Twenty-Six Points of Light

When Haiti's Angel House orphanage crumbled to the ground on Jan. 12, all 26 children inside survived. Then the real miracle happened.

Like all children in Haiti, the residents of Angel House orphanage were shaken and tumbled for fifteen terrifying seconds shortly before nightfall on January 12.

When the rumbling stopped, the orphanage was a crumbled wreck of concrete and rebar — yet the entire group of 26 orphans was not only alive, but unharmed. The children and their caregivers spent the next few nights and days huddled in a nearby tin-roofed church, feeling lucky to be alive and blessed to be together while the world outside howled with grief and the dirt floor below erupted with taunting aftershocks. But their survival would be just the first of several miracles they would experience in the days ahead.

At 3 a.m. on January 18th they would be ushered through the gates of the US Embassy; a few short hours later, they would be strapped into the plush seats of a private jet en route to Florida. By January 19th they would be living in comfortable homes in California, Arizona, Illinois and throughout the U.S.

And they would not be orphans anymore. Not one of them.

With so many obstacles impeding aid, extractions and adoptions in the wake of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, how did this small orphanage manage to rescue and place their children so quickly and completely? Gretchen Huijskens, the founder of Angel House and its parent organization, Three Angels Children's Relief, attributes their success to several factors.

Move Fast
One of these critical factors was simply acting without hesitation. "When we went to Haiti immediately after the earthquake," she says, "I didn't even think it would be possible to get the children out. We were just going down to ensure that their basic needs were met." But by getting on the first available flight to Haiti and showing up first at the embassy, they had a decisive advantage and were able to evacuate the children before the embassy was overwhelmed and extractions became mired in confusion and protocol. Huijskens and the children rushed from the embassy to board the last airplane allowed out of Haiti before Bill Clinton's arrival would shut the airport down indefinitely.

The process happened so fast, says adoptive parent, Eric Schweig, that "we were totally physically unprepared. We weren't expecting to have Sebastian here for one and a half to three years and I had to clear out my office at the last minute for him." While he was traveling to and from Florida to pick up his infant son, friends rushed in to donate "everything you could think of" for Sebastian and to transform Schweig's office into a well-appointed, childproofed nursery. Now that Sebastian is home, says Schweig, "I've never seen anyone smile so much. He smiles all day long."

Colleen Monfils, a Three Angels board member whose family instantly expanded from five members to seven after the earthquake, was similarly caught off guard by the speed at which Huijskens moved. "We weren't expecting Daniel (5) or Jonathan (10) for several more years, but we're so excited now."

Stay Small
Huijskens also cites the orphanage's small size as an advantage. Having only 26 kids allowed them to manage the whole group more easily, and to accommodate all of the children when limited seats were made available on two private aircraft that NASCAR team Hendricks Motorsports made available for Haiti relief efforts. "We maxed out the orphanage at 44 kids a while ago, but it was absolute chaos," says Huijskens. "So we intentionally downsized."

The smaller size also led to fostering a strong parent community. "We're smaller," Monfils says, "so we're able to be a tight-knit group. We were able to mobilize all of our prospective parents and volunteers quickly to help with this effort."

Part of the Angel House approach is to involve prospective parents in frequent mission trips to the orphanage while they wait — typically for one to four years — for their adoptions to be processed. As a result, the prospective parents connect deeply to their own child, to all of the children at the orphanage and to Haiti in general. Angel House, therefore, had no shortage of volunteers for the calling campaign to the State Department or for hands-on assistance in Haiti. According to Schweig and Monfils, the strong volunteer program allows potential parents to bond organically with the children; because of this, Angel House children rarely have to wait long to be selected for adoption. When the earthquake struck the few children who were not yet selected for adoption received quick commitments from families who knew them already, including an eight year old named Stephania who has cerebral palsy.

Make Noise
Though Huijskens was not confident that the children of Angel House would be able to leave Haiti, she mobilized prospective parents and other volunteers for an aggressive calling campaign just in case. "We called the State Department and the embassy nonstop and had a four-pronged approach to making those calls." Their persistence, says Huijskens, paid off. One of the parents got the ear of a State Department official who worked to expedite approval for the orphanage's request for humanitarian parole. Just a day after landing in Haiti, Hiujskens received a frantic call from a volunteer urging her to have the children packed up and at the embassy gates by three o'clock the next morning. The request for parole had been approved and, if they hurried, there would be seats available that day on a private jet. Persistent and strategic calling, says Huijskens, is what allowed the orphanage to avoid what would have otherwise been the typical "nightmare" tangle of Haitian red tape.

Cross your "Ts"
As was recently highlighted by the jailing of several Baptist missionaries on human trafficking charges, it is not uncommon for organizations to skirt the labyrinthine and, according to Huijskens, corrupt Haitian adoption-approval process. Resisting demands for bribes and following the Haitian legal requirements means sorely delayed adoptions, says Huijskens, but she and her board are nonetheless committed to "doing it right."

"Our paper trail and organization is fabulous," says Monfils. "We never say ‘oh we'll get that paperwork later.' We always get it now, today." Critical paperwork includes approval to adopt forms and letters of abandonment that must have the signoff of the child's birth parents as well as various Haitian officials. A meticulous approach to paperwork and legal process was critical, she says, to gaining the State Department's blessing to evacuate the children and expedite their adoptions.

Go Deep
Huijskens, Monfils and Schweig all cite a deep love of Haiti and its people as a key to the orphanage's success, both before and after the disaster struck. "(The Haitian people) have absolutely nothing, but their faith is so strong and the love that they share really teaches us and our volunteers a lot. They're incredible people." Because the orphanage encourages regular in-country volunteering while parents wait to adopt, their parents tend to remain committed to Haiti even after their adoptions are complete. Schweig and other adoptive parents are still shuttling back and forth to Haiti as relief volunteers. "We're all in it for the long haul," says Huijskens of the tight community of Angel House parents and volunteers.

Despite the checklist of things that Three Angels orphanage did right, they still acknowledge the miraculous nature of this event. In addition to praising her fellow parents and board members, the "impressive" efforts of embassy and State Department employees, and the generosity ofHendricks Motorsports and others, Monfils ultimately credits "a lot of prayer and God's blessing (for) making it all happen."

Still, Monfils says, many more Haitians will need many more miracles for days, months and years to come. "After the media calms down, I just hope people will remember that just as we were here for years before the earthquake, we'll be here for years after it," she says, "doing as much or even more than we're doing now. The country needs so much."

Click Here to read more of Tonic's ongoing Haiti coverage.

Photos courtesy Colleen Monfils