Ensuring optimal conditions for a child’s early years is one of the best investments a government can make. Investing in children increases a nation’s capacity to compete and grow in a global economy. When the government fails to fulfil that essential duty, it becomes the dire responsibility of devoted and engaged citizens like those through Tolycare to take it on. Tolycare believes in and adopts the old say “Education is the key to success”. President Nelson Mandela stated, “Education is the most powerful weapon, which you can use to change the world. Tolycare is strongly convinced that Education is the blood life of a country to raise loyal, responsible, respectful, successful, and well engaged citizens capable to live lives to their full potential.

It is in this politico-socio-economic backward march context and rather harsh reality that Tolycare initiated the movement to educate a segment of the Haitian population which is the underprivileged children of Port-Margot, Haiti. Its mission and vision have been to find and implement innovative strategies to reduce the number of children not attending school in the city of Port Margot whose location is at best 15 miles from Cap-Haitian, the second largest city in Haiti. Tolycare was created as a non-profit organization whose primary objective would be to make a significant contribution in the fight against this dire educational crisis which stood as a major threat against the very future of this nation. The organization has since its creation been annually sponsoring an average of 200 children in the city of Port Margot giving them access to elementary school education that due to lack of financial resources would have been “off-limits.”

Though a private non-profit entity, and in spite of the nobility and value of the cause it has espoused, the organization has not benefited from available government and private funding for its efforts. As it is well recognized and narrated, Haiti presents a paradoxical educational scenario. Because of growing population and the overcrowding of all major urban areas, the reality underlying the well-known rather dismal literacy rate of approximately 15% of which 10% fall into the functionally illiterate category revealed its true dimensions and dynamics. Haiti’s public educational system fell way below the capacity required to respond to the level of need now made visible by population growth in the urban areas. Hidden in remote rural areas, though known, the problem was not as powerfully manifested as it has been in the last 30 years, since families have been abandoning the very deprived rural areas in favor of misery in cities.

. As government/public schools were too few, too small, and too ill-equipped to handle the increased number of school-aged children in cities, a network of private elementary schools emerged offering educational services to those who could afford it. Needless to say that this very premise excludes the great majority of school-aged children whose parents are severely underemployed, underpaid or unemployed to afford such services. An overwhelming number of children can be observed roaming the streets of major urban areas begging or offering their services for an extremely low fee. Government response to this crisis has, at best, been cosmetic/artificial lacking both in scope and sincerity

Your financial assistance has helped us to be where we are today and achieved the following: “Keeping children off the street, helping young adults to read and write, keeping our annual Soccer tournament alive, assisting with relief of some medical discomforts, and more importantly, Giving “THE KEY” to “HOPE FOR A BRIGTHER TOMORROW”.

For generations, the already weak Haitian health system was further debilitated by the 2010 earthquake, which destroyed 50 health centers, part of Haiti’s primary teaching hospital, and the Ministry of Health. Few months later, Haiti’s health care network was further devastated by the country’s first cholera outbreak in a century. The immediate health needs of Haitians have been and till today remained a challenge that affects the nation.

Foreign countries such as U.S., Canada, France, Cuba, and others have been very helpful in trying to meet the immediate health needs and aiming at improving access to quality health services and strengthening the health system nationwide. A special thanks to those foreign countries and everybody one way or the other comes to our rescue.

Under the direction of Dr. Paul Perceval (a native of the city of Port-Margot), Tolycare executed a medical mission to Haiti which will, from now on, remain a yearly tradition. Dr. Perceval was highly supported by his colleages and co-workers who sponsored the first medical trip (buying medication, …) and more importantly by his crew members (Charles Norman, Patricia Faustin, Kelly Owen, Claudia Alcius, Amy Toledo, Florence Chavane, Winie Dor, Stephen Moss, Magda Omage, Nakita Labadere, and Jumel Pluviose) who gave their genuine participation in making it a success.

. We measured our success by seeing people being so grateful for changing a dressing for them; by making a pill available to them for their arthritis, hypertension, acid reflux, and etc. Despite the pre-existing, rudimentary and weak health system, the earthquake in 2010, then the cholera 2010, and now hurricane Mathew which worsens the situation.