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 9,000 meals each week, 212 school scholarships, 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. By pairing their commitment and expertise with the financial resources provided by our donors, we are able to make a difference in the lives of some of the world’s hungriest children, providing hope and opportunity for a better future.

As we look forward to 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 would prepare students academically while also teaching them skills that would support their efforts to earn income after graduation.
• Build a cafeteria alongside the new school that would feed students as well as other hungry children in the neighborhood.
• Continue the 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.
• Continue to explore and implement ways to make the food and education programs more sustainable. This might include, for instance, trying to find ways to sell crafts made by youth in the summer camp and after-school programs to generate more income for those programs.

For information about our various programs, please visit the Programs section of our website. Click here to read more about our earthquake relief efforts.

The following graph illustrates the growth in the number of meals served at the food program from its inception in 2000 through 2009. In 2010, after the January 12 earthquake, the food program served over 750,000 meals, more than twice the number served in 2009.