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WHAT WE DO

Our Mission

A Home of Hope and Healing for Abandoned and Abused Children

      The mission of the Santa Chiara Children’s Center is to provide a loving home for 45 abandoned and abused children born in the deeply impoverished and violent slums of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. They arrive hungry, malnourished, and bearing physical, emotional, and psychological wounds that need to be lovingly embraced and healed. We provide them with a safe home, nutritious food, medical and psychological care, and a first-class education.

      Within our walls, we operate the Santa Chiara Academy, which spans from pre-school through high school. Twenty students from the surrounding slum also spend the day at Santa Chiara and attend the school free of charge. Our children are schooled in a sense of dignity, compassion, nonviolence, and solidarity for the common good. Our goal is to help all our children break free from the chains of poverty, succeed as adults, and become contributing citizens who help the weakest, most vulnerable people in their community. We have seen over the last eleven years our children transformed by the power of unconditional love. They will pass on what they have received.

 

WHAT WE BELIEVE

Our Vision

A world where every child in Haiti grows up safe, loved, educated, and empowered to build a brighter future for themselves, their families, and their communities.

SANTA CHIARA

An Improbable Story

The improbable story of how a filmmaker
left his comfortable life in California
to open a free day care center for children
in the poorest nation in the western hemisphere.
Feb18

Gerard Thomas Straub, OSF

 

Founder of Santa Chiara
Children’s Center