Group wants to make holiday brighter for Haitians
Published Friday November 14th, 2008
A Fredericton organization wants a group of schoolchildren in Haiti to forget about a destructive hurricane season and have a great Christmas.
Rosemary Blair of Blair Hope International Inc., an organization she founded with her husband Miles Blair in 2007, is organizing a fundraising gospel concert Saturday.
The Christmas for Haiti Children concert will be held at the Salvation Army building, 531 St. Mary's St., starting at 7 p.m. Performers include Mark Murchison, Barb Prosser-Winder, Debbie MacDonald, Four Friends, Keith Young, Live Band Dave Palmer, Murray Gordon and Friends. Admission will be $10 at the door.
Money raised will be used to provide a Christmas Eve party for more than 100 children in a community called Raymond near the Dominican Republic border in the southeastern part of the country. The area was devastated earlier this year by hurricane Gustav.
"We always have a party on Christmas Eve, the last day of school," Blair said. "They get presented with their report cards and we present them with some presents and a nice meal. We invite basically all the parents. We have 135 children in our school, so we'd have both of their parents and maybe two or three siblings. You could have 500-600 people at this little Christmas party."
Haiti, the hemisphere's most impoverished country, loses 50 per cent of its children before their fifth birthday. Life expectancy is 45. Only a small percentage of the country's four million school-age children have the opportunity to attend school.
If things go well, Blair hopes that as much as $1,500 can be raised by the concert.
"We are always trying to raise as much as we can," Blair said. "No matter how much we raise, it is never enough. The primary reason for this concert is for the Christmas for the kids in our school."
Blair said she can't stress strongly enough the importance of the kids having a good Christmas.
"It's like a light at the end of the tunnel," she said. "They have had a hard fall; they have had a hard year. They were wiped out last year and they were wiped out again this year. These little things allow them to forget about all of the hardship for a day and just have fun and get presents that they would never get otherwise."
Blair said the gifts are things that allow children, aged three to 14, to be children.
Blair said people in the Fredericton area have always come through for them.
"We have been totally awed," Blair said. "We have been awed by the diversity of people that have come to us and have written us little notes and have sent us a cheque."
The school in Raymond is temporarily operating from a four-room house. It's serving as a replacement for the one destroyed earlier this year by hurricane Gustav.
Fundraising efforts to rebuild it in an area less prone to flooding are continuing.
Blair predicts that a new school will be built by the fall of 2009.
The Blairs, who frequently travel back and forth from the impoverished nation, hope to be back in Haiti by January or February.
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