Filed under: Haitian Artists, Haitian Rap, human rights haiti, humanitarian aid, nehemiah records, orphanages haiti, poverty in haiti, steph forster, steph leigh limage | Tags: child slaves haiti, david limage, donate to haiti, grassroots projects haiti, haiti love revolution, help haitian kids, orphans haiti, Steph Limage, street kids in haiti, temporary shelters haiti
Every single person has in instrument inside them, for those who are lucky enough to have someone in their life to help them grow and see them grow as a person and use that instrument to benefit others or for something good in life.
But for those who don’t have that luck ,that one person to help them watch them growing as a person ..they might never know what kind of talent they have or the purpose of their mission here on earth.
There’s a lot of kids that didn’t have the chance to grow up with their parents but ended up being with a family member that can take care of them or guide them in life show them how to be a person in society.
if they don’t have that family member the government might give them opportunity to go to school to learn and be what ever they want to be through giving them access to student loans, grants and scholarships..that is in first world schools.
In the first world countries they teach the kids in school that they can be what ever they want to be and have what ever they want to have…..and that’s amazing to teach them at a very young age to dream and realize that dream,what a wonderful thing knowing that you can accomplish your dreams in life.
But at the same time there’s some places we call the third world countries (like haiti where i am from) where grown up people some times dont know what they are going to do to make it in life .
Now imagine for a kid that has no body and doesn’t know who his or her family is …or where he or she is from.
The only thing that kid might know is that he or she has been dropped in an orphanage & has no memory of how he or she ended up being in the street,that’s bad ,it’s bad growing up with no identity , and to not know where you came from …who is your family ….growing in a country where the government doesn’t care about you as a kid ..they don’t have a plan to help you have an education and be a good person in life,they just don’t care .
theses kids here in haiti have no idea how to dream,when they try to they think it might never come to reality..i know this because i am the same way…the only thing they know is how to survive , for them surviving is to do what ever is possible to have some food to eat or have a place to sleep…
it happens some times… some one might tell them( the street kids) they want to help them put them in school and take care of them, and then the kids ..they are very excited about it , seeing a lots of kids their age going to school with their parents and them..well they are in the streets every day with no clothes doing their best to have something to eat & in their head they’re asking “does God think this about me?am I his son like theses other kids?why am I in the streets ?why can’t have some one to look after me?why can’t I have some one to give me a hug when I’m sad? Why?”…. And that “why ” sometimes makes them angry, some of them when they are angry they become violent.
and for the ones who decided to go with some random person they don’t know ,thinking that life will be better for them and they will have the chance to go to school learn how to read and be a person with a bright future…
but it turns out that a lot of people reach out to theses kids with the objective to use them as slaves (kids slavery) 7 -8 year old kids lifting up big bokits of water on their head walking kilometers to take care of that persons house.
they don’t send them to school like they promise and they end up doing hard labor work at a very young age,when they start understanding that they have been lied to they are going to run away and get back in the street again which is very bad cause we know how the organ trafficking is in Haiti especially with little kids that have no voice ..no body to look after them … no government to make plans for them. Each one of them has an instrument inside them & in my opinion I know that everybody needs a mentor to show them how to do things in life , like Jesus did with the disciples after showing them how to reach out to people how to make miracles, these kids need a voice, they want to be able to dream they want some one to tell them when you want something in life you can have by doing the good and right thing in life.
That’s what my wife and I want to do cause I know how it is and how it feels being on your own at a young age with no supports it might take years to take that sadness out of you we need your help this is not something that David and Steph can do alone they need your support they need your love a bit of love can make a lot of difference , show them that God loves them and is using people from other countries to help them,to help them have a place to sleep , have food to eat everyday , have the right to go to school and be able to dream and make their dreams come true like you learned at school.
God blesses those who help the poor and the orphans cause they mean a lot in his eyes. Lets take action Let us be their hero . Help us get our shelter going, please , just do what you can but do it with your heart .
