Jackson sits on the mattress he sleeps on at a Hollywood homeless shelter.
Living like a pauper himself, a young man from Broward is trying to save Haiti's children
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few years ago when the Homeless Voice decided to get involved in International relief efforts and human rights many people criticized us by saying, “why help others outside of the USA when there are so many people who need help here in the states?” We certainly understood their concerns but still came to the conclusion that we needed to do our part to help others. I guess I became upset because some of the comments I heard or received by email were not the nicest. Then the Tsunami hit and our vendors and our staff wanted to buy medicine for the victims. The result of this was that we took on even more public criticism because people could not understand why we would do this when we say we struggle to keep our own doors open and expand services within our community. But we didn’t falter and did what we had to do according to Christian principles; we gave to those who were most in need. This is our belief and we use this same philosophy when we help others like disaster victims because if you add up all the money we spend on disasters and other projects to help others and we didn’t do these things, then we would be in a much better position financially. Even some of our own staff thought we needed to focus more on getting out of our own debt before taking on more projects. But in the end they realized the fulfillment of helping others outweighs the expenses we incur and that we need to do our part and help others in an unselfish way. This may sound foolish to some but we have lived by this philosophy for some time now, and it seems as though people who donate money to charities such as ours think the same way. We are not martyrs, rather the end result of our thinking comes down to the compassion you have for others and how sacrificing just a little bit of the abundance you have for yourself… helps others. Helping in this way is a special feeling that sort of plays out like this... you plan a summer vacation and know you can afford to stay away for seven days. But your sister has an unexpected car repair and she really can’t afford the expense, so you cut your trip down to only six days because you know you can do without that extra day to help her in her time of need. That is the real definition in the sense of the Christian term for charity (love); doing without to help some person during a time of need. Here at the shelter we have many people who live off of limited incomes from vending or inadequate Social Security checks. But they still want to give to others wholeheartedly. I saw these acts of kindness a few months ago when we were collecting donations to help Aaron buy medication to de-worm the children of Haiti. Vendors who have so little for themselves proudly reached into their pocket to take out a few dollars to give to this great cause. But the one person who really knocked my socks off was a client who lives here off of limited funds from a Social Security check. He came into my office and took .50 cents out of his pocket and told me to put it in the Haiti fund so a few kids in Haiti could have the medication they need to get rid of the worms they have in their bellies. At first I was going (Continued on page 10)
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omewhere down a maze of rutted dirt roads in a rundown Port-auPrince neighborhood, past the red gate that keeps out the armed thugs, and through a courtyard of packed gravel, a 23-year-old guy from Broward County steps through the doorway of the sanctuary he created. Aaron Jackson looks out of place at first. A white kid with a black ski cap, baggy jeans, and oversized white undershirt, he seems a better fit for the Aventura Mall than this concrete home in Haiti. But then he's overtaken by a swarm of kids. As they tug on his hands, crawl onto his back, and jump into his arms, it suddenly seems as if there's no place he belongs more. "They love to be picked up," says Jackson, his eyes as blue as Easter eggs and his brown hair a messy mop that matches an untrimmed beard. "They love any attention you can give them." He sits down in a folding chair, taking two, then three of the kids onto his lap. They steal his hat, and the boys wrestle for it, the oldest, 7-year-old Ritchy, soon wearing it proudly. The kids pat his hair like they're petting a dog. "It's soft," 5-year-old Rico whispers in Creole. Jackson flips him over to tickle his stomach, and as Rico screams with laughter, Jackson points out the boy's belly, which looks as bloated as an overfilled balloon. "See?" Jackson says, touching Rico's belly button, which sticks out like a hitch-hiker's thumb. "He's still got this big tummy. The worms do it. Even
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though they're gone, it takes months for his stomach to go down." Eventually, the worms might have killed Rico. Back in January, Rico and his 7-year-old sister, Minouche, were living at a Port-au-Prince orphanage. It had run out of food and had no medicine to treat parasites that Haitian children regularly catch from drinking and playing in puddles. When Jackson took the siblings from the orphanage, he gave them a remedy that costs about 5 cents in the United States, a pill that wiped out the worms in one day. Now, Rico has added weight to bones that once showed through his skin, and he's rarely without a smile across cheeks that have become almost plump for the first time in his life. Rico and Minouche Morena joined five other children who share the three-bedroom home Jackson rents in Port-au-Prince. After traveling to Haiti a half dozen times over the past two years to hand out medicine and food to the poor, Jackson opened the makeshift orphanage in December. He pays for it by scraping together donations from family and friends, and by using almost every dime of money he made as a golf caddy. Jackson's commitment to the orphanage has cost him nearly everything. He wears secondhand clothes, has a car that no longer runs, and owns almost no personal possessions. Last year, when money was tight and he either had to give up the orphanage or his own place, he moved out of his apartment. He now sleeps on the floor of a homeless shelter. Meanwhile, he's building a school in southern Haiti and has plans to open a health clinic on the northern coast. And even more ambitious, Jackson has handed out 20,000 deworming pills since he began his efforts in Haiti two years ago. "I know it sounds crazy," Jackson says, "but I want to deworm every person in Haiti." Few places need the help more. Just a two-hour flight from South Florida, Haiti is the Western Hemisphere's poorest country, where most get by on $1 a day and only one in five has a job. The seemingly endless political unrest has led to the murder of more than (Continued on page 4)