48 hours

Well, in 48 short hours I'll be on my way to the Dominican Republic with Children of the Nations (COTN). I am so excited! I believe God has some really great things in store for me to learn on this trip and be blessed.


I am committing to updating this blog with pictures and stories from each day of our trip from Mar 26 - Apr 3, 2011.
* I am going down 3 days early before the actual trip start time on the 26th, during these four days I'll be with two other team members collecting silent auction items to help us raise money for COTN-San Diego as well as detailing our plans for our team and our purposes.

Our team is functioning with three purposes:

• The first is to expose all of the new San Diego COTN staff to the work we do in country.  
• The second is to do some training with our COTN-DR staff. We will be working on a concept called Displayed Thinking and Strengths Finders 2.0
• The third is to travel into Haiti to continue the work that has been started by COTN Founder, Chris Clark and Flood Church.  They were in Haiti last week and began the process of identifying land for our first COTN village partnership.  We will be taking the next steps in that process.  

While everyone knows the need in Haiti due to the earthquake and the incredible amount of orphaned and destitute children, the story of the Dominican children is not as well known, so to begin this blog, I wanted to tell you the story of the children that we are helping in the Dominican Republic.  

The History of the Dominican Batey:

The Dominican Republic consists of a mixed population of native Dominicans and Haitian refugees.  Since Venture participants will be working with both Dominicans and Haitians in impoverished Dominican villages as well as Haitian bateyes, it is important to understand a bit of the history. 

COTN’s ministry in the Dominican Republic began in the summer of 1997 when we first came alongside the village of Algodon—a Haitian batey (pronounced BAH-tay).  Abatey (plural bateyes) is a shanty-town camp where sugarcane cutters live. Bateyes are found only in Cuba and the Dominican Republic.
Our ministry in the Dominican Republic is centered around our Village Partnership Program which ministers to Haitian bateyes (Algodon, Los Robles and Altagracia) and poor Dominican villages (Don Bosco and Pueblo Nuevo). On the surface, Haitianbateyes appear very similar to poor Dominican villages. To understand the real differences, one must understand how and why bateyes came into existence.
The Dominican Republic shares the Caribbean island of Hispaniola with Haiti, but the two neighboring countries might as well be across the globe from each other. Dominicans are Latin and pride themselves on their Spanish roots, whereas Haitians speak Creole and are largely descendents of freed African slaves.
In the early 1900s, Haitian sugarcane cutters, lured by the promise of work, began the seasonal migration to the Dominican Republic.  The Haitians were willing to do this low-wage, back-breaking work whereas most Dominicans were not. Over the decades, many of these sugarcane workers did not return to Haiti at season end, and thus created a large, permanent population of Haitians in the Dominican Republic—a population that was not welcomed.

There has historically been a clash of cultures between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, but under the anti-Haitian regime of Rafael Trujillo (1930–1961), animosity, prejudice, and racial tension toward Haitians reached horrific levels, culminating in Trujillo’s brutal order of a Haitian massacre (where more than 25,000 Haitians found outside the sugar plantations were killed) and ultimately Trujillo’s assassination in 1961.  During this time, Dominicans harbored a growing fear of a “Haitian invasion” (much the same way some Americans today fear the effects of the illegal immigration of Mexicans in the Southwest). In the mid-1960s, in an effort to stop this growing Haitian immigration from diluting the Dominican culture, the government proposed a solution—the batey. Bateyes were company-owned towns (consisting of nothing more than crude barracks surrounded by fencing) erected by the government on the outskirts of sugarcane plantations.

Throughout the late 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s (the heyday of the Dominican Republic’s sugar economy), Haitian sugarcane cutters were confined to these bateyes (i.e. “work camps”) under the watchful eye of armed government soldiers. Their belongings were confiscated and they were trucked back and forth from the fields, often working from sun up to sun down. The daily wage was barely enough to buy one meal a day—oftentimes the cane cutters and their families had nothing to eat but the very cane they cut. The bateyes had no running water, no electricity, no cooking facilities, and no bathrooms. The shanty homes consisted of slatted wood walls, tin roofs, dirt floors and often housed up to eight or more people. The Haitians were not allowed to leave thebateyes under the threat of deportation, except to work in the fields. By the 1990s, thebateyes had become home to hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children—second- and third-generation Haitians born in the Dominican Republic, but with no legal citizenship status to be there and with no ties to their “homeland” Haiti.  They basically became a people without a country.

