Smile!

~P.T. Barnum

It occurred to me today that while we certainly don't suffer any shortage of tears and other charming displays of childhood emotions, the number of smiling faces in and around Be Like Brit far outweigh any other expression. Indeed these smiles on the faces of our 35 children are priceless. So are the smiles that the children bring to us, to our employees, our visitors, and our friends. And to each other. Today was a great lesson in that regard. When you're stressed out and you're feeling overwhelmed, take a minute to stop and take notice of what is going on around you. If you're at Be Like Brit in Haiti, you'll almost always find a smile or two to bring you back to your center.

Kristin Reed has been with us for two weeks now, a nurse at the BI in Boston. Kristin has been very busy working not just for the Be Like Brit Clinic and children here in our care, but with other Missions and organizations, too! The people at Haiti Arise and at Mission of Hope International have been fortunate to have had Kristin lend her talents and skills for a few days in their respective clinics. When she's not busy handing out Tylenol and cough syrup, nursing wounds and giving much needed hugs and kisses to our little ones who might not be feeling so great, Kristin has buried herself in entering all of the medical histories for our children into an electronic medical records database. This will streamline the clinic and make working with our medical directors in the States all the more effective! It's tedious work, for sure, but Kristin is a dedicated and generous volunteer. We can't thank her enough for all she has done for Be Like Brit and for those she has served in Haiti outside of our own program!

The children have been busy this week, just like every week! With school comes very early mornings: Up at 5:15am and with any amount of luck at the table for breakfast by 6:00am. We've been working with our staff to really try to consistently reinforce things like making your own bed and arranging rooms to be nice and tidy before heading out for the day. As you can see, the children take great pride in completing these tasks, and Darwens was all smiles - a brilliant smile at that - at his accomplishment this morning!

It seems like almost weekly, we have a birthday celebration of sorts here at Be Like Brit! Most of you saw the photos on Facebook, but for those of you who did not, Marie Flaure turned 9 years old this past week on the 12th of November! Marie Flaure was the last child to join us at Be Like Brit, enrolling in June of this year. She's come so far, we can't help but smile every time we see her! Knowing her background and having been the one to bring her in, seeing her change - her health improve, her skin and infections clear up, her hair growing in full and healthy - and being able to watch while she celebrated her birthday for the first time in her very tough 9 years on earth is incredible. Her smile - the result of our good work which wouldn't be possible without the support of the thousands of people who give and contribute to our cause - brings so many more smiles to us at Be Like Brit.

Our Tulane friends, Lauren and Zakiyyah, are nearing the end of their field placements with Be Like Brit, and while we are sad that they will be leaving us and can't believe it's been almost 3 months already, we know how much the work that they did for us as an organization and for the children here will resonate and have lasting effects long after they board their flight back to the States later this month. Zakiyyah headed up family and community visitation programming and really put in to place a wonderful strategy to keep the children connected to their communities of origin through regular visits. She's also been invaluable in helping with children who display more challenging behaviors or more traumatic histories. She designed a play therapy room in an empty space we weren't utilizing and established a great sense of trust and rapport with both our children and our staff. She will be missed, but we hope she knows how many smiles she's brought to Haiti and how lasting they are!

Lauren's work with us was a bit different, but just as important! While Zakiyyah's work focused more on direct care and services, Lauren was busy doing lots of research for us as an organization and mapping resources for the children, our staff, and the community at large. Lauren will leave us with what is essentially a "resource guide" for orphans and vulnerable children in Haiti, relative to our area. She has been integral in sourcing for us medical services from vaccinations to testing for TB, HIV care, connecting us with other NGOs who work to better serve the children of Haiti, and even served as a liaison between Be Like Brit and the NGO who works for the Ministry of Children in this part of Haiti. Because of the leg work that Lauren has completed for us, now we have a list of resources at the ready - contacts and relationships that will ensure that the needs of our children are easily met and done so in a way that aligns with our own Guiding Principles and core values.

We really and truly can't thank Tulane University School of Social Work enough. Lauren, Zakiyyah, Dr. Elaine Wright and Dr. Heather Gillis - MESI ANPIL! Thank you so very, very much!

One of these relationships we were particularly excited to make is with GOALS Haiti (Global Outreach and Love of Soccer). GOALS is based out of Leogane, a town just about 30 minutes or so to our East, and has an incredible reputation for results-oriented programming using soccer as the medium to incorporate myriad activities with a psychosocial aim.

Just yesterday, Jolinda and two of her coaches, Emilio and Nadege, traveled to Be Like Brit to spend the entire day working with the children in a fun and educational way! Through their programs, the children learned about the importance of social responsibility, protecting one another as brother and sister, team-building and conflict resolution activities, as well as hygiene games and general health education. The morning was spent on our small field here at Be Like Brit, and after lunch and a bit of a rest, we took the older children out to the public field in nearby Petit Paradis for an afternoon filled with fun and learning! The smiles were endless - adult and child alike - friends and strangers - the pure joy expressed on the faces I spent my day with were worth any and bad day one might have at work. The happiness that GOALS brought to our children through Lauren's work and outreach was a reminder of why it is we do what we do. Jolinda and her team were amazing - I can't say enough great things about them - and I can't wait for us to work together more moving forward!

The children were even thrilled at the idea of a neighborhood cleanup! That's right, Coach Emilio made it clear that before anyone could play, we had to be sure that the field we would play on was clean! Who wants to play on trash, anyway? Who wants to see such a beautiful country scattered with litter and trash? His motivational encouragement really resonated with our children, and watching them "clean up" the field before they played on it was a great experience, and one in which they took much pride!

And yes - we did wash our hands after! A fun game of dribbling the ball to a water station, with interns and GOALS staff at the ready with a bar of soap and Coach Emilio keeping a watchful eye, the children competed to see who could wash up both the quickest and the most thorough - all while multitasking! They simply loved it - an idea so simple but so effective! We suspect this will be worked into our regular, ongoing soccer we play in house - and we hope that our relationship with GOALS develops so that we can potentially start having official games against other teams!

Who wants to sponsor Team BLB Uniforms? :)

A week of hard work at school rewarded with a day of fun and play. We can't think of a better way to spend our Saturday! We know that the anticipation and excitement for Church tomorrow will be just as great a day for them as today was!

We are looking forward to some visitors in the coming weeks! Len and Cherylann will be down soon enough and you know that always brings smiles to the faces of the children here! Other friends are scheduled to come down, too - but we'll keep those a surprise for now! Until then, thank you for all that you do for us at Be Like Brit. I hope the smiles of our children, volunteers, and staff bring a bit of happiness to your day, too!