For some Americans, post-Labor Day means “back to school,” which can be exciting or stressful or both. Kids or no, the holiday marks the time to get back to business. Turn over a new leaf. Make a fresh start. Take the next level.

To families in developing countries, however, back to school might as well

“Back to school” doesn’t’ apply to kids in developing countries who can’t even afford the shoes to walk there. Thanks to supporters of Cross International, though, impoverished kids like these in Haiti are getting a quality Christian education.

mean a trip to the moon—it’s just as far fetched. Even tuition-free government schools charge enrollment fees, and most require students to wear uniforms and shoes—costs that are out of reach to poor parents who don’t have two pennies to rub together.

It’s a sad “Catch 22.” People who lack education, especially literacy, can’t get a job. So they can’t afford to send their kids to school. Those kids grow up illiterate and unemployed, and the cycle continues. Education breaks that cycle. (Click here to read more about how knowledge combats poverty.)

A family trapped in poverty for generations can lift itself out in one. But they usually need a boost.

The average cost to send a poor kid in a developing country to school for a year is about $200. While that amount’s nothing to sneeze at, it’s small when measured against the good it can do.

What a great way to turn over that new leaf—take the next level: Sponsor education for impoverished kids who would otherwise look forward to more of the same. Help break their cycle of poverty for generations to come.

When a single project can house the homeless, create jobs for the jobless, protect the planet, and be self sustaining—all at the same time—Cross International would consider it to be just about the perfect project!

That’s why we’re so excited about a special enterprise being launched in Haiti. It’s an all-in-one housing program, vocational training program,

Boys of working age at an orphanage are learning how to assemble pre-fab houses that will go to families who lost their homes in Haiti’s earthquake. This will be a steady livelihood for them for years to come.

construction company, and livelihood for orphans.

Now for the details.

The houses are designed by Shelter2Home. They resist earthquakes, hurricanes, fire, termites, and 96 percent of the sun’s heat. They’re made of environmentally-friendly materials, yet you can’t tell them apart from traditional cement homes in Haiti. Through Cross’s support, these homes will go to families who lost theirs in the earthquake.

Right now, orphaned and vulnerable kids of working age at an orphanage in southern Haiti are getting trained to put these pre-fab homes together. They’ll be able to make a living for years to come while rebuilding Haiti, through the construction company they’re forming. Those are good job prospects considering Haiti had 80 percent unemployment before the earthquake!

Click here to watch a video and learn more about this ideal project!

Nothing is more uplifting than seeing the smiling face of a hungry child receiving a nutritious meal, or a mother with tears of joy in her eyes because she knows she’ll be able to feed her family with the bag of food staples she just received.

During a recent trip to Guatemala and Honduras, a couple of our staff members were able to capture some moments like these with photos. Below are a few of the many grateful faces they saw while visiting feeding programs we support in Central America.

We are able to feed needy people such as these because of the continuing support of American Christians. Click here to learn more about the feeding programs we support around the world and how you can help.

Born with a severe case of clubfoot, Isaiah Cruz spent most of his life crawling around. The 13-year-old Honduran’s feet were so twisted he couldn’t stand without help. Although he is a great student, until recently he hated going to school because the other children made fun of him.

A local newspaper wrote about Isaiah's life-changing surgery. This is how he looked before he received help from the Christian hospital we support in Honduras.

Now Isaiah plays soccer with his friends, who cannot believe the miraculous change they’ve seen in their friend over the last six months.

Much like the lame man from the bible story in Acts 3 who receives the ability to walk for the first time, Isaiah experienced the healing touch of God — it came through a Christian hospital we support in Honduras that provides orthopedic care to children of poor families.

After two surgeries and just a few months recovery, Isaiah was “walking, leaping, and praising God” (Acts 3:8).

“I thank God, the hospital, the doctors who did the surgery, and the people who gave the money to make it possible,” Isaiah said. “I was so sad before, but now I am very happy. I can walk!”

Isaiah’s mother, Lenore, said that she and her husband never dreamed their son would walk. Poor subsistence farmers, the couple hardly earns enough to feed their six children and pay the rent each month. Like most of the families in their rural, mountain community, they could never have afforded a surgery like the one that enabled their son to walk.

Unable to walk since birth because of a crippling case of clubfoot, Isaiah now walks easily and plays soccer with his friends.

Overwhelmed by his new ability to walk, Isaiah wants to devote his life to helping others in his country.  “I want to be a doctor when I grow up so I can help people like me.”

The Christian hospital in Honduras that fixed Isaiah’s debilitating deformity has helped 382 other children in the past year, offering them life-changing surgeries that were hopelessly out of reach for their poor families.

