Since 2000, the What If? Foundation has partnered with members of the Ti Plas Kazo community in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to bring much-needed food and educational opportunities to impoverished children. We began by serving meals to a few hundred children on Sundays. Today, we fund programs that provide about 6,000 meals each week, more than 200 school scholarships each year, an after-school program for 240 youth, and a summer camp for 550 children. The What If? Foundation is the only source of funding for these programs.

Our success over the years is a direct result of our collaboration with our Haitian partners, who have worked tirelessly to ensure that our work with the children continues, through turbulent political and economic times and in the face of other significant challenges. They are the ones who prepare and serve the food program meals every week, enroll students into schools, and run the after-school and summer camp programs. And they are the ones who mobilized relief efforts just days after the catastrophic earthquake of January 12th, 2010, and provided effective relief to thousands in ensuing months. (They prepared and served over 750,000 meals in 2010!) By pairing the commitment and expertise of our Haitian partners with the financial resources provided by our donors, we are grateful to be bringing hope and opportunity to children and their families in Haiti.

As we move forward in 2012, we share a vision with our Haitian partners to:

• Build a school on the land we purchased in Port-au-Prince that can serve as a model for a quality school for the poor. It will prepare students academically while also teaching them skills that will support their efforts to earn income after graduation.
• Build a kitchen and cafeteria alongside the new school that will feed students as well as other hungry children in the neighborhood.
• Continue to support the school scholarships, after-school and summer camp programs, modifying them as needed to meet the needs of local youth.
• Support the Children’s Garden Project and other efforts to teach children and their families about urban gardening.

For information about our various programs, please visit the Programs section of our website. Click here to read more about plans to build the new school and cafeteria.