Prenatal

The COTP pre-natal program started in 2009 after lots of soul-searching around how our family could best help Haiti. Our family has been profoundly impacted by Haiti and its people. Haiti is core to who we are as a family as our 3 youngest children were born there. Our responsibility to help did not end with their adoption (Monique & Joeyin 2004 and Fabie in 2010). Monique and Joey were both impossibly tiny when we brought them home suffering from severe malnutrition. Since coming home to Canada they have flourished with good nutrition and lots of family love. Seven years later we adopted their baby sister Fabie  who joined us after being evacuated out of Haiti following the earthquake in 2010. Our kids’ birth Mom died as a result of child birth, and her life story was the inspiration behind the prenatal program.

We made a promise to ensure that no woman would have to walk the same sad path in life of our kids’ birth Mom. Poverty, poor education and a lack of support are the core reason infants are brought to COTP every day. Together we came up with a plan to start  preventitve prenatal/family care to hopefully help reduce the cycle of crisis infant care. We knew we needed to do something for the children and mothers of Haiti.Something that would give them an opportunity to grow-up healthy and strong in their home country. We felt the best was to help the mothers before their children were even born. 

With the help of many people, we have been able to give a few Haitian families a fighting chance. With the help of Daryl and Sarah Huniuk, we took the first step by ensuring mothers had access to nutrition, education and some health care while pregnant. This was the start of the prenatal program at COTP. Key members within our immediate family (through Tides Canada) provided initial funding to help get the program off the ground in 2009 by building a classroom and starting the education and empowerment of the women  in prenatal. Twice a week women walk in to COTP to be part of a network of mothers.

Prenatal has grown under the leadership of its Haitian staff. Haitians have taken alead role in the program. Renel, Marie Lourdes and Papito, from the start have managed and run a program to help the local community beyond the gates of COTP. They are building a better Haiti one heathy mother at a time!

Since the start family members, friends and corporations in Calgary and Vancouver have helped with the on-going funding of the program. Over the past 3 years this has allowed us to help 590 Haitian mothers. It has allowed us to supply roughly 2.5 tons lbs of beans and rice annually as well as pre-natal vitamins. It has allowed COTP staff to share basic prenatal and early baby-care education.

In 2012, we have been able to broaden the program to provide our Haitian mothers with the ability to generate an income to help care for their families. Through a partnership with Fokanze, our Haitian mothers can access micro-credit and some basic business education. Prenatal has proven that we can save lives, mother and child, plus keep families together. Now we have partnered with Fonkoze to provide mico-loans to break the cycle of poverty as well.

All the great things that happen in a prenatal class in Canada or the USA, like information exchange and forming life-long friendships and networking, are happening in our class in Haiti. It is an amazing place, a wonderful sense of community and a real place of hope and focus on a brighter future for mother and baby. We are proud and feel blessed to be part of this amazing success story and we are humbled that so many of you have supported prenatal.

Doug and Deanna Zumwalt