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Raymond Shader hasn't added a story.
Hi! My name is Ray Shader. Almost six years ago, most of December 2009 to early January 2010 I went to The Mojave Desert and Joshua Tree seeking the proverbial forty days in the wilderness. The economy had tanked and I was looking for some direction. The three weeks I spent in the Mojave were pure solitude. It was a time of prayer, worship and being amazed by the creation. From there I went to Joshua Tree and found out it is a mecca for rock climbers at Christmas and the New Year. I met many incredible people and at forty-nine began rock climbing.
I returned to Phoenix on the 11th of January 2010. The next afternoon the earthquake hit Haiti. My prayer when I returned from Joshua Tree was that God would open a door for me. I needed to be useful and I prayed that no matter the wage I would be willing. God is good to take you at your word and a few weeks later I was accepted by All Hands Volunteers as a volunteer.
I came to Haiti April 17, 2010 and except for a few short trips out and one longer one this last November I have been here the whole time. I got married to my wonderful wife Maricienne here and it is here we have been raising our boys, Marc, Bobi and JJ.
I just recently started an organization called Churches Helping Churches with the primary goal of inspiring the churches in more developed nations to set aside resources to help the Haitian churches see to the needs of the communities. Haitian churches are already community centers and have staffs that have been administering them well and on consistently low budgets. They coordinate missions’ trips throughout the country, often time across denominations, they administer the funds needed for the upkeep and repairs and in some cases the rebuilding of their churches and they see to the poorest in their communities as best they can.
Reinventing the wheel is always wasteful in resources and time so instead of bringing people from around the globe who have no understanding of the nuances of working in Haiti it is better to use the people here to administer and see to their countrymen’s needs.
Again it is primarily the churches in developed countries that I am seeking help from but anyone who believes that we need to see to the widows and orphans in their distress is who I hope to find support with.
The areas I feel impelled to work in are schools, clean water and orphanages. Barely 15% of grade school aged children here go to school and as they get older that number drops and more drastically for the females. 8-14% of the children here won’t see their 5th birthday due to water borne disease. The orphanages here are of two types; wonderful safe environments and the second are so atrocious that if it was an animal shelter in America the proprietors would be facing jail time.
There are three projects that I am looking at now that has to do with education and clean water.
The first is the roof on our church, Eglise Baptiste Union. Putting up the roof would allow the school to open again. The congregation also wants to place a portion of the offering for tuitions for the children in the community and hopes to find an American church that would be willing to match their giving. The cost of the roof is $10000.
The second project is composting toilets for our church to build in their community of Debois. They have something very precious there, a clean source of drinkable water; hard to find in Haiti. They need a way to protect it so it won’t be contaminated by waste. The WHO wrote in a study on the need for good sanitation in developing nations that for every $1 spent there was a return of $9. For every sanitation project there is a reduction in costs to treat water borne diseases and ailments equal to nine times what was spent to build proper sanitation. Beyond the dollar cost there is the cost in quality of life and life itself. The cost for the toilets is $8000.
The third project is solar panels at the church in Marin. For normal purposes they would use it for lighting in the church and school and to pump from the well. In emergencies, hurricanes, power outages, governmental malfunctions, etc... They want to have it available for the community so that they won't be without water and be able to charge telephones. etc... When it's business as usual they would have a place where people come and pay to charge their phones, etc... and that would cover maintenance on the system and well but in emergencies this would be free to their community. With power they feel they can begin adult education in the evenings as they have the school facilities in place and the church could become even more of a community center where organizations can come and do health screenings, community updates etc... The cost of this would be $3500.
All of these things are a one-time cost; everything is self-sustaining after that. $21000 and the needs of three communities for education and protecting clean water are resolved.
I remember watching people do the ice bucket challenge on the internet and the whole time thinking about all that wonderful water go to waste. I have a challenge for you. Go out and buy a reusable water bottle and fill it from the tap each day. Calculate how much you won’t spend on bottled water by doing that, subtract the cost of the water bottle and then send me the rest.
Challenge number two; don’t buy a $25 back pack and fill it with $20 worth of school supplies to send here. I can buy all that here for $7. Instead send me that money and the kids will get something better than school stuff they’ll get to go to school.
Together we can make a difference and we can lift up a whole generation.
At this time this is not a 501(c)(3) non-profit.
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