Health (2010 Q2)

Featured beneficiary in the HEALTH category for second quarter 2010:

HAITIAN HEALTH FOUNDATION

Charity Navigator rating:

Annual budget: $4.5 million

HHF’s main facilities are located in Jérémie, Haiti, in the western end of Haiti—where people depend on subsistence farming, charcoal production, and other menial jobs for their livelihood. The average income is just $90-$300 US per year.

The area is very isolated, and even under the most favorable conditions communication is scant, with no health services for the poor. Living conditions are dehumanizing—families crushed into hovels of banana leaves and thatch, shacks unsuitable for human habitation. It is heartbreaking to see children rooting with animals through the garbage for scraps of food. HHF has created a stable and loving preventive and curative health and development program in the poorest area of the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. In addition to the city of Jérémie, HHF provides support to over 100 rural mountain villages.

Our mission is to improve the health and well-being of the poor, the sick, and the infirm of Jérémie and to break the bonds of poverty, which tie so many Haitians to a life of great deprivation.

While cynics decry the impotence of individuals to change the world, HHF continues to change lives—one person at a time.

HHF is proud of an overhead of less than 8 cents per donated dollar, with over 92 percent of funds collected going directly to services for the poor.