This article explores Haiti’s shift from institutional orphanages toward family- and community-based care, told through the story of Émile Bejin, who spent the first 14 years of his life in an orphanage outside Port-au-Prince before moving into a foster home in southern Haiti. The piece explains how the number of orphanages surged after the 2010 earthquake, many of which provided inadequate care and sometimes exposed children to abuse, while most children in these institutions actually had living parents.

This blog from Hope and Homes for Children critiques a recent 60 Minutes segment that portrayed a Haitian orphanage in a positive light, arguing that such narratives overlook the deeper harms of institutional care. Drawing on extensive research and data, the article explains that most children in Haitian orphanages have living parents and are placed there because of poverty, not orphanhood, with orphanages often creating a “pull effect” that separates families.

This news article describes how an Irish missionary, orphanage staff, and a 3-year-old child were released after being held captive for nearly a month following a gang abduction in Kenscoff, a suburb of Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

The Archdiocese of Port-au-Prince said the kidnapping of eight people from the Sainte-Hélène orphanage betrayed ‘the failure of the state and of a society that is losing its sensitivity to life’.

Parenting author Kayla Craig; Lauren Pinkston, Kindred Exchange; Kristin Langrehr, 111Project; and Stephanie Robinson, Faith to Action, share their own experiences of caring for orphans and adoption. Their reflections provide realistic ways to be involved in supporting orphaned and vulnerable children.

The Changing the Way We Care℠ (CTWWC) Life of the Award Report highlights the initiative’s global efforts to promote safe, nurturing family care for children. Since 2018, CTWWC has been driving care reform in countries like Guatemala, Kenya, and Moldova, while supporting smaller projects in Haiti and India.

This IOM report reveals that there are more than 700,000 people currently displaced within Haiti, 52% of whom are children. Haiti is experiencing an unprecedented crisis that has affected the entire population, including the many orphanages operating there.

Human rights organizations urge the Dominican Republic to respect treaties and conventions on the deportation of minors, highlighting the severe risks faced by children deported without their parents.

After months of languishing in an abusive boarding school in Jamaica — where boys said they were beaten, waterboarded, starved and whipped — Michigan teenager Elijah Goldman begged to come home.

The Better Together conference will provide a dedicated space and time to convene, share, and learn over two and half days in Nashville. Workshops will be focused on topics related to supporting children in families with special emphasis on the complexity of the current context in Haiti. In addition to workshops, there will be plenty of time dedicated to connecting and growing relationships.