Butler County nonprofit brings supplies to Haiti several times a year
After donating to a nonprofit that takes supplies to a health clinic in Haiti, Linda Beck was convinced to finally visit the Caribbean nation in 2018 by the nonprofit’s leader.
Now, Beck travels there every few years to help keep tabs on the Haiti ULS Clinic as the now-vice president of Butler County-based nonprofit Hearts 4 Haiti.
Beck said the organization’s president, Jim Lewis, implores everyone to visit Haiti instead of just donating, because they get to make a bigger impact by being there to help in the clinic.
“I supported them financially and thought I was doing what I was called to do,” Beck said. “For me to get to go and see the result of the people here who give, that’s the biggest thing for me.”
Beck did not travel to Haiti during the nonprofit’s most recent trip in August because she said she wants there to be enough room on the plane for new visitors to see country.
For Lewis, the August trip was the latest of numerous, because he has been going to Haiti regularly for more than a decade.
Lewis was on the ground floor of establishing the Haiti ULS Clinic, after traveling to Haiti in 2013 and seeing that more work could be done by a permanent clinic rather than intermittently by international visitors.
And after continuing to visit Haiti annually after 2013, Lewis decided that once a year wasn’t enough, so he has been going there twice a year since 2016.
“Within a couple years, we decided to buy some property and began the process of building a clinic,” Lewis said of his initial visits to Haiti. “We raise money to do everything that we do.”
Lewis said that while much has changed in Haiti since his first visit in 2013, the people there are still some of the poorest in the world. Even getting to the clinic, which is in Mombin Crochu, is a long journey that involves a flight in a private jet that ends its journey by landing on a grass airstrip in Haiti.
“We go through customs there, then get on the same plane and fly to a grass strip,” Lewis said. “Pignon, that’s the little town that we fly into. Everybody should land on a grass airstrip. Then we have another hour truck ride to go 11 miles.”
Building the health clinic took years, and that’s not even accounting for the nine years it took for its doctor, Dr. Maudelin Mesadieu, to get his medical degree. Lewis said he and other members of his church, Branchton United Methodist, worked with Global Links and Brother’s Brother in Haiti to dig the land by hand and place concrete blocks that would eventually make up the clinic.
Originally, Lewis and his congregation flew to Haiti on commercial flights and packed all the supplies they were going to donate in their own luggage. Traveling to Haiti in a private plane has allowed him and about six other people to take more supplies to the clinic, which also now has more workers, mainly Haitians.
“We’ve been going 12 years now to take supplies to Dr. Maudelin,” Lewis said. “We have a paid physician, a lab worker, a technician, we have cleaning people, guards, so we’ve kind of come a long way. It’s all kind of slowly evolved over the 13 years now.”
The U.S. “ambassadors” now help out at the clinic in small ways because it is staffed with medical personnel with expertise. Lewis said the role of his team at the clinic mainly boils down to supporting its staff.
“We got there and spent a week. We sometimes work in a clinic by taking blood pressures and helping check people in, count pills and put them in little bags in the pharmacy,” Lewis said. “We don’t interact much with the patients. We see them. The staff we see a little more.”
Hearts 4 Haiti has an annual gala that helps raise money for supplies to bring to the ULS Clinic. This year’s gala takes place on Friday, Oct. 17, at the Butler Country Club, and it will have a special guest speaker to help promote the nonprofit’s message.
“Our doctor will be there, Dr. Maudelin Mesadieu,” Lewis said. “Dr. Maudelin has been to the states off and on visiting other places. He was here for the first gala in 2023 but not last year.”
Lewis said this is not Mesadieu’s first time in the U.S., but it is his first time speaking for Hearts 4 Haiti. Mesadieu will discuss the state of the clinic and ways people can help it out from Butler County. According to Lewis, people probably will be surprised to hear how many people are involved at the clinic — he said it has become an economic engine for its area.
“He now has a dentist who comes in for people who need dental health care. He has a surgeon come in and do local surgeries,” Lewis said. “He has an eye doctor, and we take glasses that are donated down and match people up with eye glasses.”
The gala helps raise money for the nonprofit and also sometimes convinces new people to travel with Hearts 4 Haiti because of the stories that get shared at the event.
Lewis said people are affected by the stories of Haitian patients, but they are even more affected by speakers who talk about how actually being there hit them.
“People live in homes with dirt floors and mud walls,” Lewis said. “But they’re very proud people. They have joy. Most people I take down there, when I bring them back they’re like, ‘I’ve got too much. We could live with a whole lot less.’”
Beck is one of the people who said visiting Haiti was life-changing. She’ll never forget her interactions with the people and children of Haiti, but said people need to have this experience for themselves to really comprehend the country.
“It’s their joy in their difficult circumstances. They are still filled with joy and peace. It’s difficult for people to understand,” Beck said. “Then, (visitors) come back and they become ambassadors for Hearts 4 Haiti and show how important it is.”
The Hearts 4 Haiti gala takes place at 5:30 p.m. Oct. 17 at the Butler Country Club, 310 Country Club Road in Penn Township. For more information on the event, or Hearts 4 Haiti, visit its website at hearts4haiti.com.
