Cross International has some great news to report from the field. Last year, we worked with one of our mission partners, Mission Evangelique Baptiste Du Su D’Haiti (MEBSH) to support 29 schools for restavek children in Haiti. Restaveks, or children working as indentured servants for their host family, are routinely denied the opportunity to attend school. These specialized schools teach them how to read, write, and do arithmetic, skills they would likely never learn otherwise.

Restavek students like this receive the education they need at MEBSH schools throughout Haiti.

And starting this fall, Cross will fund 10 additional MEBSH restavek schools! That means we’ll reach even more than the 864 restavek children we currently support through the classes and feeding programs we fund at each school.

Why is going to school so important for restaveks? Because they are Haiti’s ignored children, a segment of the population no one wants to talk about. More than 300,000 children, most of them girls, are restaveks (from the French rester avec which means “stay with”). Their parents, too poor to feed their children, send them to live with families in better economic situations with the hope that their children will have a better life and an education. But that’s rarely the case.

Restaveks are usually forced to work hard, and they are sometimes physically and sexually abused. And their host families often deny them the opportunity to attend school. Without an education, these children are doomed to be poor like their parents because they won’t have the skills to get jobs as adults. Even worse, these children grow up thinking they aren’t worthy of an education like the other children they see going to and from school every day.

That’s why it’s critical that restaveks get an education: to keep them out of poverty and to teach them that they are just as capable, smart, and worthy of an education as other children. MEBSH and Cross are working together through these grassroots-level schools to help restavek children value themselves and get an education. It’s just one way we can spread the Gospel message of Jesus in Matthew 18:5, when he spoke of humble children: “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.”

Click here to read about the restavek schools and feeding programs Cross supports in Haiti. Help us welcome the children in the name of Jesus!

In Haiti, one thing has always been certain. Through all the poverty, tragedy, and violence that has plagued the small Caribbean nation, Haitians have always celebrated Carnival.

Many churches were destroyed in the earthquake. But Haitian’s faith in God remains strong.

But not this year.

The lively annual festivities, which would have begun Sunday and ended today, have been set aside, so the Haitian people can observe three days of mourning and fasting. Haitian musicians cancelled their Carnival performances and instead are raising money for earthquake relief.

It’s amazing how God can use the worst of tragedies to remind us that he is in control. We are confronted with our own helplessness, with our absolute dependence in God’s mercy and compassion. Shortly after the earthquake struck, our own staff reported seeing groups of people openly praying and worshiping God amid the ruins of Port-au-Prince. Though the church buildings were destroyed, the faith of the people remained intact.

As Cross International begins to look forward to Haiti’s long-term recovery, we consider our spiritual focus an integral, rather than peripheral, part of our mission to the poor. The people of Haiti need hope, and our mission partners are there to lead them to the only hope that lasts. Whether we are feeding orphans at the School of the Good Sower, caring for the handicapped at World Harvest Children’s Home, or helping “restavek” children get some time away from the rigors of virtual slavery, we always make sure that the gospel is preached, because that is what changes lives. A meal will sustain a child for a day, and the sturdiest rebuilt house will eventually weather away, but the free gift of salvation in Christ Jesus is what sustains us forever.

This week Americans observe Columbus Day, in honor of the explorer Christopher Columbus, whose mixed legacy has stirred a lot of controversy over the years.

Christopher Columbus

A statue of Columbus still stands in Hispaniola, the Caribbean Island discovered by him five centuries ago, now divided into the countries of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Here, Columbus and his successors brutally enslaved and massacred the local Arawak population, until not a single one remained. Around the same time, the first African slaves also arrived on the island.

Haiti’s claim to fame is that, many years later, it hosted the first successful slave revolt in the history of the world. The slaves won their freedom by force, while slaves in other countries had to wait to be freed by their governments.

It’s a tragedy, then, that a more subtle form of slavery continues to be practiced in Haiti. Children from poor families are handed over to wealthier families with the promise that they will be educated in return for servitude. Instead, these “restavek” children are abused and treated as less than human.

Cross International supports special restavek schools, where the children are able to get a real education and, more importantly, some time away from their oppressive conditions. In these schools, they are treated with love and respect, they have a chance to befriend other children who share their hard life, and they get to hear the good news of the Gospel.

You can help us bring hope into the life of a restavek child today! CLICK HERE to learn how.

During a recent trip to Haiti, our international projects director, Michael Wilson, interviewed several restaveks who attend a basic literacy program we support at 19 schools throughout the country. If you aren’t familiar with the term “restavek,” you can read more here, but it’s basically a Haitian social system in which poor children are sent to live with strangers in urban areas. In exchange for shelter, food, and education, the children are expected to perform some house work. But often, they are treated as slaves, kept from school and forced to do backbreaking work.

Michael Wilson, international projects director for Cross International

Michael was jarred by the stories of these poor children, especially that of Roselyn J., a 12-year-old who described her life as a restavek as one of “labor and difficulty.” Below is an excerpt from his trip report:

For 19 years I’ve been working in Haiti. I knew in my head what a restavek was, but Roselyn J., a girl we talked to at one of the schools, really opened my eyes and made the idea tangible to me. It’s the first time I’ve heard the truth not being told by someone next to me, but by a restavek.

Roselyn J. doesn’t remember her exact birthday, but she remembers the exact day she was brought to Les Cayes, Haiti to be a restavek: November 30, 2005. She was only 7 or 8 years old, and she hasn’t seen her mom since. Roselyn is one of more than 300,000 children in Haiti living a difficult life of domestic servitude as a restavek.

Roselyn instantly broke down crying the moment we asked about how her life is with her “host” family. That hit me like a ton of bricks. In that moment I saw the heart of an abused 12-year-old little girl. Because of her, the idea of a restavek is no longer abstract for me. It has a face, her face. On this trip I saw the depth and despair of what being a restavek means.

It was hard to hear about her life, but I was also glad to hear that she finds hope in the literacy program we support at 19 restavek schools in Haiti. It is her three hours a day where she is among her peers and finds an escape from her harsh reality.

I was very impressed with the education taking place in these restavek classes. It’s better than some of the education I’ve seen at public schools in Haiti. But the program goes beyond education. It is a social outlet for many children — the only place they have friends or feel like they are worth something. And the teachers at the schools are amazing role models as Christians, educators, and people. They go above and beyond.

We may not be able to immediately change this deep-rooted cultural situation, but we can live out Christ’s command to help “the least of these” (Matthew 25:40). These restavek schools bring the hope of Jesus into the lives of these poor children and provide them with the tools to build a better future.