In a quiet village in the lush mountains of tropical Haiti, Lorelei VerLee of Fort Wayne found a calling – one that has become more urgent in the past few weeks.

Standing in a converted classroom in the basement of Covenant United Methodist Church in Fort Wayne, the 59-year-old woman is surrounded by its trappings – piles of colorful cotton remnant yardage piled in a bookcase along one wall, folk art drawings in frames, a rack of greeting cards with hand-embroidered inspirational scenes and fringed-fabric tote bags hanging on display hooks.

Taken together, the items make up the raw materials and products of a cooperative venture staffed by women struggling for economic betterment in Mizak, a town on Haiti’s southern peninsula, roughly 40 miles southwest of the country’s capital, Port-au-Prince.

Even in the best of times, Mizak, with a population of 35,000, was sorely in need of the help provided by Haitian Artisans for Peace International, the faith-based group with which VerLee has been affiliated since 2007.

Eighty percent of villagers live below poverty level, equivalent to one U.S. dollar a day. There is no electricity or plumbing. Residents catch rainwater to bathe and travel by donkey to springs to collect drinking water, which must be filtered before drinking. There is one school and no hospital, only a rudimentary clinic.

But since the 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck Haiti on Jan. 12, the needs of Mizak have become dire. The village is about 25 miles from the quake’s epicenter. About 500 of its homes were destroyed or severely damaged.

And while worldwide relief efforts were galvanized after the quake, Mizak’s destruction has been virtually overlooked, said VerLee, who spent 10 days in Mizak last month assisting with quake relief.

“We don’t get help from the Red Cross because we are far from the populated areas,” she says. “The NGOs (non-governmental organizations providing relief) are concentrating on the population centers because that’s where most people are, and that makes sense.

“But what they aren’t realizing was all of the people who fled the cities and went back to the villages where their families are. Villages like ours are inundated with relatives, and they have no way to house them or care for them or get them food.”

Since the earthquake, VerLee says, HAPI staff members have diverted from their primary goal of developing a sustainable arts and crafts business that would reinvest profits into community improvements to providing emergency aid.

The group has been distributing 10,000 meals a week in Mizak and trying to provide shelter. Even when she was there, VerLee says, villagers were still sleeping outdoors.

Those securing aid for Mizak’s villagers must travel over narrow mountain roads four hours northeast to Port-au-Prince or south to Jacmel, where there is an airstrip, she says. Cash is needed for purchases.

But even then, help has not been guaranteed. “We would go to Jacmel, and connect with the other (agencies), and they would say it’s not in our jurisdiction,” VerLee says. “Well, it seemed like it wasn’t in anyone’s jurisdiction.”

One day while she was in Haiti, some members of her group were able to secure several blue plastic tarps to cover holes in roofs and walls of damaged homes.

“You would have thought we were giving out Cadillacs. They were so touched by getting that one tarp,” she says.

Greeting cards

HAPI got its start in 2007 through a Mizak native, Paul Prevost, the village’s former mayor, and Valerie Mossman-Celestin, an American. The two had the vision of helping Haitian women gain employment at fair-trade wages in a place where 75 percent of adults are unemployed and nearly two-thirds of residents are children.

Since then, HAPI has received financial assistance from the global missions arm of the United Methodist Church, Methodist women’s groups and individual congregations. Its U.S. base is in Grand Rapids, Mich., where Mossman-Celestin lives with her Haitian-born husband. Because of VerLee, its warehouse and shipping center is in Fort Wayne.

VerLee, wife of the Rev. Ron VerLee, former pastor of Covenant and St. Joseph’s United Methodist churches in Fort Wayne, learned of the group through an Internet posting seeking volunteers.

Specifically, the posting asked for someone who could help HAPI develop a line of greeting cards that would appeal to the U.S. market.

In the early 1990s, VerLee, who has a background in art and had been a missionary in Japan, owned a greeting card company, Friend to Friend, which marketed whimsical, handmade cards throughout the U.S. and abroad.

“I jumped because I have all my life wanted to start a mission that was also artistically related,” she says, noting she had been to Haiti several times in the 1990s on short-term mission trips to install solar collectors in clinics and hospitals. “I believe God put this in my heart knowing that this was going to happen someday.”

In March 2007, VerLee went to Mizak for a month to develop products and business practices and train workers. A line was launched in July 2007 featuring 24 designs. The plan was to sell the cards through churches and online.

The cards feature hand-embroidered fabric fronts mounted on heavy paper. Designs are of simple figures engaged in daily activities common in Haiti, animals and birds, flowers and biblical scenes. There are also quilt squares in many of the same designs.

Other products were developed, including a journal made of paper recycled from cement bags. A line of purses and totes made with one of Haiti’s most plentiful resources – fabric from cast-off clothing donated in the U.S. – came into being last year. HAPI’s goal is for its products to be environmentally friendly, VerLee says.

VerLee says she was “shocked” at the living conditions when she first went to Haiti, and on subsequent trips, felt more pressed as she “was exposed to more of the poverty and the real way Haitians lived.”

“I don’t have an idealized view,” she says. “It’s really important to me to get women connected to a paycheck, because if the women get it, it’s statistically proven in poverty situations around the world, the family will get it and their lives will improve.”

Many of the artisans care for several children, she says, and many have used the money to enroll them in school or provide for elderly relatives. Now, they also are using money to repair homes.

Building homes

HAPI, meanwhile, has plans to continue meeting needs. One U.S. volunteer team is in Mizak constructing houses made of discarded 50-pound rice bags.

The bags are filled with dirt, stacked in rows like bricks and then stuccoed over – a technique that HAPI researchers found was not only more practical for Mizak than wood or concrete but also surprisingly earthquake-resistant.

The group is working on bringing additional water to the village, possibly through an aqueduct from a nearby lake, and is helping build a park in the center of the village.

After the earthquake, the park was turned into an impromptu relief center and the site of a children’s trauma recovery camp staffed by U.S. volunteers and paid villagers. The camp served about 150 children; leaders hope to take the idea to other Haitian communities, VerLee says.

U.S. volunteers, including two from the Bluffton area, staffed the medical clinic after the earthquake, and there are dreams of starting a school to train nurses and midwives. Another Fort Wayne-area resident, Tamara Kreigh, will soon be living in Mizak and training HAPI work teams.

Meanwhile, VerLee has been developing new products to be used in what has become urgent fundraising. They include a new style of journal and possibly pillows or quilts made with artisans’ embroidery squares, with the items assembled locally by volunteers.

All the proceeds from the new products would go to the housing project, VerLee says.

HAPI hopes to be able to end emergency aid by July, the start of the new growing season, and artisans’ production continues to rebound, although many refuse to work indoors, opting for a courtyard instead. “They are terrified of concrete falling on them,” she says.

“The devastation was worse than I expected, and I expected it would be pretty bad,” VerLee says. “Part of me wants to cry because of the suffering. I feel it right here,” she says, pointing to a spot above her heart.

“But I’m afraid to let it out because I’m afraid if I do, I won’t be able to stop.”

Still, knowing she is providing helps keep her going.

“You have no idea how important it is to our artisans that they be able to go back to work,” she says. “Every day I’m just listening to what God is telling me to do.”

To assist, visit the Haitian Artisans for Peace International Web site at www.haitianartisans.com or call VerLee at 414-7203.

rsalter@jg.net