Haitian Street Kids

Haitian Street Kids, Inc. is a charity based in Texas whose mission is to rescue and shelter the street kids and restavek slave children of Haiti. HSKI was founded by Michael Brewer, RN and opened their first small shelter for the “untouchables” of Haiti in December of 1999. They started with five kids, ages 7 to 10. Before the earthquake they had 75 children in residence, some who have been with them since that first shelter.

HSKI also has approximately 3000 other street children and runaway restavek slave children registered with their charity. They are there for those suffering children during times of crisis or special need. In most cases, HSKI is the only resource they have to call on or turn to during an emergency. HSKI is also the sole organization that goes directly out to the streets, where the children work and live, to serve their needs. They are on-call for the children anytime, day or night, to provide or obtain medical assistance for them, or to help with any other problem they may have.

Even prior to the earthquake, HSKI had fallen upon hard times financially and over the last year have lost over 50% of their support base! Their loss is largely due to the economic difficulties suffered by many past supporters in the U.S. and other countries. Due to fewer resources they were forced to move out of a large house that was home to over 75 children! HSKI’s inability to raise the entire year’s rent in time to renew the contract on the home left them no choice but to move. Until the recent earthquake they sheltered the children in four different small one and two-room “safe houses” in different areas of Port au Prince. Two of these homes were in Solino, a slum in the middle of the city. The earthquake destroyed even those humble dwellings. Sadly, two of their children were killed in that tragedy.

One of the two killed, a thirteen boy known only by his first name, Chelo, lost his life helping the other boys escape. He made it safely out of the shelter but went back in because he thought some of the younger boys were still inside. When he did, a wall collapsed and crushed him. There were other HSKI orphan heroes that day.

One of the boys had a badly damaged foot in the aftermath of the earthquake. Upon not finding any medical help for him amidst the chaos of Port au Prince, some of his fellow orphans pooled their meager resources and arranged for transportation to the Dominican Republic. There he was able to receive treatment and his foot was surgically removed. He would have died without his friend’s selfless act of love!

The earthquake has made HSKI’s task even more daunting. It was already a difficult task to provide the children with even one meal per day. It has been even more challenging to provide the kids with educational opportunities, which is the most important thing to these precious children.

HSKI has an ambitious vision to acquire land and construct a complex containing a home, clinic, school, recreation facilities and a chapel. Additionally, they will build a small guest facility where supporters and visiting missionaries can be housed when visiting the children. Their goal is to build a place that these suffering kids can call “home” and where they can finally know they are safe and secure. And most important, where they can find and really know the love of God.

Additional resources from new partners, both caring individuals and companies, are urgently needed. HSKI needs partners who understand how vital it is to rescue these children from lives of misery, starvation, danger, and suffering! People and companies are needed who will help HSKI offer the kids a chance to have a childhood, an education, a bright and hopeful future, and to know the word of God. There are few, if any, options for these wonderful things to happen for the street kids and restavek children of Haiti, besides Haitian Street Kids!

HSKI emphasizes that these are all good and deserving children who dream of a chance to show what they can achieve, if only given an opportunity to do so. HSKI is determined to offer these children the ability to become happy, successful, thriving, and to embrace the love of God through His Son, Jesus Christ. They want their kids to grow up with strong characters, children who will pass on to future generations of hurting, challenged children the opportunities and chances given to them.

If you are interested in helping Haitian Street Kids on their rescue mission to the “least of these” of Haiti, their website is www.hski.org. On the website is a convenient Pay Pal to allow you to make a secure and tax-deductible donation to help support them. Additionally, there are benefit concerts for HSKI kids being planned around the country that you can financially support. Another caring and creative person, award-winning film director Andrew Shapter, is allowing HSKI to ask for donations at many of the screenings of his new documentary “Happiness Is”.

Additional inquiries on these and other initiatives, including a partnership with Architecture for Humanity-D/FW chapter, who are designing HSKI’s future facility for their children, can be directed at Michael Clearman, HSKI’s Director of Development. Mr. Clearman’s contact phone # is 972.523.1054 and his e-mail address is finalword57@yahoo.com.

Child Slavery-Haiti 2010


Imagine for a moment that your next-door neighbor gets a sudden human addition to their household. You notice a child, six to seven years old, appearing frequently outside their home, engaging in a myriad of yard chores. This child is unusual for at least two reasons. He never smiles or laughs. And he bears no resemblance to the previously childless couple that resides next door.

Over time you observe this little boy taking on the chores that, at least previously, you had always seen your neighbors attending to. Every time you smile at or attempt to engage the little boy in conversation, he averts his eyes and rushes away. You resolve to ask your next-door neighbor to clear up the mystery child.

Before you have an opportunity to ask them, you rise at dawn one morning to check on a ruckus in your back yard. Your dog is at the fence barking at the strange boy, who is standing with his back to you and carefully folding some kind of thin cloth. A little irritated at being awakened so early, you call to him and inquire what he is doing at such an ungodly hour in the back yard. Sheepishly, shyly, he turns an obviously bruised and battered face towards you and answers, “puttin’ up my bed sir.”

Surprise segues to shock as you realize that this brutally damaged little boy has been sleeping in your neighbor’s rusted out tool shed! When you attempt to question the boy as to the nature of his hideous wounds, again he runs away. Now what do you do? Really, what would you, the reader, do?

Would you walk next door and demand answers to explain the child’s injuries? Would you call Child Protective Services or the local police? Or, would you go about your daily routine and do nothing?

What if it was your neighbor down the street, instead of your neighbor next door, abusing this precious child? What if the abuse occurred in a neighboring city? A neighboring state? What if the child happened to have dark skin or spoke a different language? Would any of these reasons make it easier to ignore the atrocity, the crime?

Isn’t that precisely what we are doing in this country, “the land of the free and the home of the brave”, when we turn our heads and our hearts away from the 300,000 plus restaveks, child slaves, in Haiti? Does Haiti being another country and a different culture make this brutal cruelty acceptable in America? Really? Is it because this impoverished nation is 700 miles from our East Coast that we can sleep soundly and ignore the cries of these embattled little angels? Most troubling to this writer is this heart wrenching question, “if these child slaves were white, would our country, our churches, our politicians, our pundits, and our military, stand by and allow this affront to human decency to continue?”

Edmund Burke said, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” Rising from the gutters and back alleys of Port au Prince is a chorus consisting of millions of children’s voices, dead and dying, crying out to an Unseen God and an uncaring world for help. Where are the good men? Where is God?

Listen to their cries
Learn of their needs
Love them with your actions! www.hski.org