The Restavek Freedom Foundation Blog

The Restavek Foundation: A Year in Review

Dear friends:

It has been three years since the Foundation’s incorporation and so many good things have come our way during this time.  I am writing this letter to THANK YOU for believing in us and supporting our efforts even when we had yet to prove ourselves. None of our accomplishments would have been possible without your continued encouragement.  We have been fortunate to have an army of talented volunteers that have given their time and resources to help us create our beautiful website and other much needed materials.  Our “Mwen Se Ayiti Tou”conference in May, was made possible through a generous grant as well as the participation of another team of volunteers that helped with every possible detail imaginable.  Thanks again to your support, we now employ eight full-time staff in Haiti who work daily to ensure the well being of over 400 children in our program and we have permanent office space, complete with computers, which enables us to work more efficiently.   

This past year, we received an invitation from former President Bill Clinton to participate in the second annual Clinton Global Summit where we had one of our community projects recognized and accepted as a CGI “Commitment.”  The Foundation was also recognized by the United Nations Fund on Contemporary Forms of Slavery with a ten thousand dollar grant.  More importantly, your support has given us the confidence to go after larger funding from the State Department and other sources, which if received, would allow us to move forward more aggressively with several initiatives we are currently developing.  Of course, one of the biggest things that happened in 2009 was the international exposure we received from the CNN team when they came and spent a few days with us, interviewing me and documenting the experience of Dina, a restavek girl.  Dina is now free, enjoying life with a loving family and going to school.  We were recently made aware that Dina was elected president of her class, which is amazing when you think of where she was just a few short months ago.  Our goal is that more young children will be given this same opportunity.

We have many programs in motion that will take us into the next few years.  Our hope is that you will continue to partner with us to achieve our goal to end child servitude in Haiti.  We enjoy receiving your emails and letters of encouragement and promise to work hard to live up to the confidence you have placed in us.

It is with much thankfulness and gratitude that we move into the year 2010.  We will always be appreciative of your willingness to walk this journey with us.

We are now on Twitter! Please follow us @restavekfreedom

Also please tell all your friends to join our Facebook Fanpage:http://www.facebook.com/#/pages/The-Restavek-Foundation/102979020431

 May you find peace and joy in the NEW YEAR,

 Jean Robert Cadet