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UPLIFT Haiti forms partnerships with rural Haitian communities. "UPLIFT" stands for "Uniting People to Learn, Inspire and Form Together."

UPLIFT Haiti is a Section 501(c)(3) public charity. We assemble teams of volunteers to travel to Haiti. They work with local partners to achieve sustainable improvements in local residents' access to technology, training, education, employment and economic development.

22/07/2025

Medical Clinic Update
July 23, 2025
https://uplifthaiti.org/news/250723.htm

Everything went well at the 4-day special medical clinic in Baradères last week, says Sr. Julienne Siberisse, administrator of the Baradères Health Center.

She is now preparing a financial and statistical report for UPLIFT Haiti. In the meantime, we have some videos she sent. They show four days of high-speed activity as patients register, nurses do intake interviews, and doctors consult with patients. You can view a short compilation at https://uplifthaiti.org/video/Klinik2025-5.mp4.

"I am really thankful to God because everything went well," Sr. Julienne said. "All the doctors returned home safely. Everyone is very satisfied with the clinic. I just want to say thanks for everything you do for the people of Baradères."

The Baradères Health Center is the region's only public medical facility. The medical team typically is one physician and a couple of nurses. For special clinics, the staff grows to about two dozen doctors and nurses plus support personnel.

UPLIFT Haiti continues funding these clinics despite increased costs and travel risks due to gang violence, because most people in Baradères lack other options.

Our own cost for these clinics has averaged about $10 per patient. UPLIFT Haiti's long-term goal in working with Baradères Health Center is to strengthen the existing public health system.

This year, we began funding a nursing scholarship in cooperation with the Baradères Health Center and a Haitian university in the city of Les Cayes. To support this and our other work in public health, vocational education and economic development, please consider donating at https://uplifthaiti.org/donate.htm.

01/07/2025

July Medical Clinic in Baradères

About a thousand men, women and children in remote Baradères, Haiti, will get free medical care July 14-17 at a special clinic sponsored by UPLIFT Haiti and carried out by the Baradères Health Center.

Most people in the Baradères district have practically no access to medical care. Physicians visit occasionally, but few of the estimated 50,000 residents, mostly subsistence farmers, can afford to pay. And Baradères' population is growing, as people continue to flee from insecurity and violence in other parts of the country.

The Baradères Health Center is a first responder, the Baradères district's only public medical facility. The medical team typically is one physician and a couple of nurses. But from July 14 to 17, Baradères Health Center administrator Sr. Julienne Siberisse plans hiring 11 physicians and 12 nurses to staff the special clinic.

UPLIFT Haiti has funded several multiday clinics in recent years despite increased costs and travel risks due to gang violence.

Our own cost for these clinics has averaged about $10 per patient. Since 2019, all medicines and supplies are bought in Haiti. Paid extra staff are all Haitian medical professionals. There is no charge to patients for initial exams, tests and diagnoses. A prescription costs the equivalent of a few pennies, but only for those who can afford this.

Our long-term goal in working with Baradères Health Center is to strengthen the existing public health system. We are a very small organization, but the multiday clinics show that health care in rural Haiti can be provided inexpensively.

Please consider a tax-deductible donation to support our work in public health, vocational training and economic development in rural Haiti. We design our projects to achieve goals expressed by people in the community. You can donate online at https://uplifthaiti.org/donate.htm.

04/05/2025

Building an Emergency Bridge
April 30, 2025

About a year ago, students in remote Baradères, Haiti, were about to lose their schools and teachers. Many of the 1,500 students—in kindergarten through high school—were about to lose their only reliable meal of the day.

That’s because skyrocketing food and fuel costs prevented the pastor of Baradères’ St. Pierre parish, Fr. Ambroise Noemi, from paying the teachers and providing lunch for the students.

On Feb. 18, 2024, we told our own supporters about the emergency in the Baradères parish schools. They responded immediately and with incredible generosity. And they told others.

As a result, Fr. Noemi was able to build a two-month-long bridge of food and education to span the gap until St. Pierre parish would receive resources from its twinned U.S. parish, St. John the Baptist Catholic Community, in Silver Spring, Maryland.

Months ago we posted photos and videos of emergency food being delivered, cooked and served at Baradères schools (here and here). But how was the emergency fund of $37,000 spent?