Click here to support our vision www.haitiloverevolution.org
Filed under: From Haiti, Haitian Artists, human rights haiti, humanitarian aid, orphanages haiti, poverty in haiti, steph forster, steph leigh limage, sustainable community haiti, voices of haiti | Tags: foster care programmes haiti
a few months ago we started bringing food to a small tent city that was near our home. this particular tent city had about 50 tents but 5 – 7 people per tent including women, children and the elderly who have been squatting on the small piece of land that resembles a garbage dump. i went to canada for 2 weeks and just got back to find all but 4 tents remaining in the camp. when i asked around i found out the govt paid them 300 USD to leave and go elsewhere. this is a pattern that is taking place all over the capital. the tents around the palace have also been evicted.. the reason for this in the local paper is a music festival the govt is putting on at the end of july with local haitian artists. normally i would love and endorse any type of arts festival but in this case i feel it was a sad excuse to evict my friends who have already lost everything and were living in horrific conditions. its beyond me who could start their life over from nothing on 300 bucks in a place like this that is already beyond over populated. if the famalies are lucky they may find dwellings in the slums that surround the city and make up a majority of the down town core .
around christmas time i was robbed and through the gps on my iphone that was in the loot the robber took i tracked him with mobile me online to his house. the house was in a slum outside of the capital and for the first time i was exposed to some of the “relocation camps” which were horrific. these relocation camps are far from resources and some of them are so far from the capital that i have no idea how the govt expects these people to sustain there long term.
the whole thing just breaks my heart… i guess you are familiar with the term ” out of site out of mind”…. thats how i feel many of my haitian friends are. over the past 9 months i have been living here full-time i have tried to create awareness surrounding many of the barriers the poor and displaced in haiti have with some luck but not on the scale i had envisioned ..which brings me back to my original mission.. the film.. the film i came here to make and have been sitting on for nearly a year now. after a few fancy offers from american studios that wanted to completley dereail my pshycological positioning and story line of the film i walked away with my tail between my legs feeling as if i would not obtain the neccassary funding for mass distrubution and be stuck trying to “crowd” fund it through indiegogo or kick starter dot com… as you know i already have to do a great deal of fundraising for our outreach programs and general expenses so to be honest i became very unmotivated in the creative dept and weighed down with logistics of food shipments and distribution.
i had an email a few months back and the person said ” i hope u are sharing jesus when you feed these people” but the thing is you cant even have a basic conversation with some one who has not eaten in days. i found this when we have street kids come by a few times during the week that we pick up and take come..i would try to talk and pray with them and often they would nod off into a sleep after a few minutes..which as you can imagine became quite frustrating. i then realized if i wanted to talk with them i had to feed them first…which helped the attention span but after about 30 min they would nod off again..which also got me upset but then i realized that the reason they were falling asleep on my patio with burning ciggarettes in their hands was because they felt safe here and could finally relax.
i cant imagine its easy to get a solid rest when you sleep outdoors especially in a place like Port Au Prince. After a few failed attempts to take in one of the children we were working with/reaching out to i realized that the model i based the whole Child Relocation Project on ( www.haitiloverevolution.org) was a recipe for disaster and needed to find an alternative solution/revamp the project..which i did. also these kids that we were taking in were stealing from us and are very good manipulators and i realized i was in way over my head.
for some one who came with the objective to bring immediate aid after a major natural disaster and make a feature documentary about it to move into the country where you were just planning on shooting a film in to expose truth is a whole other feature documentary in its self..hence the brain farts with my story boards for the film and the objectives.
going back to the sharing jesus part when feeding people… for one to understand fully what it is like to be literally starving would be the first way to try to relay the simple fact that when we hand out meal kits in the tent city we dont get to talk to people, its a riot, pushing , screaming, hitting and verbal abuse to us and those who are in front of them in the line up..that is if we can maintain enough order to keep a line formation… the food programme is not some thing i ever expected to start or being doing but here in haiti it is a big deal if you can eat everyday and we had to remedy that immediate need for our friends to worry about where their next meal was coming from and give them some peace and relief… i wouldn’t want a 14 year old girl to go prositute her self to support her family in her tent just so they can eat..so the food helps but it doesnt solve their problems.
with the weight of what to do about these street kids on my shoulders and what they really needed to move forward in life … i went to god in prayer for over a month. i cried, i fasted, i screamed at God, i nearly gave up believing in god all together and then one day it hit me… why not find haitian foster families that can actually deal with children such as these in their own culture and not some foreigner in a mixed marriage trying to rehabilitate them… after i realized that foster care was a better option than an institution i then prayed for the right people to simply present them selves to me with out me searching.. and that happend several months ago..
