We are very excited to announced that you have helped us sponsor 24 children in Chauffard, Haiti. This sponsorship guarantees education and food for these wonderful children which, in turn, guarantees a more hopeful future.

For only $1 a day you can make a significant difference!

Sponsor a child today.

We just wanted to announce that we have had our 11th child sponsored!

Scherline Estime now has much needed worm medicine, a meal a day, and primary education for hope for a better tomorrow!

We still have yet to have our official launch party at Black & Brew on Saturday the 21st. Tell your friends and invite them to this awesome night.

Thank you all for partnering with us on behalf of Scherline, her family, and the wonderful community of Chauffard, Haiti.

Kenny and Grant

And all of The CPI Guys and Gals

We have 2 BIG announcements for you that we are extremely excited about!

1. CPI Child Sponsorship has launched
2. CPI Night at Black-N-Brew, Saturday, May 21st

1 – CPI Child Sponsorship Has Launched

CPI is THRILLED to announce that the child sponsorship program is ready for you!! We have 48 children waiting for a sponsor. Our school has 128 children and 2 teachers. As you know, that is not an environment conducive for learning. Education is the key to getting out of poverty in a country where the majority of the population is… illiterate.

For $30 a month you can begin to change this statistic. What would happen in the village of Chauffard if ALL of our students could read and write? GREAT things would happen. Please, please consider being a child sponsor. You can visit our website and begin the process today at: CPI Child Sponsorship

2 – CPI Night at Black-n-Brew, Saturday, May 21st

Come join us at Black-N-Brew on Saturday, May 21st to help us celebrate the launch of our Child Sponsorship Program. Nate Mundell will be displaying and selling photography created from his most recent trip to Haiti. A percentage of the delicious food and drink sales will go to CPI-Haiti. Drop in and show your support between 6:30 and 9:30!

Great people, great mission, great food and drink…don’t miss it!

Together, we are making a difference!

The CPI Team

As you can see from this picture, choosing to work in the remote village of Chauffard presents some challenges.  This is a picture of our team having just worked for hours to repair the road which had been washed out by a flash flood.

The road conditions and elevation in this picture are consistent with the 20 miles of road that lead out to Chauffard.  So, one of our consistent challenges has been securing transportation to get work teams, supplies, building materials and food out to our friends in this remote farming village.

That is why we are very excited to announce that we have purchased a truck with the funds we raised from the Hope for Haiti 5K and with the generous support of our newest partner, Bartow Ford. Denny Mullis and the Bartow Ford team were very generous in making this a reality.

It is an F-350, 4×4, with re-enforced suspension, all-terrain tires and an 11 foot truck bed. We have been looking for months and this truck met all of our criteria.  We are outfitting the vehicle and preparing to ship it in a few weeks.

The  last hurdle we need to overcome to get the vehicle down to Haiti and put it to good use is raising the additional funds needed for shipping and customs.  We need to raise $5,000 to complete the process.

If you are willing to help us get the truck to Haiti…

1. Mail check payable to “CPI” to:

530 Bonnie Drive
Lakeland, FL
33803,..  OR

2. Donate securely online by clicking on the “Donate” tab above

The Many Uses of the CPI-Truck:

• Transporting food & farm supplies
• Transporting building materials
• Transporting work/mission teams
• A transporting business for our Haitian team members

Spring Break & Summer Trips

Hello, everyone! We are super excited to announce the awesome trips we have going this summer (and this spring break, meaning in a week!)

We have a team of 18 (11 from Lakeland and 7 from The Crossing Church) heading down March 13-18.

There will be 2 CPI-Lakeland trips this summer along with a CPI-Clermont trip.

Trip 1, CPI-First Presbyterian: July 3-10
Trip 2, CPI General: July 9-16
Trip 3, CPI-Clermont: July 16-23

We will be limiting the teams to 15.
The cost of the trips is $1,200.

We will be having a meeting on March 6th after the morning service in the youth hall for people interested in the FPC trip. FPC is a church partner with CPI and therefore we devote at least 1 trip each year to FPC attenders. We’ll know after the meeting on the 6th how many spots on Trip 1 will be available to non-FPC attenders.

Please let me know ASAP which trip you would be most interested in.

• Call: Kenny – 863-698-4352/ Grant: 561-247-2686
• E-mail: ellis.kenny@gmail.com/ grant.nieddu@gmail.com
• Connect form.

The projects for each trip will be determined by how much $$ we can raise between now and then and the assessment of greatest need as we come back from the Spring Break trip.

Ok, so tell your friends, family, and the pets you like most to get ready for an awesome transformational trip this summer.

Gratefully,

The CPI Haiti Team

Kenny Ellis
Grant R. Nieddu
And the AWESOME CPI Team Family

An Explosive Event

Thank you, everyone, for all of your support this past Saturday! The first annual Hope for Haiti 5k Run and Walk was a smashing success.

Over 228 racers. Over 270 people made a personal statement that they support the work for Chauffard, Haiti and CPI’s Haitian friends who live there.

Take a second to let our sponsors know how much you appreciate their support. Congratulations to all of our Heroes of Hope who helped raise above and beyond their registration fee, which was a huge help for our Haitian friends.

Get Haiti 5k Photos Here

Check out all of the awesome photos, provided by Nate Mundell, here: CPI Haiti – Hope for Haiti 5k Run and Walk Photos.

Watch for Updates

The Hope for Haiti 5k Race is planned for being an annual event. Be sure to watch your e-mail for updates on the results from this year, updates from our progress in the field, as well as plans for next year’s awesome race!