Three-fourths of the fund was used to purchase, transport, cook and serve lunch for the 1,500 students in the parish’s 16 schools. Food staples included bulgur wheat (1,800 lb), corn meal (6,000 lb), pinto beans (2,400 lb) and rice (6,500 lb). Also purchased were dozens of gallons of cooking oil, 2,800 tins of sardines, and local farm produce such as yams and plantains.

The rest of the fund went mainly to cover a month of salaries for more than 90 school teachers and other staff. About 5 percent covered transportation and fuel.

While we are grateful for what was accomplished, we are sobered by reality. Fr. Noemi reports that many more students are enrolled in parish schools today, as families from cities try to seek safety in rural areas. Nationally, gang violence and government paralysis continue to batter the population.

Hunger, already increasing, has spiked because of the cancellation of USAID projects.

But we are encouraged by a spinoff project begun last spring by the small community of Catholic sisters in Baradères, the Petites Sœurs de Sainte-Thérèse (PSST). The project helps local farmers and gardeners grow more food.

PSST sisters have been in Baradères for decades. They operate the local health center, a vocational school, and a large elementary school. They also teach in some of the parish schools.

UPLIFT Haiti has cooperated with the PSST and other Baradères leaders on vocational learning, health education and medical clinics, and other locally inspired projects for 15 years.

The next medical clinic is scheduled for June, and we have just begun funding a nursing scholarship. The sisters and our other Haitian partners are not quitters, and neither are we, thanks to your generosity. You can donate online at http://uplifthaiti.org/donate.htm.

20/04/2024

Look at the massive cabbage being grown in Baradères right now! is working with the community leaders to add to the community garden. Your donations are going to help plant more fresh food - the people of Baradères will beat the Haitian food crisis!

19/04/2024

We are deeply grateful to everyone who supported, far beyond our hopes, the recent emergency food drive. But we are most grateful to our Haitian partners and other community members in Baradères. They are organizing and carrying out all the logistics, delivery, cooking, etc. As a result, students have lunch.

13/04/2024

More photos from the multiday clinic this week in Baradères. It is not easy for the visiting doctors to get there, even in more peaceful times. We are so glad they came.

10/04/2024

Sr. Judith Prophete, who administers the Baradères Health Center, is always busy organizing something.

Two weeks ago, it was a peace march. Yesterday—despite the multiple crises paralyzing Haiti--it was the start of a special multi-day medical clinic for Baradères residents. The special clinic, funded by UPLIFT Haiti, is surging extra medical staff and equipment to the Health Center this week. More details coming soon.

27/03/2024

A March in Rural Haiti for National Peace and Justice

Baradères, Haiti, marched for peace and justice last Friday.

More than 250 residents of all ages walked through the farming town in southern Haiti (video link). They chanted, “Down with the gangs, down with the political insecurity, down with hunger.”

Father Ambroise Noemi, pastor of St. Pierre parish in Baradères, said, “We in the church did not want to remain indifferent to what is happening in the country. And we wanted to ask for justice for the country of Haiti, justice for Bishop Dumas and for all victims of r**e, theft, kidnapping and the like.”

(Haitian Bishop Pierre-André Dumas, vice president of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Haiti, is recovering from severe injuries due to an explosion in Port-au-Prince on February 18.)

The same day Baradères marched, the World Food Programme reported that 4.7 million Haitians--nearly half the population--are now suffering acute hunger.

Haitians have increasingly fled Port-au-Prince and other cities for rural areas, including Baradères. The community and its schools are making space for the newcomers.

Gang control of roads keeps farmers’ crops, such as yams, mango, plantains and coffee, from traveling safely to markets in cities. A recent effort by UPLIFT Haiti to respond to Baradères’ own food emergency in St. Pierre parish schools will not solve the hunger crisis but could reduce its impact. The effort emphasizes use of locally grown food crops. We at UPLIFT Haiti are incredibly grateful for the outpouring of support for this effort.

Baradères farmers have kept working despite all the struggles they face, said Sr. Judith Prophète, administrator of the Baradères Health Center. Sr. Judith helped organize the March 22 event. She notes that it was the Friday Way of the Cross, a Lenten tradition. But the people also benefitted from a peaceful walk in community solidarity.

You can support UPLIFT Haiti's efforts, including vocational education and medical assistance, by donating online at: http://uplifthaiti.org/donate.htm.

