About

Founded in 2008 by Sarah Wallace (pictured, right), Olive Tree Projects was created to serve and save the children of Haiti. Although orphanages and schools are typically recognized as children based programs, OTP has also recognized the effect maternal care can have on a child’s life.

 

Projects

Sarah moved to Jacmel in 2008. She knew it would be important to live in the community, building relationships and establishing her reputation. In the first year, Sarah instituted educational classes on nutrition, hygiene, and information on pregnancy for the people of the community. She was the midwife for numerous mothers in the area, providing prenatal care and assisting in the delivery of their babies. Sarah maintained contact with these mothers with postnatal care and baby wellness check-ups. Throughout the year, Sarah also took in some very malnourished babies and, after setting up a nutritious feeding program, was pleased to be able to hand them back to their mothers in good health. Sarah also started craft classes for a small group of teenaged boys in the community. They learned a variety of different crafts using recycled plastic bags, bottles, and coconuts.

Maternity Center

The Olive Tree Projects’ maternity centre is situated just outside of Jacmel, Haiti. The public hospital only has the capacity to deliver a quarter of the births in Jacmel and its surrounding communities and, therefore, many women deliver at home. We provide a safe, clean place for labour and delivery, as well as offer prenatal, delivery, and post delivery care.We believe that by providing complete prenatal care we can reduce maternal mortality in our community and help keep children with their families.

We recognize the importance of first trimester prenatal care, but realize that there is no way of enforcing that women receive care in their first few months of pregnancy. In response to this, we’ve connected with a group of men and women from our community who hold monthly meetings.  We speak at their meetings each month about the signs of pregnancy, risks of pregnancy, and the importance of prenatal care.  If men and women in the group understand the importance of early prenatal care then the hope is that they will encourage their friends, family, and neighbours to come to us in their first trimester.

Nutrition Program

Many children in Haiti are living with malnutrition. It is often not a lack of food, but a lack of nutritious food that is causing the malnutrition. Simply providing a nutritious diet may sustain the child, but this isn’t always enough to bring the child out of malnutrition. We offer weekly nutritional classes for mothers of the malnourished children while monitoring the growth of these children who are being treated with a three month course of Medika Mamba, a highly fortified peanut butter meal. www.mfkhaiti.org

Project ‘Amen’

In Creole, amen means by hand. We have a group of boys, ages 10 – 18, and a group of women who are learning to make jewelry and decorations out of readily available resources such as coconut shells and garbage. Their work will be sold to visitors in Haiti and at OTP fundraisers. Fifty percent of the sales of the boys’ crafts will go into a savings account for them, which can be used towards their education in the future. As the women need more money immediately for their families, twenty-five percent of their sales will go into a personal savings account.

Girls’ Soccer League

Every Friday afternoon we have a girls’ soccer league. We have recently hired a Haitian female soccer player, named Ginu, to lead this program. We hope that our soccer team can grow into a league and that through soccer we can teach young girls that they don’t have to follow the example of their older sisters, cousins, and neighbours. Our goal is for these girls to know that they can be different, that they can make choices, and that they don’t have to grow up to be as so many young Haitian women are – uneducated, mothers, and dependent on men. The hope is that with the right guidance these girls will be able to finish school before they become mothers.