How to make a difference in another country from Philly

Gabriel Fedelus had a dream to start an orphanage.

The Haitian man, who had been living in Miami, returned to his home country after it was ravaged by a 7.0-magnitude earthquake in 2010. Hundreds of thousands of people had died, millions were displaced, and the country was set on a long road to recovery — exacerbating the number of children left uncared for. Fedelus wanted to provide them a nurturing home, so he created Love Orphanage in 2011.

“When I see all this suffering in Haiti for the kids, I have no choice, I’m going to open an orphanage,” Fedelus said. “Having an orphanage is something I do with my heart.”

Then he met Ahaji Schreffler, a Philadelphia resident who had traveled to volunteer in Haiti in 2011. When Schreffler heard about Love Orphanage, she knew she wanted to help. She had zero experience with nonprofit work and humanitarian fund-raising, but Fedelus’ story compelled her to get involved.

Over the next 11 years, Schreffler worked to build a nonprofit in Philadelphia called We the Village, a 501(c)3 and the fiscal sponsor and supporter of Love Orphanage in Haiti.

“It went from, we had a small little space, no resources, a couple of blankets, the kids didn’t have clothes — I mean, it was a dire situation,” Schreffler said. “To getting licensed through the government, all the kids now in school for the past nine years, building this big facility, camps, study-abroad programs, food and wellness — literally from the ground up, he and I, together. It’s 100% volunteer-based — I myself am a volunteer as the president.”

Here’s what Schreffler and her colleagues learned about making a difference abroad from Philadelphia:

Start small — try asking your local community to donate supplies or money that you can send or take with you on a trip.

When she first started supporting the new venture of Love Orphanage, Schreffler just did what was accessible to her — collecting used clothing and doing small-scale fund-raising, then traveling back to Haiti to distribute the donations to Love Orphanage.

“I was me, myself, and I doing that for about two years, of fund-raising, collecting supplies, going down every few months, and helping get the orphanage off the ground,” Schreffler said.

It was never Schreffler’s intention to create a nonprofit organization, but after about two years of people imploring her to start one, she decided to make it official.

While We the Village is the fiscal sponsor of Love Orphanage, it’s Fedelus who runs the orphanage, oversees the staff — who are Haitian volunteers — and takes care of the children on a daily basis.

Schreffler met Fedelus by chance — he was a translator for her volunteer group in 2011.

“He sleeps four hours a night trying to figure out where the next meal comes from, how to fund it. He’s a hero, and we all know it,” said Kathy Milano, a We the Village volunteer who has helped establish educational programming for the children.

For Fedelus and the children, We the Village changed everything.

“We the Village totally changed our kids’ lives,” Fedelus said. “We the Village makes sure our kids are able to eat and drink. We could send them to school with We the Village. We the Village made it possible for us to have a shelter. We the Village made it possible for our kids to have a better future in so many ways.”

There are an estimated 500,000 orphaned children in the Port-au-Prince area alone, and many of them are poverty orphans — meaning they have at least one parent who is alive but is unable to provide for their children.

One of the first things Schreffler noticed when she started traveling to Haiti was the hundreds of orphanages in the country — many of them were over capacity, with children far outnumbering adults and getting only the bare necessities of food and shelter, but not emotional, social, and mental support.

Schreffler and Fedelus wanted Love Orphanage to be different. If you decide to form a nonprofit, fill a void.

“Love Orphanage is set up like a family — we have 20 children,” Schreffler said. “[Our intention] is to remain high quality in terms of the care that the children are getting, so that they’re not just surviving, but they’re actually being healed and thriving and growing.”

With an emphasis on mental and physical health, education (none of the children had attended school before entering the orphanage), food and housing security, and fun activities such as culture camp, Schreffler and Fedelus ensure that holistic support and care is provided for the child.

A year after her first visit to Haiti, Schreffler decided to make her experience accessible to students. The senior director of Education Abroad at Drexel University, Schreffler started leading intensive courses in Haiti.

Schreffler would take two to three groups of students to Haiti each year, and also created separate programs that provided annual volunteer opportunities at the orphanage.

“The study of our courses that I’ve developed, Love Orphanage was always a part of that,” Schreffler said. “Drexel students would fund-raise, would do different activities at the orphanage. It wasn’t the focal point … but the study-abroad courses were another way to link … education, global and cultural exchange, and service.”

When Schreffler and Fedelus had raised enough money to build a home for the children in 2014, they chose Croix des Bouquets — a safe, quiet, calm, and idyllic countryside suburb of Port-au-Prince.

But the suburb that was once quaint suddenly became ground zero for gang warfare, with kidnappings happening on a daily basis. They had poured everything into building the perfect home for the children, but Schreffler and Fedelus needed to move the family. Just about a month ago, they relocated the children to a temporary rental home in a safer area.

“We didn’t anticipate having to pay for a rental house and all the other expenses that go along with that, but we really had no choice,” Schreffler said. “We have to keep going … to help these children.”

While they had held a fund-raiser in October to establish solar power for the house in Croix des Bouquets, the duo pivoted and dedicated half of the proceeds to the relocation costs.

“There’s been layered tragedy upon tragedy the past three years, starting with the pandemic,” Schreffler said.

But they learned to change course with creative solutions to overcome unexpected obstacles that came their way.

To have a successful nonprofit, you need a team to support you.

Schreffler established a core group of volunteers who contribute to everything from fund-raising to collecting donations to program development, and even has volunteers located in other parts of the United States.

“The key thing that has really stuck out to me over the last few years is community engagement,” said Amy Gandhi, today a member of We the Village’s predominantly BIPOC board. She was one of the students who visited Haiti with Schreffler in 2016. “I found that a lot of our success in raising funds comes from having a loyal group of donors. The people are truly invested in not just a nonprofit, but these children.”