Rockford Residents Rally to Build a Village in Haiti
ROCKFORD, Ill. (June 17, 2010) – Residents from the Rockford/Chicago communities have started to rally support to rebuild Haiti and restore hope. The Hope for Haitians Committee and Food For The Poor will host their ninth annual fundraising event, An Evening in the Tropics, Saturday, Aug. 21, at Giovanni’s restaurant. Proceeds will be used to complete the construction of a self-sustaining village in Chastenoye, Cap-Haitien, Haiti.
Delane Bailey-Herd, Food For The Poor’s Haiti project manager, recently returned from Haiti, and will travel to Rockford to speak at An Evening in the Tropics event. She told how she observed families with young children living in makeshift tents on the median of a busy highway. National Public Radio (NPR) reported soon after that approximately 1,000 people are living in shacks made only of bed sheets, sticks and tarps in an 8-foot-wide stretch of median in the middle of a six-lane road that is one of Haiti’s busiest. They all lost their homes in the earthquake, according to the report.
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The Hope Friendship Village in Chastenoye, Haiti, will provide a new community for those who have been displaced by the earthquake, as well as those who are living in the disease-ridden, swamp area of Prolongé. Proceeds will be used to complete the two-year project that includes the construction of 100 housing units, 50 sanitation units, an artesian well, a community center, animal-rearing and agricultural projects, and two solar panel lights.
An Evening in the Tropics will include a steel drummer, cocktail reception, silent auction, and formal dinner with friends and members of the surrounding communities. Bidding on silent auction prizes such as exclusive art and collectibles from the Caribbean and Latin America, designer jewelry, vacations, golf and dining packages offer opportunities for guests to shop and donate to the cause.
For additional information regarding the An Evening in the Tropics event, sponsorship levels, and tickets, available at $100 per person, please call, 1-888-404-4248 or visit the Web site www.foodforthepoor.org/rockford.
Masters of ceremonies for the event are co-chairmen Tom Lorden, Pat Bachrodt and Peter Roche. Members of the Rockford-based Hope for Haitians Committee have traveled to Prolongé and met the people who live in thatched homes built on rotting trash in the muddy swamp. Children and their families here are forced to share meager meals and have no access to safe, clean drinking water.
Committee members included: Pat Bachrodt, Reverend David Beauvais, William Clancy, Mike Delany, Brian and Missy Hand, Frank Haney, Msgr. Robert Hoffman, Danny Lorden, Tom and Nancy Lorden, Bob McLaughlin, Philip Nicolosi, Al and Terry Provenzano, Patti Rangel, Pete Roche, Jody Schumacher, and Jerry Weber.
Food For The Poor, 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 agency 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. For more information, please visit www.FoodForThePoor.org.
Contacts:
Jennifer Leigh Oates
Food For The Poor
954-427-2222 x 6054
[email protected]
Tom Lorden
Event Co-Chairman
815-964-1904
[email protected]