Espwa fe viv.  -Haitian Proverb

Hope makes us live. 


The effects of poverty are devastating on children.  A child who is orphaned, abandoned, or a financial burden on their already suffering family will have few choices.  They can live with another family, only to face a childhood of servitude as one of the approximately 250,000 "restavecs" in the country, who are essentially child slaves, or they can turn to a life on the streets.


The "Kay Nou" (Our House) project of Hearts Together has, and continues to, work with small groups of the most marginalized children on our hemisphere.  


In 2006, we welcomed a "family" of girls who had recently been working in other, less poor, households as restavecs.  In this system, children will often have no opportunity to attend school, instead spending their days performing the most difficult, time consuming and filthiest jobs of the household, and enduring many types of abuse.  Our family was different.  Hearts Together for Haiti provided education, health care, meals, and a family environment complete with a house mother for a small group of girls.  Recently, we have reunited the girls with their biological families, but continue to support them.


As we continue to support these young women, we are providing hope for other street children and restavecs, in another direction.  We are currently raising funds to provide a new "Kay Nou," welcoming a new family, providing basic needs, and offering hope to children that had never been given a chance.


In the years since the devastating earthquake of 2010, we have raised funds to purchase land, build a home, furnish the home, pay staff, buy provisions, for the home.  We are currently welcoming seven children into the “Kay Nou family,” who will benefit from the shelter, education, health care, and enrichment opportunities.  We are in the process of providing for the girls, a garden to grow food, chickens, and a music program.  If you are interested in providing hope for Haiti’s most vulnerable children, please contact Jeanelle Spratt:


htfhkaynou@gmail.com

519-972-3374