September and Harvest Giving - Oné Respé

This month, and particularly at our Harvest Service, the charity the church is supporting is Onè Respé, based in the Dominican Republic.

Onè Respé is a small Dominican organisation that works alongside some of the poorest people living in the Dominican Republic (DR). The DR shares the Caribbean island of Hispaniola with Haiti, and over many years, Haitians have migrated to the DR to look for work and to flee the desperate poverty that has long been endemic in that country. The DR itself is poor (the sun kissed beaches of the travel brochures only tell a small part of the story!), and the influx of up to a million Haitians over many years has put a strain on this small country and its people. Sadly, racism and prejudice are rife in the DR, and the migrant workers are the poorest and most marginalised members of society, living in appalling poverty and often unable to access basic services such as health and education.

Onè Respé (Haitian Creole for, "Honour and Respect") was established in an attempt to change this. Onè Respé supports these marginalised communities within both the capital Santo Domingo and the second city Santiago. It offers an education for children (running a number of schools), supports people as they seek to access health services (often denied them by the government because of their "migrant" status), and educates people in a range of life skills, from good parenting to HIV/Aids prevention. Perhaps most crucially, Onè Respé provides a focal point for these marginalised communities, giving them a sense of purpose and belonging. Community meetings are an opportunity to air views and share information, and these are led by members of the community themselves.

As you may know, the Congregational Federation has agreed to work with Christian Aid to support Onè Respé for a three year period. We are now in the third year of that partnership.
The events of the Haitian earthquake in January have only exacerbated the levels of poverty suffered by the Haitian people and are likely to stretch the resources of organisations such as Onè Respé. There can never have been a more important time for us to be supporting this important work.

Philip Clarke

Philip, is from Southam and Bishops Itchington Congregational Church, in Warwickshire, and he will be joining us for our morning worship on Harvest Sunday to share some of his experiences in the Dominican Republic, and to tell us more about the work of Onè Respé.

Mary Michael