04/03/2024

Thank you Sisters!

Many people in the rural village of Baradères, Haiti, will see a doctor this winter, thanks to a special grant to UPLIFT Haiti from the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary (SNJM).

Because of the Ministry Grant from the SNJM U.S.-Ontario Province, the Baradères Health Center can now plan a 5-day medical clinic for more than a thousand local residents. Through Ministry Grants, the SNJM community partner with organizations dedicated to justice and equality, with special concern for the poor and disadvantaged.

The Baradères Health Center is the only public health facility in a 60-square-mile district of steep mountains, flood-prone valleys and near-impassable roads. About 50,000 people live in the Baradères district. Most are subsistence farmers and fishers.

Sr. Judith Prophète, administrator of the Baradères Health Center, called the grant "really good news" given all the health challenges in Baradères, and she is very grateful to the SNJM sisters in North America.

Sr. Judith, of Haiti's Little Sisters of St. Thérèse, will use the SNJM grant and donations from other UPLIFT Haiti supporters to hire two dozen temporary medical staff and purchase medications and other supplies.

She had hoped to conduct the clinic in late February. But these days, violent gangs, economic collapse, and political paralysis are complicating every Haitian’s life.

At a 5-day clinic funded by UPLIFT Haiti last year, 1,400 patients were cared for. Along with 10 nurses, there were four general physicians, an internist, a pediatrician, a gynecologist, an ophthalmologist and four dentists. Patients are not charged to see a doctor, and prescriptions cost only a few pennies.

The Baradères Health Center—like many other hospitals in Haiti—is also coping with a cholera outbreak. Through mid-February, the center had cared for at least 38 patients with cholera. Five have died.

Until UPLIFT Haiti sent emergency funds in January, the center lacked enough bleach, soap, doxycycline or food for cholera patients. Now the center can fully treat all of them and feed all of them.

Currently, the outbreak has slowed. "We can take a breath," Sr. Judith said.

In Haiti there are 25 doctors per 100,000 people (360 in the U.S) and an estimated 300 dentists for the 11 million people with teeth. Most medical expertise is clustered around the capital city of Port-au-Prince.

Rural Haiti can be a medical desert, but the Baradères Health Center is a priceless oasis. Our long-term goal in working with the center is to help the center do more for public health. Among potential advances, when funding allows:

• Regular visits by dentists—possibly monthly.
• Regular visits by midwives to conduct prenatal education sessions, health checkups, and to train “matwòn”—birth attendants. (In Haiti, most women give birth at home.)
• Increased capacity of the colvol—the local cadre of volunteer health workers. The colvol help report and monitor health crises, such as cholera outbreaks, in the dozens of tiny settlements in the 60-square-mile Baradères district. They are integral to the logistics of the health center’s public education programs and multiday medical clinics.
• Reliable distribution of medicines for widespread conditions such as gastritis, hypertension, anemia and infections.

You can help by donating online at: http://uplifthaiti.org/donate.htm.

18/02/2024

Help for a school emergency in Baradères

For two weeks, UPLIFT Haiti will raise emergency funding to help 1,500 students at 17 Baradères schools—by keeping their schools open and providing lunch.

For many children in Baradères, school lunch is the only meal.

The schools—a combined secondary and high-school and 16 elementary schools—are operated by the local parish of St. Pierre and funded mainly by St. John the Baptist Catholic Community (SJB) in Silver Spring, Md.

But by last month, monetary inflation in Haiti (43% in 2023) had depleted the funds available to the St. Pierre pastor, Fr. Ambroise Noemi. He has no money to pay teachers or feed students.

SJB parishioners have strongly supported St. Pierre parish in many ways for decades, and continue to do so.

But during the next two weeks, UPLIFT Haiti will collect emergency funds we will deliver to Fr. Noemi. Then he can provide lunches to the students most at risk of hunger. And he can cover at least part of the salaries due to the 88 parochial schoolteachers.

We may not be able to raise all the money needed, but anything you can provide will help.

Every online donation UPLIFT Haiti receives through Sunday, March 2, will go toward this emergency relief of the Baradères schools.

You can donate online to support this effort, or write a check to UPLIFT Haiti, putting “Emergency” on the memo line. Send checks to UPLIFT Haiti, 12608 Billington Rd., Silver Spring, MD 20904.

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