Helen Little

In January, Helen Little, a 77 year old Methodist from Clayton, NC will make her 43rd trip to Haiti. Her mission, to help the people of this poverty stricken country anyway she can.

Helen’s husband, Reuben died of leukemia in 1984, months after he was diagnosed with the disease. He was 56. A short time later, Helen attended a church service and listened to the spokesperson from Mission to Haiti describe the extreme poverty which had overtaken this nation. Two years later, she retired and took the first of 42 trips to the poverty-stricken Caribbean country. She traveled to remote towns with doctors to instruct people on how to take donated medicines. She was horrified by what she saw, little boys walking around naked, families living in 12-foot wide huts, women bathing in filthy water from a ditch.

Since 1986, Helen has raised money to build seven schools, four wells, one church and now an orphanage. This week, she will send her sixth 40-foot shipping container to this impoverished island, stacked with furniture, clothes, school supplies, garden tools and other basic necessities. Over the years, she has persuaded at least 100 North Carolinians to help Haitian children by paying for their school expenses. Recently, she watched a young man she has supported since he was a boy graduate from college.

The orphanage Helen founded supports 10 children, ages 4 to 7, in a suburb outside the capital, Port-au-Prince. It is housed in rented quarters so she now wants to secure its future by buying land for the facility.

Every Saturday, she drives to local yard sales to pick up clothes and shoes for Haitian children. She loads up her spare bedrooms with her castoff treasures until there's no room left, then she packs it up and hauls it down to the Merci Center in Goldsboro where the goods are loaded into large shipping containers. In September of this year, Haiti was slammed by four back-to-back storms in less than four weeks. The severe floods destroyed farmland and crops, and the small homes, made of sticks and mud. The fruits and vegetables in people's gardens were stripped away. Goats, chickens and other animals were nowhere to be found. Hurricanes Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike took away the gardens, animals and small homes, which represent all the earthly possessions these poor families have.

Over 1000 people were killed and in Gonaives alone, 1,000,000 people were displaced with no food, shelter or drinking water. In total, over 300,000 children, were affected by these storms. Sadly, Haiti was already suffering from a food crisis and 4 out of 5 families were going hungry everyday. These back-to-back storms only worsened an already life-threatening situation. This was a horrible setback but Helen became more determined than ever to rescue this nation and the people she so loves.

Little's desire to help the children and families of Haiti stems from her religious faith and from her conviction that education is the only road out of poverty. She feels that in order to establish a middle class, which is nonexistent at this point, the children must be educated and then they must educate their own children. Since she began her work two decades ago, Helen has seen improvements in Haiti- more children are attending school, and the generation growing up seems more aware that things need to change. Helen knows she will probably not see a governmental change and the people of Haiti lifted from poverty in her lifetime, but she expects for her grandchild too.