No more “Mwen Regrét Sa”

What is it like to feel helpless?  Who feels acutely vulnerable?  Though I see myself as a ready advocate for social justice, I am usually in the corner with those looking for a fair opportunity to improve their own situation.  They may feel stifled, hindered, cheated, temporarily blocked or unfairly burdened, but they don’t feel perpetually helpless or permanently incapable.  In contrast, associates have offered me the opportunity to write grant applications for programs designed to serve the most vulnerable and helpless—elderly persons on fixed incomes in the disadvantaged zip codes along the rich South Carolina coast and laboring women and their infants in the country with the highest maternal, fetal, and neonatal death rate in the West.

Stono Blessing Basket operates an emergency grocery program in Charleston County (SC), a county with an 18.7% poverty rate.  One in 10 senior citizens live below the poverty line.  Elizabeth Hempton,  a program organizer along with her husband Chef Darrell Hempton, said grant writing is problematic for their organization because many of their clients are elderly while most nutrition-related grants they have discovered focus on children.  Noting that rising food prices eclipse the buying power of many social security checks, Elizabeth wrote, “Our clients have very little hope of ever having more than they do now, and the way things are going, they're likely to have a whole lot less before they die. …Sadly, most of our clients only come off of our food program by passing away.”

This program is operated by a Baptist church on Johns Island.  If I am able to successfully locate and apply for grants, the clients will eat and Stono Blessing Basket volunteers will be encouraged in their work of collecting food from donors, as well as growing, harvesting and delivering fresh produce to clients.  It’s easy for them to lose heart.  “Honestly, I gave up on grants a while back because I have no time to write them and I became discouraged with so many companies who don't include faith based grants,” Elizabeth wrote.

My second client, Mama Baby Haiti (MBH), has a very different mission with another vulnerable population.  MBH’s website describes their mission:

Our mission is a seemingly simple one: to provide quality maternity care in an area where there is none. Haiti is one of the least developed countries in the world; it has the highest maternal mortality rate in the Western Hemisphere. It is our core belief that no woman or child should ever die because of where they live. Our goal is to offer services to women that will decrease their risk of dying from what should be a normal life event: pregnancy and birth. (http://www.mamababyhaiti.org/who-we-are/)

This non-profit is not associated with a religious organization, but, like Stono volunteers, the MBH Board of Directors, comprised of health-care providers, finds it difficult to leave their primary tasks to apply for grants.  I will be seeking appropriate grants for this birth center and clinic, which is located in Morne Rouge, Haiti, but reaches out to the surrounding area with education, as well as prenatal, birth, postpartum and pediatric care designed to reduce the maternal and infant death rate.

MBH reports that too often in Haiti a mother is told, “Mwen Regrét Sa"—I’m sorry your baby has died.  The grant packages I plan to assemble this semester could activate the people and resources needed to help the midwives make good on their motto, “No more Mwen Regrét Sa” and to hush the Charleston grocery clerks’, “I’m sorry.  The card was declined.”