we were working with a christian rap group in the studio here and got to talking with the christian married couple ( the lead singer in the group). he shared his testimony with me and it turned out he has known my husband for several years now. Perry is his name… and Perry has a crazy testimony from leaving the gang life on the streets of haiti and doing a 180 with god… over the months we got to know perry , his wife and children. i began to realize that they would make an amazing foster family for a few of the boys ( especially the ones that are professional thieves) . i stayed at perry’s place in the ghetto for 3 days trying to see what they were like at home and see how he talked to his kids and wife… the results were amazing.. i have never been more received by anyone..in-fact you can go a few posts back and see photos of perry and his family from the weekend i am referring to. over the past months we have grown to be great friends with this family and they have been a huge support to us in times of need in our own marriage . so with this said we approached perry with the idea of building the first house on our land here in SANTO PAP for him and his family to move to a safer area that is away from the gang violence of his current neighbourhood and then foster 2 of the children we have on our list. they loved the idea and said even if they didn’t relocate to our land they would take the kids…but i choose to wait because the area they currently live in is not some where the kids can stay out of trouble. the house they have also is only one step up from basically living on the street so its not an environment that is conducive to rehabilitating children.
so i prayed about it several times and then last week a friend of mine in AB Canada told me to write a proposal for the costs involved in building the first house, clearing the land, laying the foundation, building a proper latrine and water system…which is about 5grand..not allot to change a few lives.. so i am praying day and night for that to happen for the proposal to be accepted so we can get the first house built and start relocating the kids.
now going back to my original mission, my film VOIX DU HAITI… its done, and finally after many months i got my creative fires burning again thanks to my old proff from Vancouver Film School. we met up in Toronto last weekend and he inspired me to organize my shot lists and submit it to the editor for the final cut and gave me some connections i needed to funding. so now i know in my heart of hearts that this film for what ever reason is important to God and important to haiti and i am just going to pump it out no matter how i think people will view me or the content or my shooting style…i just need to fulfil the mission and tell the story the best i can and know i did my part aside from the feeding programme and these homeless kids.
i guess i was frozen and now feel the creative floodgate has opened again..the ice is melting… seeing people suffering and all this political BS can really put a damper on things in the creative dept but i got too sucked in and have to work daily to not get sucked back into the pain, sorrow and misery its a bottomless pit once you let it overtake you..i also heard a sermon about jonah and how god told him to go talk to a group of people and he tried to bail out and that didn’t work out so well for him and god put him where he was supposed to be and i feel like that, i tried to escape god but here we are now finally hand in hand and i am night fighting him anymore about the fact he wants me in haiti right now.
anyways i am heading to the tent city now..or whats left of it to see where some of my friends ended up after their buy out …
if you want to help get the first house for Perry and his family to start fostering 2 of the boys we know from the streets then you can donate here www.haitiloverevolution.org where you can get a tax receipt or you can drop me a personal email steph@nehemiahrecords.com
Filed under: From Haiti, Haitian Artists, human rights haiti, humanitarian aid, International Arts Collaborations, nehemiah records, nehemiah vancity, News, orphanages haiti, poverty in haiti, steph forster, steph leigh limage
“if you dont live with the poor how can you tell their story “….thats what my husband said to me after a big pep talk he gave me an hour ago. i havent really had the words to describe what i have been going through here..for a few reasons..one being i find it hard to try to explain things that people cant simply google search to find the evidence for and develop an opinion of and also because i didnt want to scare people away from coming here to visit or to help the people here by writing about all scary stuff that happens to me..but since this is my blog i decided i can say what i feel so i can get it out of my head..
not sure where to start but i will just start typing and see what happens and you are happy to read along…
a few weeks ago i was had a gun held to my head for the first time in my life..a 38mm … it was a haitian cop that held the gun to my head and cursed me while by standers cheered him on…. i was driving in the countryside on a really sketchy road with my husband , we were heading back from a meeting to see a development project that i was photographing . on the road there was a terrible accident and the UN had the road all barricaded and local police were trying to deal with the traffic jam…i was driving about 2km per hour..just coasting and accidentally clipped the cops arm with my mirror….he was standing in the middle of the traffic …i kept saying i was sorry in Creole but he got fanatical and pulled his gun on me…he was screaming at me and cursing me and took my licence away and told me to pull over at gun point..my husband then took over and calmed him down and went to fight for my licence back..which he got thankfully but we drove away pretty traumatized from the whole thing.. i come from a country that is pretty organized and peaceful and when a cop pulls his gun its for a good reason ..it took me 2 days to get over having a loaded weapon held to my head..i laid low and watched cartoons. i had written about it on my status on facebook and then after a few comments and inbox messages from concerned friends pleading with me to come back to canada and leave this place i decided to delete the status because poeple simply don’t understand why i stay here and deal with this stuff and also they don’t know enough about the racial tension.. and i don’t mean that from the white people i mean haitians… this is the hardest thing to write for me but i need to share it.. i have been dealing with severe racism since i moved here…if this surprises you then i suggest doing some research on all the horrific things white people have done here to Haitians including loading them in ships as slaves a few hundred years back..the whole reason they are here in the first place…
Today i was sitting alone in my truck waiting for my husband to get off school and drive home together and i was literally surrounded by a group of people hanging on my truck staring at me and making racial comments… so what are you to do when this happens? i am here to love these people and bring them food each week but the same mouths i work so hard to feed curse me each day. i thought i had a tough enough skin to tolerate the racial comments but today i had a total melt down..
