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Wednesday, Sep. 24, 2008

Couple helps Haitian children with Ten Kids Inc.

In October 2005, Gip Gibson took a trip to Haiti with members of the Frankfort-based Haitian Needy Children's Foundation. After a 12-hour journey from the airport in Port-au-Prince to the mountains in Haiti's southwest — across barely existent roads, reduced to traveling by donkeys and wading across waist-high rivers — Gibson and his group made it to their destination: the tiny village of Samadek.

Up to that point, the journey had seemed like "an adventure," he said. The need in Haiti, the Western Hemisphere's poorest country, still seemed abstract.

That all changed for Gibson at 5 a.m. his first morning there, as he awoke to see flecks of movement coming down the mountainsides. It was children in their red-and-white school uniforms, literally walking hours over mountaintops to make it to the small school nearby.

"Right then I knew I couldn't continue to live my life just for myself," said Gibson, a former professional theater lighting designer.

Gibson had been soul-searching for a more meaningful career, and in Haiti he found it. He returned to Frankfort where he and his wife, Kim, began brainstorming ways to best help the children there.

For months they researched missions and aid groups and non-profits already at work in Haiti. But one night in mid-January this year, tired of all the red tape, Gibson said out loud while sitting at the kitchen table: "Let's forget the planning. We're going to find 10 kids and we're going to help them."

So began Gibson's non-profit foundation: Ten Kids Inc. The goal of the agency is straightforward: providing 10 children in Haiti with a safe home, three meals a day, clean drinking water, clothes, access to medical care and an education — including tuition, uniforms, books and supplies.

"We're dealing with the front-line, basic needs," Gibson said.

Hard facts

Haiti is a country where 76 percent of the population lives in poverty. One out of eight children dies before the age of 5. Life expectancy is only 49.

Ten Kids is focusing its efforts in Port-au-Prince — Haiti's capital and site of the country's severest need, where thousands of children literally live in the streets, drinking from sewers and scavenging what food they can find or steal.

Ten Kids' goal is raising $12,000, enough to feed, clothe and support 10 children in a home and pay for a full-time housemother to care for them for the entire year. Since the Gibsons began fund-raising in January, they have raised $8,660.50, or 72 percent of their goal. They are currently funding seven children, ages 6 to 13.

There's Valvil, 13, who excels in school and already knows he wants to be an engineer so he can "grow up to help his people." And Roodlet, 6, who didn't speak at all two years ago but now is the "life of the party," Gibson said.

All of the children are orphans or were abandoned. All have experienced physical, mental or sexual abuse. They all arrived malnourished and infested by worms at the home Ten Kids is funding. But they still found a reason to smile, Gibson said.

"They are amazing. They have been through so much. They all have their own little quirks. They are so fun and articulate," Gibson said.

Gibson met the seven children in March, when he took his second trip to Haiti and began a collaboration with a non-profit agency called Planting Peace, which runs three other orphanages and a school in Port-au-Prince. Planting Peace has launched a massive de-worming project in Haiti that earned its founder, 27-year-old Aaron Jackson, recognition as a CNN hero last year.

(It's estimated that 80 percent of the Haitian population is infected with intestinal parasites — the result of dirty drinking water — that rob their stomachs of 20 percent of their nutritional intake. De-worming pills cost only a nickel apiece, and for just two pills, or 10 cents, a child can be fully treated, Gibson said.)

After seeing Jackson and his Haitian projects featured on Larry King Live earlier this year, Gibson called Jackson and asked about collaborating with him.

The home that Ten Kids sponsors sits near the three homes being sponsored by Planting Peace, and all of the children living in those four homes will attend school together, Gibson explained.

"You see a lot of people who say they are willing to come down to Haiti and do something, but Gip actually did it," said Jackson, speaking from his home base in south Florida. "He's done a tremendous job of following through and offering feedback on new ideas."

Changing career paths

Gibson has retired from his lighting design career to run Ten Kids full-time. His wife, Kim, a social worker who works with Harmony Care, an agency providing services to adults with disabilities in Frankfort, is preparing to open a new adult day training program called Cypress Community Services in Lexington next month.

They've purchased office space at 517 Southland Drive, which will serve as the headquarters for both Cypress Community Services and Ten Kids Inc.

The Gibsons hope the launch of their for-profit day training program business will allow them to earmark even more of their personal funds toward supporting the work of Ten Kids, Kim Gibson said.

So far, all travel expenses and postage and printing fees for Ten Kids have come out of the Gibsons' own pockets so that 100 percent of donations can go to support the children of Haiti, Gip Gibson said.

The Gibsons, who have no children of their own, rationalize purchases now: Instead of buying a big-screen TV, how many children could they help in Haiti instead?

"Gip and Kim are really good-hearted and really believe in making this happen," said Holly Brady, who became Ten Kids' first board member recently. Brady learned about Ten Kids in talking with Gip Gibson at Joli Salon and Day Spa, where she works and he gets his hair cut.

Brady's son Miles, 6, recently presented the Gibsons with an envelope containing a $2.50 donation — a quarter for each of the ten children in the non-profit's name.

"They've done something really heroic," Brady said of the Gibsons. "They've made it very easy for people to go online (to their Web site) and see the need and make a donation to make a difference."

As additional funds come in, the Gibsons hope first to fund three more children to meet their initial goal of supporting 10 kids. Their plan is to support these 10 children until they are 18 or older and able to support themselves. When enough funding is available to support the original 10 children for at least two years, Ten Kids will begin to identify a second set of 10 children to support and then will grow from there, Gip Gibson said.

Flooding from the recent hurricanes that swept over Haiti have made donations all the more needed right now, Gibson said. Because many crops were destroyed in the floods, food costs have spiked: Rice has gone from $50 to $85 a bag and oranges have doubled, Gibson said.

The Gibsons plan to make another trip to Haiti — Kim's first and Gip's third — in October or November. Eventually, they can imagine themselves living there full-time.

"There's poverty in the world because we let there be," Kim Gibson said. "As a country, we have the resources to do something about it."