cross catholic kobonal water

WWW.CROSSCATHOLIC.ORG

2700 N. Military Trail, Suite 240PO Box 273908

Boca Raton, Florida 33427-39081-800-914-2420

Kobonal Water ProjectProviding safe, clean water

to poor villagers— Kobonal, Haiti —

He that believeth in me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.

John 7:38

PROJECT 0770

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KOBONAL WATER PROJECT PROJECT 0770

Project Synopsis

DescriptionDig wells and install pumps to benefit poor villagers living in Haiti’s Central Plateau.

PurposePrevent unnecessary illness and needless deaths from waterborne diseases by providing destitute families with access to safe, clean water.

LocationKobonal is an isolated farming community within the Diocese of Hinche, which encompasses nearly 1,200 square miles and is home to about 518,000 people.

CostEach well costs about $14,636 which includes drilling, installing a pump, building a shed to store supplies, and providing education to community members on how to fix and maintain the wells.

Highlights• When Fr. Glenn Meaux arrived

to establish Kobonal Haiti Mission, he found abject poverty, deplorable living conditions, and people dying of starvation.

• Over the last two decades, the Mission has helped bring dramatic improvements to the area.

• Hundreds of villagers in Kobonal lack access to clean, safe water sources; instead they depend on contaminated rivers and wells for drinking water.

• With the support of compassionate Catholics, Cross Catholic Outreach plans to build wells in several communities, so that the people will have safe water to drink.

• Members of the communities have volunteered their time to help with the construction; all that is needed is the funds to get the project started.

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The NeedLife in the ‘Darkest Corner’ of Hinche

When Father Glenn Meaux and his missionary team arrived in Kobonal in 1989, families were starving; children were dying from dirty water; there were no farms and no jobs.

“Very few employment opportunities existed for the unskilled, uneducated population, so very few were able to earn money to buy food. Families were facing starvation. There was no agriculture, there was no irrigation system, there was just literally no hope at the time,” Fr. Meaux recalls. “The families had no possibilities for advancement.”

Fr. Meaux quickly learned why Kobonal had earned its reputation as the ‘darkest corner of the Diocese of Hinche.’ He says, “We found a people enslaved and oppressed by black magic priests and their ritualistic services. Voodoo was prevalent, superstition was strong, and Zombism and human sacrifice were practiced.”

This is the challenging home of Kobonal Haiti Mission. Over the last two decades, the Mission has helped hundreds and hundreds of families. “Throughout these years living among our Haitian brothers and sisters, we have clearly seen God’s hand hard at work,” Fr. Meaux says. “Hundreds and hundreds of

people have experienced dramatic positive changes in their lives. God has changed hearts. There now exists among our families a vibrant faith community, whose members reach out in loving service to others.”

Despite this overwhelming transformation, there is still a great need for help and the hope of Christ in the Diocese of Hinche, which is home to half a million people, many of whom still live in dire poverty. Located in one of the poorest parts of the country, families in Kobonal struggle to survive on next to nothing. The poorest families live in one-room shacks of sticks, tin, mud, and cardboard, with dirt floors and no running water. Clean water is scarce and hygiene is inadequate.

“As Catholics we must extend our hands to help our brothers and sisters in need,” Fr. Meaux says.

Haiti’s PovertyOf Haiti’s 9.8 million people:

• 80% live below the poverty line, making it the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere

• Only 20% have electricity

• Nearly half don’t have access to a potable water source

• Infant mortality is 11 times that of the U.S.

• Less than 4% of adults live past age 65

• 15% of Haiti’s children are orphaned

• There is 1 doctor for every 4,000 people

• 40% of the country’s potential workforce is unable to find a job, and those who do find work are often underemployed

• Barely half of Haitians over 15 can read and write

• Haiti’s natural environment is one of the most devastated in the world

The people of Kobonal suffer from parasites, chronic diarrhea, skin disease, and other treatable maladies caused by contaminated water. With little access to medical care, these individuals suffer needlessly. Children and the elderly often die from these preventable ailments.

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The ProjectSafe Water Source Needed

In Haiti, not having clean water can often mean the difference between life and death.

By some estimates, more than half of all deaths in Haiti in recent years are attributable to waterborne diseases — diarrhea, typhoid, cholera, dysentery, hepatitis — and most of those victims are young children.

