Ways that you can help Haitians in need:

Fundraising | Sponsor a child | Books | Clothing & Shoes | Eyeglasses | IGive | Monetary Donations

A great way to help out is by holding a local fundraising event through your office, organization, community or even just hold one online! Fundraising can be a fun activity with a great cause attached to it.

If you are interested in fundraising online, you can direct your patrons to Causes.com. If you would like to fundraise through your business/community, please let us know through our contact form. If you would like to help us with one of our fundraising events in your area, please use our volunteer form.

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Have you seen those late night commercials asking you to sponsor a child and you thought that you would like to do so but really want to have a more personal relationship with that child? When the earthquake happened on Jan. 12, 2010 in Haiti, Haiti Reads was contacted by many child sponsors who asked us to help them find out what happened to the child they were sponsoring. I was surprised to learn that most sponsors know very little about the children they sponsor.

Haiti Reads works with many families whose parents cannot afford the tuition for their child to attend school–approximately $200.00 annually. Sometimes, families may have tuition for one child but not all of their children. In those instances, the boys are generally enrolled in school while the girls are kept home. Unfortunately, this happens almost everywhere in the world where parents do not have a choice of free education.

In Haiti, children who do not get to attend school are also not as fortunate health wise. For an extra small fee of $50.00 – $75.00 annually, children in school are fed one meal a day in school. For many children, this meal is often the only meal they eat all day.

Haiti Reads does not have its own school. We work with children in the neighborhood and the schools they attend. School tuition, books, a uniform, and the food program will cost a sponsor between $250 to $300 US dollars per year depending on the school and level (Elementary School or High school). This annual payment also covers the cost for teacher salaries. Any extra money Haiti Reads will hold on a scholarship fund to cover testing fees for upper grade students. We have a long list of children who need sponsorship. Please contact us for more information. We would like it if you could make a commitment to whichever child you choose for the duration of his or her schooling but we also welcome sponsors who want to make only a short time commitment.

Whatever you do, you will get periodic updates of the child and we will make sure you have an address where you can send letters if you like. You may also sponsor a child anonymously. It is your choice how much you would like to be involved in the child’s life and education.

Cost to sponsor a child depending on level:

• Elementary School: $200.00 which covers registration fees, tuition, uniform, books, one meal per day (plus teacher salary).


• High School: $250.00 – 300.00 which covers registration fees, tuition, uniform, books, testing fees, one meal per day (plus teacher salary).

We will keep you posted as to the cost of tuition for each school a child is sponsored from. We will make our best effort to post a registration and cost bulletin for each school. Tuition rates may vary depending on the school and location.

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Because we have limited storage space at this time, Haiti Reads can only accept books written in Haitian Creole or easy-to-read French (e.g., children’s books with many illustrations and simple text). If you have these types of books and wish to donate them to Haiti Reads, please send them to:

HAITI READS c/o Jeanette Alfred
6415 N. Ravenswood #100
Chicago, IL 60626

If you have books in English or another language, please consider donating them to another organization needing these items. Many public libraries will sell books not used in their collections to help finance needed materials. Please contact your local public library to see if they have a resale program. Here are some additional resources for finding homes for donated books:

• Find Gift, Gift Giving Made Easy!:
http://alturl.com/ejjwd

• Rebuild Haiti Better World Book Drive:
http://www.betterworldbooks.com/Custom.aspx?f=helphaiti

• Women’s Prison Book Project: Paperback books only. Especially need journals, dictionaries (English and Spanish), lesbian literature, and literature by people of color. See further book donation guidelines at
http://www.wpbp.org/pages/donation.html

• Words Alive (San Diego, CA): Children’s books in good condition. See the organization’s web site for more information: http://www.wordsalive.org/

• Univ. at Buffalo, Health Sciences Library, Book Donations Wiki:
http://libweb.lib.buffalo.edu/dokuwiki/hslwiki/doku.php?id=book_donations

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At this time, we do not have the storage space to collect donations of clothing. We will post a notice on this web site when the situation changes. In the meantime, please consider donating your clothing items to charitable thrift stores or homeless shelters in your area. When specific disasters strike, relief organizations may need clothing donations as well. If you have women’s professional clothing and accessories to donate, please check the Dress for Success web site at http://www.dressforsuccess.org to see if there is a chapter in your area.

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Before the earthquake, Haiti Reads collected old eyeglasses for use by the people of Haiti with visual impairment. Unfortunately, we do not have the storage for these items at this time. If you can store your old eyeglasses, please do so. We do plan to reinstitute this program once we have relocated the library and storage area. One out of every four children in Haiti needs glasses.

If you have the prescription information for the glasses, please store that information with your glasses. When we have storage space in Haiti, we will post this information on our web site with information on where glasses can be sent. If you need to donate used eyeglasses immediately, some eyewear stores carry collection bins for the Lions Club. If there is not a collection site near you, please consult the Lions Club’s web site at http://www.lionsclub.org to see where you can donate eyeglasses in your area.

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If you do a lot of online shopping, please consider registering for IGive and choose Haiti Reads as your charity at
http://www.iGive.com/HaitiReads.

Many popular merchants participate in IGive, including Walgreen’s, Drugstore.com, Kmart, Sears, and Barnes & Noble. We all need to make purchases for day-to-day living. Why not help Haiti Reads at the same time?

We are also registered with:

Goodsearch

Missionfish

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Monetary donations are needed most. Currently, we need to rebuild our community library and hire needed personnel. In the future, we will need monetary donations to ship books and other items from the United States. Haiti Reads is a volunteer-run organization, and we have low administrative costs. Accordingly, your donations will be used to serve the people of Haiti Donations can be made from this web site via Pay Pal or checks or money orders can be sent by mail to:

HAITI READS c/o Jeanette Alfred
6415 N. Ravenswood #100
Chicago, IL 60626

Please drop off or ship all in-kind donations to:

HAITI READS c/o Jeanette Alfred
6415 N. Ravenswood #100
Chicago, IL 60626