition to updates on the progress of your partner in our programs. If you are not getting these, please let us know ASAP! You may also now schedule a free live video conversation with your partner (we provide the translator), which is a great way to get a sense of her or his personality. We are also now providing the chance to send a package of up to three pounds directly to your partner, by simply sending it to our address in the U.S. Details about these and other ways to develop your partnership are available at your Partnership page, by clicking on the links on the right sidebar.

Achieve a dream!



Just this week we began to hold workshops on a new and unique feature of People in Need Partnership: 'Achieve a dream!' During this workshop we explore the meaning of having a calling in life, and help each partner design a preliminary five or ten year plan to reach it. This is a dramatic and even audacious ambition. Most development organizations assume that only those with their basic needs already met can focus on higher qualities such as what is in their hearts (a theory often referred to as 'Maslow's Hierarchy'). Our experience, in rich and poor countries, shows just the opposite.

Soon you will receive a copy of the 'Life plan' that your partner created. At the end of the first year of your partnership you will have three options: continue the partnership for an additional year; discontinue it; or join together in a mutual commitment with your partner to achieve a dream. Whether your partner wants to be a teacher, nurse, journalist, artist, or whatever they envision, this joint action can change the world by taking a person who otherwise might languish in suffering, and create repercussions that will be incalculable.

The child slave Madeline was utterly without the means to improve her desperate position until she found a partner with People in Need Partnership. There is nothing we can't achieve when we set our sights with each other.

Life-plan workshop

On your Partnership page you will also find a link to our new feature that explores a universal theme using a Tree of Understanding and Action. Please feel free to explore the tree and add your own leaves or fruit! Also, Linda Khachadurian, a freelance writer, visited us in Haiti this month and produced a photojournal about her experiences, which you can find from a link on the home page of our site.

In providing all these opportunities, we don't intend to ask anything more from you, and we especially are not requesting that you contribute any more money. Our goal is simply to create more tools that you can use to develop your relationship with your partner. The way in which you choose to do this is entirely up to you.

What do we mean by a 'real' relationship? It is not just learning about the life of your partner. And it's not just care for their well-being. There is a deeper level, a quality that is rare even in the closest and more direct relationships: the capacity to address injuries not just to the bodies but the souls of others. This is what is needed for transformative effects. It is compassion for the integrity of souls.

In Partnership,

Geoff
People in Need Partnership

Haiti staff





People in Need Partnership staff, Haiti: Sophia, Cajuste, Geoff, Myriam, and Marcel

P.S. Yes, our new name is People in Need Partnership (formerly People in Need), which we have chosen to reflect our mission and action more clearly.






Feb 16, 2009

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Feb 10, 2009

To: Marci

Dear my Partner ,
How are you doing? Your family? By my side, I am not so good and not so bad. I am sick, I am suffering Asthmatic, I can't do anything to make a living.Today I am very glad to receive the money did you send to me to buy clothes and shoes. Thank you a lots, and also the school you pay for me, I would like to continue going to school, cause I am a poor woman I couldn't. Now, I am going to literacy training and I am going to learn cooking skill next week. You are a big help for me. I am very glad to get you as partner. I want to see you in photo.

My children are not going to school because of money. I am praying God everyday for blessing you more in all activities. My big problem now, I don't have anything in my hand to feed my children. Sometimes I sleep without food, in the morning I can't wake up. cause hunger.
I would like to share any information that you want to know about me. My situation is very difficult. I would like to help me get out of this miserable life bout I could not, now I can say that my life is beginning to change a little bit.
I sent you a video message and pictures of me.

I don't know how much to thank you. I am praying God to bless you more and giving you healthy, and spirit . I have 2 children. Their names are: Rebeca and Rald.
I would like to have your picture a day. Don't forget to say hello for everybody

Much love with us.

Many kisses of you!

Your Partner
Christine

Feb 10, 2009

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To a partner, friend and sponsor of a person in need in Haiti:

People in Need was created to answer this question: Is it possible for one human being to truly care for another, even though they have nothing in common except for their shared humanity? This letter contains news about several new programs we have developed as we continually strive to answer that question by saying Yes!

Our new system depends on Coordinators, whom we have chosen from our Haitian partners. Each Coordinator assists a group of 5
Oct 01, 2008

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Sep 23, 2008

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People in Need June - July 2008 update

Thanks to all of the people who have become sponsors or who have registered this month as a guest with People in Need. In this letter you will find news of some exciting new progress. As we develop our programs and expand our work, we have new reasons to believe that this innovative program can make a real difference to many people living in extreme poverty, as well as in forming personal relationships that matter. If you are a sponsor, please check your Partnership page for your monthly update. As an initial gift, many partners have received a food package (twenty meals for schoolchildren and their families, or forty meals for mothers of families). In future months, your sponsorship plan will be carried out. For example, we are in the process of purchasing school uniforms for sponsorships of children not going to school. The name of the sponsor will be embroidered on the uniform! This month in Fifteen minutes for understanding you will find news of the effect of the global rise in food prices. In Haiti and other countries, millions of people are now facing starvation. You will also find a very brief mini-course, supplied by Humanity School, on the meaning of Compassion. Just visit your Partnership page for details (or click here). I just returned from a whirlwind trip to Haiti, hanging onto the back of motorbikes and squashed into the back of pickup trucks (the primary form of transportation, called tap-taps). During this trip we made contacts and partnerships with a number of wonderful Haitian organizations. News of these opportunities will be available on the People in Need website in upcoming months. We have made the decision to interview seventy new people in the notoriously poor slum of Cite Soleil - fifty girls not going to school, and twenty mothers and their families living in extreme poverty. A photo gallery of the extremely poor neighborhood we are focusing on, called Cite Fequier, is available here. Cite Fequier is one of the most difficult places to live on earth. Almost all families live in shacks made of tin, with dirt floors, no running water, no electricity. Many have few if any work prospects, and many are facing starvation. Please consider telling a friend or two about the opportunity to form a partnership with one of these people in need. In order to facilitate the additional responsibility of the new partnerships we are forming, we have need of a center of our own, and are now planning to occupy a small building in Port-au-Prince. This will make more in-depth monthly updates possible (it's not easy to conduct interviews while squatting on a dirt floor!), as well as providing opportunities for classes and other resources for partners. We are seeking new ways to deepen the interactive features of our site, and you can expect more tools for learning about your partner in the future. For example, we are making arrangements for a special Saturday class for schoolchildren partnerships, to begin in September. This class will provide additional learning tools for children, as well as readings where both children and their sponsors can read and respond to the same stories! Another feature we have implemented in the past month is the opportunity to purchase a $25 food package for a starving family. This package contains enough food for forty meals, and we have made a special effort to find rice that is grown locally. The use of foreign rice by aid agencies during the past decades has been devastating to farmers and to Haitian agriculture. http://img.constantcontact.com/letters/images/1101093164665/newspets_div.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x;" rowspan="1" colspan="1" background="http://img.constantcontact.com/letters/images/1101093164665/newspets_div.gif" height="1"> In spite of the catastrophic situation, there is also something truly special that is evident in Haiti. The openness, humility, and simplicity of many people in life and death situations is striking. The suffering seems to be tied to the beauty. And it provides an opportunity - and a necessity - for we individual people, privileged to live where we do, to reach out and extend a caring hand. Please contact us with any questions, comments, or suggestions.   In partnership, Geoff Director, People in Need

Sep 22, 2008

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Jul 29, 2008

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