A local woman who has spent the last eight years helping out children in Haiti is rebranding her organization in hopes of helping out even more people in need.
Emily Hime first travelled to Haiti in 2011 at the age of 19 to volunteer at an orphanage and medical clinic. She eventually took over the orphanage, making it a children's home and created her organization Hime for Help, which she has been running ever since. Now, Hime is officially rebranding her organization from Hime for Help into RISE House International.
Hime said as she grew up, so did the organization and she recognized it was time to expand its mission. According to Hime, children in Haiti are often time put into orphanages because the parents believe it is the best decision. Hime is hoping to change that.
"There's hundreds of orphanages filled with hundreds of children. However, very large percentages of those children aren't actually orphans," she explained. "The parents are giving them up to the orphanage or abandoning them at the orphanage because they believe an orphanage will provide them with a better life, guarantee them an education, food and security."
According to Hime, many women in Haiti are victims are sex-trafficking and are often left pregnant with nowhere to turn and no resources. Over the last few years, Hime said she had been facing moral conflict about how she could get to the root these kinds of problems and help people overcome adverse situations.
"I've learned a lot from working there first hand so I want to be able to use our resources to reach more people. I presented to the board that maybe it's time we start addressing the big issues, the poverty and working towards keeping families together," Hime said.
RISE House will expand the children's home into a shelter for women as well. It will not only be a place families can go in need, but will also focus heavily on teaching Haitians the skills they need to prosper.
"Our big mission is to offer training and educational opportunities and resources to people to empower them to rise about poverty," she explained. "We want to try and keep families together and provide communities with more resources and support the Haitian economy."
Another new initiative Hime will be offering with RISE House is an entrepreneur program to teach people basic business skills as well as offer loans and grants to cover costs for start-up businesses.
"There's not many resources in Haiti for people to do that. A lot of people can't afford education, they can't afford to go to trade school or anything like that so we're there to kind of support them and try to get more people in the community educated and working," said Hime.
Outside of the business training program RISE House will also offer smaller educational programs focused on health, nutrition, childbirth and agriculture.
The rebrand is about three months in the making and Hime is hoping to launch the first business programs at the end of June. Kids who are currently living in the Hime for Help children house will remain in the organization's care during the transition. She added that her goal is to bring RISE House programs to other third world countries.
"I've met so many Haitians... and in other places that I've worked as well, that are so dedicated, so motivated, they have so much drive and such a good work ethic but they just don't have the tools and resources they need to grow or to utilize their skills and their talents," she said. "It was really heartbreaking to see all these people, if there were here they would be so successful and be doing incredible things and to know that, because of the lottery of life, and them being born there versus here, they don't have those same opportunities."
Hime currently lives and runs the organization in Chatham, visiting Haiti every few months. Hime said she looks back to when she first went to Haiti with $500 in her pocket and still can't believe the organization has gotten to where it is today. She said it's an accomplishment that wouldn't be possible without all the help and support she's received over the years from the residents of Chatham-Kent.