after the mob around my truck was done, my husband came out and then we headed back towards our house and ended up in the middle of a shooting..so i had to hide in our truck till the bullets hit the human they were after and wait to drive away up the other side of the road to get to our house…at this point i was rattled but it was the second time i was in the line of fire here..i had nearly been shot the night before Christmas eve when i was walking to the motorcycle after buying some icecream with my husband..that time i saw the police murder a boy..so i was happy that today i didnt see the murder nor was i outside the truck so it offered me some protection..the other pro is my husband has been in school for the past 4 months learning how to protect people and use weapons etc for National Security..so i feel safe when i am out with him but the idea of going to the store for milk alone scares me incase some thing goes down in the street…
after the shooting we decided to stop to get some mangos on the way home.. i was heading over a bridge that has these guys guarding it and use a Megaphone to direct the bridge traffic because its one of those one way bridges with 2 way traffic so you need to wait your turn.. as i drove over simply following the other cars the men decided to yell racial comments at me with the megaphone..that was my breaking point.. i had heard enough for one week.. i went home and cried for 2 hours and pleaded with god . i feel simply beaten raw inside with racial comments… they stick to your bones.. when i was just visiting here short term i didn’t notice it and if i did i brushed it off because i had my fancy bed and home to go to and i could forget about it in a few weeks but i live here now and its become part of my daily routine..being harassed and bullied..not being offered the same prices for produce because of the colour of my skin ..the list goes on..
i also noticed that the racial comments are particularly intense the day after i feed the poor or go out of my way to help people here…so the dark powers of haiti use their own people to turn on me with their mouthes and curse me…but i have to make the decision to stay here and keep trying and keep going but its hard today i feel so beaten up.
tomorrow we were supposed to go to outreach in a really poor area of Port-Au-Prince which is also notorious for its gangs ..which is a whole other story…anyways we had to cancel the outreach/food drop because our friend that lives inside that specific community said some things are going down right now on the streets. the gangs have the roads barricaded and already shot one cop today, so he advised us to come next weekend..but the thing is the people need food and no one goes to these places..
i get so confused because i see all these fancy NGO SUV’s driving around everyday but i can never figure out where they are going and who they are helping.. i know from first hand experience that the warehouses here are simply full of aid,food and medical supplies that have not been distributed .
the other day i was going to the warehouse to pick up a food shipment and on my way there i saw a man walking with his hands up a mountain..and i mean a real mountain..he was walking with his hands because his legs did not work… he needed crutches… so i looked over to my husband and said ” i wish i had a bunch of crutches so when ever i see some one like that i could just stop the truck real quick and give them some crutches and drive away”..so an hour later i was inside the warehouse loading the shipment and guess what i found?
a big pile of brand new crutches.. yep shiny new with fancy plastic wrap..just sitting there with piles and piles and piles of other Aid… so the thought crossed my mind to highjack the ware house goods and hand it all out like robin hood…but that would be stealing so i clearly didn’t do that.. or i would be in jail right now… but my point is there is millions of dollars worth of stuff just sitting here and i personally know at least 10 worthy ministries that could really use that stuff.. but it doesn’t work like that.. so my challenge to you is when you donate to a big NGO with the fancy website and all the fancy marketing where do you think that money goes? how much do you think pays for the fancy marketing and how much really impacts lives..or how much pays for housing for the NGO peeps, SUV’s and fat salaries ..check out the UN Job bank and look at the average salary..its retarded high..i got offered an NGO job as a Project Manager but it doesn’t have a fancy salary and also connects me to those who have a massive amount of resources in terms of humanitarian aid so i figured if i could steer the shipments to the right places then i would be contributing some thing good …so i also need to not make blanketed statements about ALL NGOS and dubbing them as evil because that would be wrong and ignorant.. but i do my due diligence and review budgets and overhead before getting involved with NGO’s and i check references .. but over the past 2 years i have seen some really crappy things that NGOs have done so its a daily task to forgive when you are surrounded by so much poverty and suffering.
