Easter flowers for Haiti orphans

A grassroots group of church ladies is partnering with local businesses to hold a pre-Easter flower sale this weekend in support of severely disabled orphans in Haiti.

The benefit sale is Saturday from 7 a.m. to noon at Ferguson’s, next to Wendy’s on North Main Street, in Culpeper. It is the first of numerous fundraisers the newly formed group, World Without End, plans to hold.

Betty Jean Franklin of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church spearheaded the effort to provide ongoing assistance for the Little Children of Jesus Handicapped Home, one of five facilities in Haiti operated by Florida-based Food for the Poor.

“We expect it to be a lengthy process,” she said of their plans to support Haiti through Food for the Poor over the long term. “This is our mission as Christians.”

Franklin was prompted to take action in the wake of the country’s devastating earthquake Jan. 12 that left hundreds of thousands of people homeless in the already impoverished country.

In a recent meeting, she spoke of seeing a television segment in which a reporter followed the sound of children singing to find 26 babies and toddlers crowded into the back of a truck with no food or water, in the intense heat and covered with insects. The Haitian children were from an orphanage that had been destroyed in the earthquake and had no place to go.

Franklin rallied her Bible study group to help the orphans, and group members were put in touch with Food for the Poor, a Christian aid group that’s been working in Haiti for 20-plus years.

“Betty Jean made a phone call to me — her heart went out to the children. How can we help them?” said fellow churchgoer Lina Marengo-Frank. “We are challenging the community of Culpeper to rally behind us and give their support for the children.”

Kathy Skipper, marketing manager with Food for the Poor, said the home for disabled children, located outside Port au Prince, was not destroyed in the earthquake, but its exterior security walls crumbled and some of the interior walls cracked.

Thankfully, no children were hurt. Yet their lives are far from easy.

In Haiti, children born with disabilities are usually left at hospitals or abandoned. One hundred and four such children live at the Little Children of Jesus home, and many require round-the-clock care, Skipper said. The orphanage has 70 staff members.

Candace Travers, one of the St. Stephen’s ladies helping with the local aid effort, said they want to help where help is most needed.

“Most times, these special-needs children are the last to be looked at in society,” she said. “We want to make them the focus.”

Added church member Kitty Whitman, “It is difficult for us to grasp the idea of desperate poverty, but if we can assist Food for the Poor, maybe we can offer not just bread but the bread of life to these orphans.”

The situation of greatest need in Haiti right now, Skipper said, is the pending approach of the rainy season and the need to get proper sanitation and clean water systems in place.

In addition to housing and community development, Food for the Poor provides daily sustenance to Haitians — since the earthquake it has delivered more than 9,300 tons of food, medical supplies and medicine and building materials.

The organization, through the years, has established various water systems in Haiti and also works to provide services in education, fishing, agriculture and health care. Skipper said every little bit of charity helps, acknowledging the local flower sale Saturday in Culpeper.

“We take it as an individual approach,” she said. “If you can change the life of one person, you can begin to change the family and the whole village. We are grateful when groups like this reach out to us.”

Local businesses contributing to the flower sale include Lowe’s, Martin's, Safeway, Ebenezer Heights Greenhouses and Food Lion.

Want to help?
World Without End, a newly formed group of charity-minded church ladies, is holding a flower sale outside at Ferguson Enterprises, 814 N. Main St., next to Wendy’s in Culpeper, Saturday from 7 a.m. to noon. All proceeds benefit Food for the Poor, a Florida-based aid organization to Haiti. Call Lina Marengo-Frank at (571) 436-3171.