Causecast

Originally posted by Will Laughlin, Tonic.

When Haiti’s Angel House orphanage crumbled to the ground on Jan. 12, all 26 children inside survived. Then the real miracle happened.

Like all children in Haiti, the residents of Angel House orphanage were shaken and tumbled for fifteen terrifying seconds shortly before nightfall on January 12.

When the rumbling stopped, the orphanage was a crumbled wreck of concrete and rebar — yet the entire group of 26 orphans was not only alive, but unharmed. The children and their caregivers spent the next few nights and days huddled in a nearby tin-roofed church, feeling lucky to be alive and blessed to be together while the world outside howled with grief and the dirt floor below erupted with taunting aftershocks. But their survival would be just the first of several miracles they would experience in the days ahead.

At 3 a.m. on January 18th they would be ushered through the gates of the US Embassy; a few short hours later, they would be strapped into the plush seats of a private jet en route to Florida. By January 19th they would be living in comfortable homes in California, Arizona, Illinois and throughout the U.S.

And they would not be orphans anymore. Not one of them.

With so many obstacles impeding aid, extractions and adoptions in the wake of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, how did this small orphanage manage to rescue and place their children so quickly and completely? Gretchen Huijskens, the founder of Angel House and its parent organization, Three Angels Children’s Relief, attributes their success to several factors.

Move Fast

One of these critical factors was simply acting without hesitation. “When we went to Haiti immediately after the earthquake,” she says, “I didn’t even think it would be possible to get the children out. We were just going down to ensure that their basic needs were met.” But by getting on the first available flight to Haiti and showing up first at the embassy, they had a decisive advantage and were able to evacuate the children before the embassy was overwhelmed and extractions became mired in confusion and protocol. Huijskens and the children rushed from the embassy to board the last airplane allowed out of Haiti before Bill Clinton’s arrival would shut the airport down indefinitely.

The process happened so fast, says adoptive parent, Eric Schweig, that “we were totally physically unprepared. We weren’t expecting to have Sebastian here for one and a half to three years and I had to clear out my office at the last minute for him.” While he was traveling to and from Florida to pick up his infant son, friends rushed in to donate “everything you could think of” for Sebastian and to transform Schweig’s office into a well-appointed, childproofed nursery. Now that Sebastian is home, says Schweig, “I’ve never seen anyone smile so much. He smiles all day long.”

Colleen Monfils, a Three Angels board member whose family instantly expanded from five members to seven after the earthquake, was similarly caught off guard by the speed at which Huijskens moved. “We weren’t expecting Daniel (5) or Jonathan (10) for several more years, but we’re so excited now.”

Read the full post on Tonic.

Photo by DVIDSHUB, flickr.