so in the middle of all this anger i feel towards those hoarding resources i also understand the spirit of poverty on the land here and that they have fallen under it too.. and you know what the spirit of poverty does? it causes you to be greedy and hoard things… which is why we have a giving principle in our ministry and believe even the poorest people we know have some thing to give..whats that you say? they can give their time to serve food with us to others, they can pray for sick people in their community, they can take in orphans or visit with those who are severely neglected… each person has some thing they can offer and contribute then its not a hand out its a hand up and it breaks that spirit!
anyways i feel like if i keep writing i will have more explaining to do than i can handle right now but i would appreaciate your prayers..that is if you pray.. if not send me good vibes.. my special request is that some one out there sends my husband and i some money JUST FOR US not the kids we help or the community BUT US because we need a weekend away …a break..a refresh and a time to reflect and re-group so we can keep going here. it is really hard and thats my prayer, thats what i asked god for today was that break, that weekend away…
thanks for reading this far..
check ya later i am going to listen to the rain
Filed under: Call for Artists, From Haiti, Haitian Artists, Haitian Rap, human rights haiti, humanitarian aid, International Arts Collaborations, nehemiah records, nehemiah vancity, News, orphanages haiti, steph forster, steph leigh limage, sustainable community haiti
Hello Ladies & Gentlemen !
We are currently producing a collaborative Album with 100% of the proceeds funding our charity project here in Haiti
( LINKAGE- http://www.loveglobal.com/project/project.aspx?asset=696 ). We are looking for international artists from a variety of genres to collaborate with our Haitian Artists to create positive, encouraging,multilingual tracks that will bring life & awareness to the issue of child trafficking/exploitation here in Haiti.
What do I do if I want to be involved in this project?
-Submit a music sample & a brief write up telling us why you want to be involved to steph@nehemiahrecords.com by MARCH 15th 2012 & use the sign up form below to register & receive additional information.
After March 15th the artists who have registered & sent their submissions will be contacted for a telephone interview & those artists selected will go on to work on collaborative tracks with our Haitian Artists.
Nehemiah Records will then release the Album to raise the necessary funds to support our building project here in Haiti for Children at Risk.
NOTE: Artists wanting to register in the Vancouver BC Canada area will have the option to meet with us directly as we will be there from Feb 15th 2012 – March 15th 2012.
What Can you Expect?
- You can expect to connect with talented Haitian Artists who believe in the cause
- -You can expect to receive credit for your work ( media releases,press interviews,print publications & social media)
- -You can expect to add your tracks to your portfolio
- -You can expect to be invited to perform here in Haiti
- -You can expect to change lives
- You can expect to be taken to a point of full studio production with your music
We look forward to hearing from you!
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Bonjour Mesdames et Messieurs!
Nous sommes actuellement en produisant un album en collaboration avec 100% du produit de financement de notre projet caritatif ici en Haïti
(LIEN-http://www.loveglobal.com/project/project.aspx?asset=696). Nous recherchons des artistes internationaux de divers genres de collaborer avec nos artistes haïtiens de créer positifs, encourageants, pistes multilingues qui apportera la vie et de sensibilisation à la question de la traite des enfants / exploitation ici en Haïti.
Que dois-je faire si je veux être impliqués dans ce projet?
-Soumettre un échantillon de musique et une brève rédiger nous dire pourquoi vous voulez participer à la steph@nehemiahrecords.com le 15 mars 2012 et utiliser le formulaire d’inscription ci-dessous pour vous inscrire et recevoir des informations supplémentaires.
Après le 15 Mars les artistes qui ont enregistré et envoyé leurs soumissions seront contactés pour une entrevue téléphonique et les artistes sélectionnés iront à travailler sur les pistes de collaboration avec nos artistes haïtiens.
Néhémie dossiers seront ensuite sortie de l’album de lever les fonds nécessaires pour soutenir notre projet de construction ici en Haïti pour les enfants à risque.
REMARQUE: Les artistes désireux de s’inscrire dans le Canada, Vancouver, C.-B. aura la possibilité de rencontrer directement avec nous car nous serons là dès février 2012 15 – Mars 15th 2012.
Que pouvez-vous attendre?
-Vous pouvez vous attendre à être prises à un point de la production studio complet avec votre musique
-Vous pouvez vous attendre de se connecter avec talent des artistes haïtiens qui croient en la cause
-Vous pouvez vous attendre à recevoir un crédit pour vos travaux (communiqués de presse, interviews à la presse, les publications imprimées et médias sociaux)
-Vous pouvez vous attendre à ajouter vos pistes à votre portefeuille
-Vous pouvez vous attendre à être invité à se produire ici en Haïti
-Vous pouvez vous attendre à changer des vies
