Joan Rose Foundation – Pragmatically nourishing the potential in every child
Education and Community Development project in Haiti pragmatically nourishing the potential in every child. The Joan Rose Foundation was created to give children born into poverty the opportunity to succeed in life. We provide the basic necessities, food, clothing, medicine, documentation and education as well as support and love for over 110 children Monday-Saturday. The founder of the Joan Rose Foundation lives by the foundation and works their 6 days a week, along with his girlfriend Catherine Serrano. Catherine is the Director of the foundation and manages most of the day to day activities. The fact that the people who founded and manage the Joan Rose Foundation are the same people that run it on a daily basis gives us the ability to be highly adaptive to individual children;s needs. We have facilitated training in trades for our older children who dropped out of public school long ago. We have also sent some of our younger, brighter pupils to private schools in hopes that they will one day go to college. The majority of our children are illegal Haitian immigrants in the Dominican Republic. They are extremely poor and often shut out of basic services like schools and hospitals. We help them access these types of institutions. Sometimes that means getting a child a birth certificate or talking to a school principle. Other times that means paying a hospital bill or personally taking the child to the hospital. We have 5 local employees as well as at least 2 foreign interns at all times. Our hope is to help all of our children the means to support themselves and their families. Many are not bound for college but with guidance and training can provide a stable life for their families.