In the mid-1990s, the bateyes drew the attention of humanitarian organizations, calling for action to address the “deplorable treatment” of Haitian families and children living in the bateyes. Most of the 400+ bateyes in the Dominican Republic had not changed much since they were originally erected—they still had no running water, no electricity, no cooking facilities, no bathrooms, no schools for the children, and no medical facilities. And since the Constitution of the Dominican Republic does not extend citizenship to children born to non-naturalized Haitian parents, these children born in the Dominican Republic did not have birth certificates or identity papers of any kind. This lack of documentation made it nearly impossible for children of Haitian descent to attend school or benefit from any other social services. These families and children were denied access to medical, social, and educational facilities. Just as the generations that preceded them, these families faced a dead-end life—with no way out of the batey. Essentially, what the Dominican Republic had done was to create a permanent underclass—a category of individuals that, in the eyes of the law, doesn’t exist—they have no right to own property, no right to an education, no access to healthcare, and no right to vote. In essence, a class of people condemned to poverty.

A little over a decade ago, when the world markets (particularly the US) switched to high-fructose corn syrup and away from cane sugar, the Dominican government was forced to privatize the sugar industry and closed many of the struggling sugarcane plantations. Without cane to cut, the Haitian workers were no longer needed. Essentially, the economy of the batey (sparse though it was) completely dried up. Not long after the Haitians’ only means of support disappeared, so did the armed government guards and the fences that once kept them prisoner. All that remained in the bateyes were crying babies, bored and uneducated mothers, and unemployed men who were no longer able to even meagerly provide for their families.

But the Dominican’s privatization efforts were not without consequence—much to their dismay, it forced the Haitians from the bateyes into the cities in search of work. Starting in the late 1990s, the women, ineligible for legal jobs, took positions in the homes of Dominicans as nannies and maids, or worse, entered into the sex trades. The men found under-the-table work in construction and farming. They also took to the streets as vendors. But in a country where unemployment is already high, competition for jobs was tough. And with this increased visibility and competition came a backlash—government officials and the media began to blame the Haitians for increased violence, social problems, and poverty, causing them to become, yet again, the target of Dominican frustration and racial prejudice.

Today, the bateyes remain with little change, except those brought about through humanitarian and non-governmental organizations. An estimated 500,000 residents—7% of the population of the Dominican Republic—live in more than 400 bateyes. Most still do not have latrines. Potable water is rare.  Electricity is virtually non-existent. Primitive dirt roads carved through ever-encroaching jungles become muddy lakes when it rains, cutting off entire bateyes from the outside world (including food and water) for days at a time. Inside the bateyes, education and healthcare remain almost non-existent. Where these services are available, they generally have been built and are operated by humanitarian organizations, not the government. And when natural disaster strikes (like Tropical Storm Noel that made a direct hit in October of 2007, washing away homes, furnishings, and livelihoods), the bateyes are the last in line to receive assistance from the government, if they receive any at all.

Yet there is hope. Children of the Nations is making a visible and lasting difference in the lives of these families and children by investing in these communities through our Village Partnership Program—building schools and churches, operating feeding programs, providing medical services—providing hope where there once was none. Our local Dominican Staff are devoted Christian men and women who are called by God to minister to the needs of their Haitian-Dominican neighbors. COTN is investing in children who will grow up and transform their own nations. We seek to end the dead-end cycle of poverty and give these precious children a chance at a life far different from the one they have—a chance to make a difference in their own communities.


Please pray with us and keep up to date on our team progress.  Allow God to reveal to you how you may be able to partner with us in this endeavor.

“The Devil will try to thwart us from praying for he has no power over those who desire to give themselves to God.” – Teresa of Ávila

Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before. – James Buckham