We just wanted to let you know that we now have a “Title Sponsor” for the Hope for Haiti 5K:

This comes by way of Caylyn and Lisa Gilbert being willing to do the “ask” and following up. Way to go!

We know everyone is busy out there putting up flyers, talking it up on Facebook, spreading the word and hopefully talking to event sponsors. We have heard the buzz and been encouraged by how many people know what we are up to already. Keep it up!

If you have not approached a potential event sponsor yet…now is the time. We are thrilled with the news about Mid-Florida, but for us to reach our goal we have to have an additional 40 sponsors coming in at the $250 level (or some equivalent at other levels). December will be here and gone before we know it – so let’s do the “ask” and see what God does.

Have you been to the 5K page on our site? Check it out: http://cpihaiti.org/hope-5k/

Also coming up in the next 10 days:
Donate Your Christmas Campaign
Heroes of Hope Web Tools

Kudos again to Lisa and Caylyn! Go team! Have a great Thanksgiving!

All-Hands-On-Deck Meeting Summary

First of all, thanks for making last night a priority. I know our schedules are crazy and there are plenty of other things clamoring for your attention, but you will never regret an ounce of energy, time or resources invested in serving others for the reputation of Christ.

So, way to go for making room in your lives for our friends in Chauffard who are largely unknown or overlooked by most of the world. I would love to see their faces if they could see a picture of us, here in the U.S. meeting and planning on their behalf. Good stuff!

Second, last night was the beginning of something great! We all made mutual commitments to give some of our best focus and energy towards making our vision a reality. Here is a summary of the commitments that we made last night:

Commitment – #
Event Sponsors - 35
Host Dessert Social - 4
Race-Day Volunteers - 13
Speaking Opportunity - 2
Enlist Runners/Walkers - 107
Donate Your Christmas - 65

Third, keep in mind that our team is larger than those who attended the meeting last night. I know of several other people who will make similar commitments in the next week or so as we communicate the vision and the opportunities.

Fourth, we will be finalizing the Donate Your Christmas process in the coming weeks and will keep you posted once it is ready to go.

Here are some suggestions as we move forward together:

1. Take a few minutes and get very specific as to how you are going to follow through on your commitments. Get your calendar out and set the days and times that you will make that call, send the email, stop by the business, have the conversation, hand out the flyer, put up the poster, etc. As someone once said, “If you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time.”

2. As a general rule, don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today. I would suggest we look at the time leading up to Thanksgiving as our prime window of opportunity for securing the Hope for Haiti 5K event sponsor commitments. Remember that our event sponsors can commit now and pay in January if necessary, but we would like to secure the commitment now if possible. Don’t forget that Grant and I are more than excited to come with you to talk with a potential event sponsor.

3. With the holidays fast approaching, those of you who committed to hosting a Dessert-Social will need to act now and get your event scheduled. If you don’t think you can pull it off prior to the holidays, you can always shoot for January.

I think that is all for now…let the fun begin!

Kenny Ellis
CPI-Haiti, www.cpihaiti.org

“Men anpil, chay pa lou.”
Many hands make the load lighter

A Success Adventure Building Homes In Chauffard, Haiti

As many of you know, we were unable to build new homes in the village in July because our materials were held up in the red tape of the port.

After returning to the States, our Haitian team worked diligently and finally got the materials out of the port in early September.  Meanwhile, we were assembling another team (aka, the Dream Team) to head back and finish the project.

Our team left for Haiti last Wednesday night.  Here is a picture of our team:

Kenny, Leah, John, Shawn, Bobby & JJ

It goes without saying that the choice to work among the people of Chauffard was a decision to accept and overcome extreme obstacles at every turn.  The remote location, the extremely poor road conditions, and the abundant rainfall all pose serious challenges to our teams.

This is why most organizations work in and around Port-au-Prince.  However, the forgotten people of this village have become our friends and partners, and their future is worth it all to us.

So, although it was an adventurous, trying few days, we were able to complete the new home late on Saturday night.

Oxyllian, his wife and their 4 children were overwhelmed with  gratitude and excitement.

As we packed up our tools and loaded  the trucks, we could still hear the people of the village talking and  the children laughing as they had surrounded the new home to  check it out.

Driving down the mountain, we realized that we and  all of our U.S. partners had touched a real family in ways that are  immeasurable.

We also realized that this is still only the beginning of a  life-time partnership with our friends who are working, day in and  day out for a better future.

One final highlight for us was to be able to train many of the locals how to use the various tools that we had used and the basic concept of a wood-frame house.  We left behind the materials for two other homes (Senles’ family and Willy’s father’s home) that will be built by the locals who helped us build this first house.

We’re Headed Back to Finish What We Started

As you know, our team was unable to rebuild the homes in July due to red-tape and corruption in the port.

However, Jonathan worked diligently to get our supplies out of the port and we have been preparing to return to Haiti with a small team to build the homes. Our team will be in Haiti next week (October 7-10).

Our plan is to complete at least 1 home while teaching the locals how they are constructed. With the newly acquired skills and a model to refer back to, they will then be able to use all the materials to complete the remaining homes.

Here is our team:

Jonathan Capre (Haiti Team Leader)
John Foley
JJ Smith
Leah Higginbotham
Shawn Maguire
Bobby Brigman
Kenny Ellis

In addition we will be delivering the school uniforms and supply packets that many of you helped provide for the children in our free school.

As always, we plan on coming back with pictures and stories of another step forward in our mission. Until then, please keep us in your prayers.