Boca Grande Committee to Announce Plans for Friendship Village III

COCONUT CREEK, Fla. (Feb. 12, 2013) – During the week of Jan. 14-17, Hope For Haitians Chairmen Ben and Louise Scott, and eight Boca Grande Committee members, traveled with Food For The Poor to Haiti. During the three-day trip, the group attended the inauguration of the Boca Grande Friendship Village II in Michaud, and they also toured the location of the future site of Boca Grande Friendship Village III, where they received a very warm welcome.

In a prayer of thanksgiving for the visitors from Florida, one Manneville, Haiti resident said, “We thank you God, because they are people who recognize that we are people.  You put it into their hearts so they can relate to the situation that we are living in, this difficult situation.”  

Manneville is a small town located near Thomazeau in the community of Croix-des-Bouquets. The residents who live there are in desperate need of housing and access to clean drinking water. With a population of approximately 52,000, the community’s need can seem overwhelming, but the committee members are not intimidated. 

“We can only do so much, but our goal is to help as many as we can, build houses as fast as we can, and to raise as much money as we can. There are a lot of groups like us, but not enough, so we just want to do our part with what we have,” said Scott.
“What impressed me the most was the patience, the faith, and the hope that’s still here after three years,” said George Castrucci, Boca Grande Committee Member.  “It’s very sad, but very pleasing they’re hopeful, and hopefully we can do something to help them.”

Scott will address the Boca Grande Community at a reception on Feb. 21, at the historic Gasparilla Inn Beach Club, located at 445 Gilchrist Ave. in Boca Grande, Fla. He will elaborate on plans for Boca Grande Friendship Village III in Manneville, Haiti.
Boca Grande Friendship Village III will have the following:

• 35 two-room houses with sanitation. Each house will be built with a gutter system on the roof that will be connected to a water cistern, which will provide families with immediate access to rain water.
• 2,000 trees will be planted around the community to reforest the land and also increase fruit bearing trees.
• 100 goats will be distributed to residents in the community. The residents will be properly trained on how to care for the animals.                                                        
• 50 residents will receive agricultural tools to help them become more productive farmers.

“The Boca Grande Committee has partnered with us to fund communities, and the members are helping families to have a home, which will provide their children more hope, more dignity and the ability to live life with some measure of comfort, said Angel Aloma, Executive Director of Food For The Poor. “These communities also will allow the parents to seek employment and to have that wonderful feeling of being self-sustaining.”

The Boca Grande Hope for Haitians Committee has been working through Food For The Poor to build homes since 2009.  The first Boca Grande Friendship Village is located in Pierre Payen, Haiti. Click here to see what some of the committee members saw while visiting the tent cities, and during the inauguration of Friendship Village II.

Committee members include: Ben and Louise Scott, the Rev. Gary Beatty, the Rev. Brian Brightly, the Rev. Jerome Carosella, the Rev. Michelle Robertshaw, George and Lois Castrucci, Patricia Chapman, Ray and Iliene Corcoran, Randy and Sue Eddy, Charlie and Florita Field, Evelyn Finnegan, Lou and Corie Fusz, Stephen and Susan Jansen, Tom and Nancy Lorden, Colvin and Madelaine McCrady, and Peter and Elsa Soderberg.                                                 

Food For The Poor, named by The Chronicle of Philanthropy as the largest international relief and development organization in the nation, does much more than feed millions of the hungry poor in 17 countries of the Caribbean and Latin America. This interdenominational Christian ministry provides emergency relief assistance, clean water, medicines, educational materials, homes, support for orphans and the aged, skills training and micro-enterprise development assistance, with more than 96 percent of all donations going directly to programs that help the poor.