'Haiti' Archives

South Florida-Based Charity Planting Peace Loses Funding for Haitian Orphanage

By Erica K. Landau Tue., May 14 2013 at 3:21 AM

via plantingpeace.org

Aaron Jackson, South Florida's most lovable do-gooder, whose non-profit Planting Peace helps house and feed homeless children throughout the developing world and in March took on the Westboro Baptist Church bigots with its rainbow-colored Equality House, needs help.

Planting Peace is looking for sponsors for one of its Haitian orphanages after a foundation that had promised funding failed to follow up or send any money. Instead of chasing down the foundation, Jackson is moving on. "I'm not in the business of collection," he said from the organization's Equality House in Topeka.

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Haiti

Haiti Suffering From Food Shortage; Charity Has $42 Million of Food Aid but Needs Money to Ship It

By Deirdra Funcheon Thu., Apr. 11 2013 at 7:56 AM

Categories: Haiti

RIBI Image Library via Flickr

Haiti, 2010

We saw how Hurricane Sandy caused carousels to flood and wiped out much of the Jersey Shore last year, but in Haiti, the damage was much, much worse.

Not only did 54 Haitians die and 21,000 people lose their homes in the storm, but the impoverished country, still reeling from devastation of the 2010 earthquake, saw many of its crops wiped out. Seventy percent of the country's yam, corn, and banana plants are gone.

Now, Coconut Creek-based Food for the Poor is reporting that the hunger crisis is putting 1.5 million people at risk for starvation.

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Housing Bubble

A Visit to Sweet Micky's Random-Ass Real Estate Investment Flop in Pembroke Pines

By Stefan Kamph Tue., Mar. 29 2011 at 12:25 PM

Categories: Haiti, Housing Bubble

He's a kompas king, a diaper-dancer and a firebrand, and he just may be Haiti's best hope for a president with more efficacy than an ingrown hair. Votes are being counted, and it's between former first lady Mirlande Manigat and our boy, Michel "Sweet Micky" Martelly. Why ours, exactly? Well, he's a bona-fide former Florida real-estate owner, before the market sent him packing. Behold a humble abode in far-slung Pembroke Pines, which may soon have presidential ties.

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foreclosure, Haitian election, Pembroke Pines, Sweet Micky

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A Murder in Haiti Threatens to Become Lost Amid the Rubble

By Stefan Kamph Fri., Jan. 14 2011 at 1:13 PM

Categories: Crime, Haiti

Courtesy Viola Semxant-Zucker

Gregoire-Ronald Chery on an earlier, happier trip to Haiti.

Our feature story this week tells the harrowing tale of Gregoire-Ronald Chery, who was murdered in Haiti when kidnappers came for a young girl in his family. Chery was a 17-year federal agent who worked in the Miami office of the Customs and Immigrations Service. When he was killed, federal agencies, including the embassy in Port-au-Prince and the FBI office in Santo Domingo, swept in to lead the investigation.

We've now heard from the family, though not confirmed, that federal authorities have called off their investigation. The Haitian police, as far as we know, are still pursuing the case, but the odds of doing police work in a country with minimal infrastructure are making the case grow colder every day.

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Tags:

Gregoire-Ronald Chery, kidnapping, murder, Police, Port-au-Prince, prison

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Haiti

A Murder in Haiti Threatens to Become Lost Amid the Rubble

By Stefan Kamph Fri., Jan. 14 2011 at 1:13 PM

Categories: Crime, Haiti

Courtesy Viola Semxant-Zucker

Gregoire-Ronald Chery on an earlier, happier trip to Haiti.

Our feature story this week tells the harrowing tale of Gregoire-Ronald Chery, who was murdered in Haiti when kidnappers came for a young girl in his family. Chery was a 17-year federal agent who worked in the Miami office of the Customs and Immigrations Service. When he was killed, federal agencies, including the embassy in Port-au-Prince and the FBI office in Santo Domingo, swept in to lead the investigation.

We've now heard from the family, though not confirmed, that federal authorities have called off their investigation. The Haitian police, as far as we know, are still pursuing the case, but the odds of doing police work in a country with minimal infrastructure are making the case grow colder every day.

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Tags:

Gregoire-Ronald Chery, kidnapping, murder, Police, Port-au-Prince, prison

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Haitian Kidnapping: One Clueless Journalist's Story of an Angry Mob in Port-au-Prince

By Eric Barton Wed., Jan. 12 2011 at 10:43 AM

Categories: Haiti

Erosion -- and kidnappers -- awaited us on a road outside Port-au-Prince.

It was my first day in Haiti when my translator and I were nearly kidnapped. If things had gone down differently that day, the two of us may have ended up tortured and held for ransom. Or maybe dragged out of our car and beaten.

Who knows, because it ended as best as it could for all -- except for the guy we hit with our car.

I thought a lot about that day while we worked on this week's cover story in New Times about a Haitian kidnapping. Things ended much worse in that incident. Thugs killed a federal agent and held a girl for ransom for several days while her family was told she had been tortured.

First, some explanation of how I found myself nearly kidnapped in the hills outside Port-au-Prince. I was in Haiti in June 2005 to write a story about Aaron Jackson, who, at the time, had just opened his first Haitian orphanage. Jackson was living at a homeless

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Aaron Jackson, Haiti, kidnapping, Planting Peace

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Haitian Kidnapping: One Clueless Journalist's Story of an Angry Mob in Port-au-Prince

By Eric Barton Wed., Jan. 12 2011 at 10:43 AM

Categories: Haiti

Erosion -- and kidnappers -- awaited us on a road outside Port-au-Prince.

It was my first day in Haiti when my translator and I were nearly kidnapped. If things had gone down differently that day, the two of us may have ended up tortured and held for ransom. Or maybe dragged out of our car and beaten.

Who knows, because it ended as best as it could for all -- except for the guy we hit with our car.

I thought a lot about that day while we worked on this week's cover story in New Times about a Haitian kidnapping. Things ended much worse in that incident. Thugs killed a federal agent and held a girl for ransom for several days while her family was told she had been tortured.

First, some explanation of how I found myself nearly kidnapped in the hills outside Port-au-Prince. I was in Haiti in June 2005 to write a story about Aaron Jackson, who, at the time, had just opened his first Haitian orphanage. Jackson was living at a homeless

More »