And according to Ruth Castro, the hospital’s director, it is the support of American Christians that enables them to continue.

“The need is overwhelming here. The people literally have nothing,” she said. “The support of Cross International and its donors is a vital blessing.”

This Christian hospital is one of several medical outreach programs we support in places such as Vietnam, Guatemala, and Afghanistan. Click here to learn how you can provide life-changing medical care to a child like Isaiah.

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!

If there was ever a place in Haiti that needs help, it’s Gonaives.

Far from the city life of Port-au-Prince and the beauty of Haiti’s tropical

Emory Wilson truly has a heart for serving God’s children in Gonaives.

mountain ranges lays a barren desert on the northwestern coast. The landscape looks like the moon: white, empty, flat, and dusty. The city of Gonaives, which is home to about 200,000 people, blisters under the hot sun, and many of its people suffer from hunger, malnutrition, poverty, joblessness, and homelessness.

It’s here that Emory Wilson, one of Cross International’s mission partners, says God wants him to be.

“I’ve been dependent upon God to show me the way,” Emory says. “He’s been my strength and compelled me to go where I didn’t want to go.”

Emory began coming to Haiti in 2004 on outreach trips, and he moved to Gonaives for good in March 2008. Cross first began working with Emory in 2008, when Gonaives suffered horrible flooding. Today he’s building a new school in one of Gonaives’ worst slums, Jubilee, with help from Cross. Several classrooms are expected to open this fall in time for school.

To begin with, the Jubilee School will have preschool, kindergarten, and a

Several classrooms of the Jubilee School are scheduled to open this fall for students (photo taken July 2010).

class for “late bloomers,” or older children who need to start at the kindergarten level because they’ve never had the opportunity to attend school before. Emory plans to add more grades when the school is completely done.

With education, the children of Jubilee will have a chance at making better lives for themselves than the dirt-poor existence of their parents. The things they’ll learn at the Jubilee School—reading, writing, math, Bible lessons—will be tools they can use to get jobs as adults. These children are faced with some of the toughest economic conditions in Haiti, and thanks to Emory’s work, they’ll have what they need for a brighter future.

Emory says the school has been a community effort as much as anything.

“I liken this work to that of Nehemiah—when he went to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, each family built their part of it. When families come and see the work we do, I see what spot they can build along the wall…people are finding things and places they can do and are doing it.”

Click here to read about how you can help Cross International support education in Haiti. You CAN make a difference just like Emory!

Grace Ministries Mission evangelical church has a new leader with a big heart, and big plans, for the poor.

Bishop Stanley Simunyola praying over a poor Zambian family in their home.

Recently, Cross staff met up with Bishop Stanley Simunyola in Lusaka, Zambia, where he told us about the roots of his passion: a Christian teacher from his childhood. As a boy growing up in poverty, Stanley was on the verge of dropping out of school because his parents could not afford the fees and supplies. But his teacher believed in him enough to intervene and pay for his education.

As a result of that act of kindness, Stanley finished school, went to college, became and ordained minister, and earned a masters degree in pastoral studies from an American university. Now he is reaching out to a new generation of children in Zambia to give them the same opportunities.

“When I see street kids, I see potential pastors. I see potential doctors, lawyers,” he says. “I know that what is being done into the lives of those children is not in vain.”

Bishop Stanley’s ministry seeks out children who have lost one or both parents and provides food, school expenses, and Christ-centered counseling. Rather than create an atmosphere of dependency and entitlement, the program is helping the poor to see what they can accomplish through their own diligence and hard work, encouraged by the prayers, love, and support of the local Christian community. For instance, a widow whose four children are being put through school by Grace Ministries was inspired to begin volunteering at her church, and now she provides home-based care to other needy families in her village.

“They don’t want to just be recipients,” Bishop Stanley says. “They want to also pass on help to other people.”

Click here to learn about how Cross International is supporting this powerful ministry.

After more than two years of waiting and praying, Ana Briceño’s dreams came true. Her family was one of 50 to receive a sturdy home through a housing project we support in Nicaragua.

“This is such a blessing from God,” Ana said. “Before our family was suffering because we were constantly moving from place to place. We did not have a place to live.”

The shanty where Ana and her family used to live was literally falling apart.

Ana and her husband, Erwin, and their five young children had been nomads for several years. The $2.50 a day Erwin made working on a shrimp farm was hardly adequate for food and basic living necessities, let alone enough to secure a safe place for them to live. So they moved — a lot.

One of the places they lived was a small shack in El Limonal, the community next to the Chinandega city garbage dump. The people call the area the Triangle of Death because it is surrounded by the 20-acre dump, an overflowing cemetery, and a contaminated river. The nickname is hardly an exaggeration. Disease runs rampant in the community because of the filthy living and working conditions.