Despite the overwhelming improvements made by Fr. Meaux and the Kobonal Mission, a great need still exists in the communities for clean water. Without safe water the people cannot bathe, cook, grow a garden, raise livestock, or run a medical clinic; and they risk life-threatening illness every time they take a drink.

Many of the communities currently depend on parasite-contaminated streams, which only have water during the rainy season. During the dry season, families will dig a hole in the dry riverbed and wait for groundwater to seep into it so they can fill their buckets.

Community Wells

With help from Cross Catholic Outreach, Fr. Meaux plans to build clean-water wells for several communities in dire need. The people in these remote villages will not only use the water for drinking and cooking, but also to water the gardens they depend on for food and income.

These hand pump wells are free-standing, with no holding tanks. The families in each community will choose a leader to oversee and perform maintenance on the wells. Each well will have a cement wall around it for security and will be open certain hours during the day. The water will be free for the users, but they are encouraged to give a token amount that is put into a community fund for repairs on the wells. This gives the villagers a sense of ownership over the wells and builds community sentiment.

The people in the communities have already volunteered their time to help with the construction of the wells. Now all that is needed are the funds for drilling, purchasing materials for a pump and house to store supplies, and training for community members on how to fix and maintain the wells.

Just 58 percent of the population in Haiti has access to clean drinking water — a number that drops to 51 percent in rural areas.

With the help of generous Catholics, Cross Catholic Outreach has been able to provide a handful of communities with wells, such as the one pictured here. Help us extend the gift of clean water to other villages desperate for a safe water source.

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Cross and Kobonal Mission: A Special

PartnershipIn 2003, Cross Catholic

Outreach paid its first visit to Fr. Meaux and Kobonal Haiti Mission. We were extremely impressed by how efficiently the ministry operated, and the powerful, positive impact it was having on the community.

We were also impressed by how much each parishioner, no matter how old or how poor, exuded the love and joy of Christ. Despite the fact that they lived in the poorest region of the poorest country in the Western

Hemisphere; despite their high mortality rate, their frequent hunger, and their crude living conditions, they did not express self-pity or seek outright handouts. On the contrary, they were willing to work hard, and to actively participate in the solutions to their poverty.

After prayer and follow-up visits, in 2004 Cross Catholic Outreach began supporting various elements of Kobonal Haiti Mission. Throughout these years we have found the mission to be forthright in accounting for the funds we provide. And the people helped continually express their gratitude, not only to their benefactors, but especially to God.

Kobonal Haiti Mission’s Outreach to the Poor

With support from Cross Catholic Outreach, Kobonal Haiti Mission is able to respond to the needs of the area’s destitute in many ways:

• Sturdy, cement homes and a half-acre of farmland, which provide destitute families with a safe place to live and the means to feed their families.

• Preschool, primary and middle schools that are considered among the best in the country for their holistic approach toward the student and family

• Agriculture projects which allow farmers to sell their crops at a profit to the mission’s schools, where 2,000 students are fed daily

• Interest-free small business loans to mothers so they can earn a livelihood while managing their families

• An Emergency Survival Program which provides food to elderly citizens and extremely destitute families, as well as pigs or goats for animal husbandry.

Cross Catholic Outreach President Jim Cavnar (left) and Fr. Glenn Meaux (right) during our first exploratory meetings with Kobonal Haiti Mission in 2003.

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2700 N. Military Trail, Suite 240 • PO Box 273908 • Boca Raton, Florida 33427-3908 • 1-800-914-2420

© Cross Catholic Outreach. Cost effectively written, designed and printed in-house.


100 percent of the proceeds of this appeal will be used for this project. In the rare event that we receive more than needed to fund this project, additional gifts will be used for other urgent needs for the poor.

Help Now!Access to clean water is such a basic need that even in communities where hunger problems exist,

the number one request from church and community leaders is still for help to provide safe drinking water. Having safe water to drink is literally a matter of life and death, and it is a crisis that must be addressed immediately.

We hope you will prayerfully consider joining us in our mission to bring clean water to the people of Kobonal. This clean water will not only help prevent cholera and other potentially fatal waterborne diseases; it will also provide a strong demonstration of Christ’s love to suffering families in a region that, for many years, was in bondage to oppressive voodoo beliefs and practices.

Help us bring hope to the hurting and help to draw the hearts of the poor to the peace of our Savior who declares, “Whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14).

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cross catholic kobonal water

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