OREM — It took two Utah County men and 401 local volunteers more than two years, 15 airplane flights and more than $850,000 to get a cinder block orphanage built in La Model, Haiti. Now they are ready to take on similar projects in Mexico and China.
"Our intent is to do this all over the world," said Paul Cook, who, along with Provoan Weston Whatcott, set out three years ago to help a big-hearted LDS Haitian couple who were trying to care for 17 orphans in their tiny tin-roof cottage.
The new 14,000-square-foot building, which was designed to be hurricane- and earthquake-proof, was dedicated Aug. 12 by a Catholic priest and an LDS branch president in front of several thousand Haitian villagers who are ecstatic over their good luck.
The orphanage not only provides a clean, spacious facility for hapless infants and youngsters up to the age of 6, it provides jobs and ongoing opportunities for major improvements in their lives.
"What a payday! It was a great occasion," said Cook, the director of A Child's Hope Foundation. He and Whatcott, the owner of the West Sands Adoption Agency in Provo, started on the Haitian project after they met Guesno and Marjorie Mardy and realized the young couple needed serious help.
They banded together, got the word out and started stumping for funds. They started enlisting other interested organizations as well.
"Our vision is not just to be an adoption agency but to create a "village of hope," Cook said. "We want this to be a community center, a training and development center, a place everyone can come and feel welcome and useful."
The new orphanage has a concrete roof, tile flooring, clean running water, indoor toilets, kitchen facilities and bed space for up to 300 children.
When Whatcott and Cook started, they were planning to build a much smaller facility and hadn't planned on a number of additional projects such as digging cesspools and trenches for sewer lines and laying 40,000 feet of fence.
What looked at first like a one- or two-trip process turned into an ongoing series of trips — with volunteers who paid their own way to defray the costs.
Whole families and Boy Scout troops signed on to help, and all came away with a new appreciation for the basic necessities of life they're used to in America.
They had to deal with heat, humidity and strange foods. They hand-carried generators and power tools to the area and lived out under the stars, for the most part.
Now that the village has a home for its orphans, the Haitian minister of social affairs wants to use it as a model for other orphanages: "Le Efant de Jesus" or the home for the "Children of Jesus."
The road between start-up and completion wasn't smooth. In addition to the difficulties that come with working in a remote, Third World area, Haiti has been plagued with political unrest over the past year. At one point, the insurrection threatened to stop the project. But the new government appears stable, and Whatcott and Cook are encouraged.
"The situation in Haiti is the best I've ever seen it. A lot of the political activity has stopped," Cook said.
That's good because the two men still have things to do in Haiti, such as finishing a building wing for volunteers who will be coming to help build water systems for the village, teach agricultural skills and job skills.
They will remain involved in seeing that the orphans are adopted by good, loving families.
And, they continue trying to raise more money.
"The $850,000 includes an endowment fund to keep the orphanage running, but we can add more wings and there are always needs. Basically we're a way station, a creche because we take only the children 0-6 years of age. They are the most expensive because they take the most care. But for us, they're the most adoptable and that's what we're all about," Cook said. "Literally, we are trying to save as many children as possible."
E-mail: haddoc@desnews.com