Ana’s children were always sick from the dirty conditions — they lived in a dilapidated shack made from rusted tin, dirty plastic tarps, and rotting wood — and she feared something would happen to them while she was gone during the day working as a maid.

Now Ana's family can sleep in peace knowing that their sturdy house built by Cross will protect them from the weather.

Ana prayed daily that her family would be able to escape the harsh conditions of the dump. Just when she was about to lose hope, Ana’s family was selected to receive a house in a clean community miles from the dump through a Cross housing program.

“I was so happy when I heard the news,” Ana said. “I didn’t know what to say.”

Ana and her family are now settling into their new house, and her three oldest children are attending the primary school in their new community — the other two will also once they are old enough.

“The environment here is much better than in the dump,” Ana said. “I am so thankful to have a place where my children can grow up in safety.”

Of all the things you can do to help a poor family nothing is as transformative as building them a house. Not only does it provide them with a safe place to live, but it gives families who have nothing hope for a better future while showing them the love of Christ in the process. Cross provides sturdy homes to destitute families like Ana’s who don’t have a safe place to call home. Click here to learn more about the housing projects we support around the world.

Amidst the tragedy of the January 12 earthquake in Haiti, God worked through his people to offer a helping hand to children in need. One such person who interceded for God was Gladys Thomas, director of a multi-faceted ministry in Port-au-Prince that includes an elementary school, School of the Good Sower, and an orphanage, Haiti Home for Children. Gladys took in as many orphans as she could after the earthquake.

Evans, 13, found a new home at Haiti Home for Children after the earthquake.

One of those lucky children was Evans, 13. He had been living at an orphanage in Port-au-Prince before January 12. After the earthquake, that orphanage abandoned its children to the streets and closed. Evans was befriended by an 18-year-old street boy who took him under his wing like a brother. The pair cobbled together a shelter in a tent city and begged for money and food together in the streets.

Evans survived on the streets and in a tent city from January until April. Then a mobile medical clinic found him and learned his story. They contacted Gladys, who immediately made a home for him at Haiti Home for Children orphanage. At first Evans didn’t want to leave his new “brother.” But the older boy was 18, a veteran of the streets, and knew he couldn’t join Evans at the orphanage. In the end, the boy told Evans to go with Gladys—he knew his “little brother” would receive the care and love he needed.

Now Evans has a safe place to live, goes to school, and eats a hot lunch every day. Best of all, he learns about the comforting, saving message of Jesus—now that’s nourishment! Gladys is just one example of God working through his followers in the aftermath of the earthquake. With help from generous American Christians, Cross International supports Gladys’ ministries in Haiti, and we hope you, too, will join us in helping her reach out to more children in Port-au-Prince.

Click here to read about School of the Good Sower, Haiti Home for Children, and other ministries that Cross International supports in Haiti.

If you look at Haiti solely in terms of statistics, the picture looks bleak: barely half of Haitians over 15 can read and write, more than two-thirds of the workforce is unemployed, and about 15 percent of Haiti’s children are orphaned. And after the devastating earthquake in January, poverty and homelessness are on the rise.

Sedellia and her 3-year-old grandson, Marc, find hope in God after the earthquake.

But if you look at Haiti at the “people level,” you’ll see a different picture altogether, one of hope that comes from the Christian people of Haiti.

Take Sedellia Guerrier, 63, who survived the earthquake at her home in Gressier, which is just a few kilometers from the epicenter. When the earthquake hit, her house tumbled down around her, her son, and her grandson, Marc, 3. The damage appeared severe—a wall toppled on her son’s back and broke it, and her house was completely destroyed. But Sedellia looked through the destruction and saw God’s hand.

“The dust hadn’t settled when I began to pray and give thanks that my family was saved,” she said. By the grace of God, Sedellia’s son was not paralyzed from the injury. Marc, who had been inside the house during the quake, was found sitting on the roof of the collapsed home, which Sedellia calls a miracle. And after sleeping under a tarp with her family for three weeks, she praised God for sending them a tent to live in instead.

“When you don’t ask for something and it shows up, it could only be God that sent it,” she said. “A tent showed up and we slept in it for two months.”

Today, Sedellia lives next to the rubble of her old home in a one-room temporary shelter made of salvageable cement blocks and tarps. Seven family members live there with her. Despite losing everything, Sedellia thanks God for keeping them alive and knows he will help Haiti recover.

“It’s not money that makes you rich; it’s the power of God and love in your heart,” she says.

Click here to find out how Cross International is reaching out to earthquake victims like Sedellia—and how you can help!