Hope Can Reach Beyond Borders for Haiti

In the struggling nation of Haiti, the average daily income is less than two dollars a day for most families. Many people are unable to afford to buy food at all, and are reduced to eating cakes of mud to stave off their hunger pangs.

Worst of all, many rural families are so poor that they try to give their children better lives by sending them to live with urban families, with the promise that they’ll be given food and education—but, in most cases, the children are ultimately sold into slavery. As many as 300,000 Haitian children are unpaid slave laborers (or restaveks), and many are physically and sexually abused.

The Christian nonprofit organization Beyond Borders is working to change these horrifying statistics through a combination of innovative programs. In the group’s campaign to end child servitude, they work to help rural families learn about child slavery, so that they don’t fall prey to the lies that have led so many other children into unpaid labor. They also help to fund leadership skills among rural families, and invest in policies to ensure that even the poorest children will have the opportunity to attend school.

Beyond Borders also provides opportunities for Americans to get a sense of Haiti’s realities and discover how they can help, through its “Transformational Travel” programs, in which they’re invited to spend up to two weeks in the home of a Haitian host, along with a translator. Such programs can give participants true insight into what it’s like to live in a developing nation, and the many issues they face.