an interview with
john miller
john miller is a man who was gripped by the reality of the orphan plight in haiti and was compelled to do something about it.
John established One Vision International in 2005 as a nonprofit organization that extends aid and support to seemingly forgotten areas of the world. OVI works with some of the world’s most vulnerable people, desiring to meet their immediate physical needs while also bringing hope to an entire community. OVI’s current focus is Haiti. In January 2009, One Vision discovered 124 orphans in Cabaret, Haiti living in an abandoned night club. OVI is now working to sponsor each child to provide food, water, medicine and other basic needs. This past August, One Vision finalized the purchase of 40 acres of land in Cabaret where the first One Vision Hub will be built. The Hub will consist of an orphanage, a clinic, a church, a team house, a school and an agricultural project that will serve the entire community of 5,000.
thank you to one vision international for the lives they are changing each day.
How were you first introduced to haiti as a country?
“I was in Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) with a friend of mine, Pastor Edward, and he took me over to Haiti to take a look at some things and to see if we could do any work over there close to the border. That’s what got me started in Haiti. I didn’t know much about Haiti before that.”
How did you find the orphans that ovi is caring for currently in haiti? “In January of 2009 I went on a trip down there with Francisco (Director of OVI in Haiti) because he wanted to show me an abandoned night club. That’s how we found the 124 kids. They were in very rough shape. We don’t know how old most of them are, we’re just guessing. We went down and had some people look at their teeth to try to guess but no one knows the actual age of 90% of them.”
What are your goals with ovi for this next year?
“I want to see water and I want to see the building get all the way up. A lot of times in Haiti you get to a certain point in the building process and the government officials will come in and say, alright we’ve changed things and now you’ve either got to tear what you have down and rebuild or pay us money. I don’t want to see that happen.”
What do you think it’s going to take to rebuild the country?
“Many people think that money is the issue. Money is not the issue with Haiti. It’s the way the people think. Their way of thinking is very corrupt and that must be changed in order for the country to change.”
How do you go about finding the people who will be the workers and caretakers of these children? “We leave that up to Francisco (Francisco is the director of OVI in Haiti) and Cecille (Francisco’s wife) and they go through an interview process to try and find the right people. A lot of times in Haiti, you’ll find people that want to help out but they’re not really good workers at all. Before the earthquake there was 80% unemployment in the country so everyone is looking for a job, but not everyone is qualified. Education doesn’t exist so finding the people who we need is very hard because not many of them are out there.”
What are the best and worst things that you have experienced during your work down in haiti? “One of the worst things is when we were down there during one of the hurricanes. There was a lot of flooding and we had to help pull a bunch of the kids out of the mud that had passed away.” One of the best things is just being able to take in a child that is on death’s doorstep and see their life turned completely around. Rebecca is the little girl that I’m thinking about. Her mother passed away and her father brought her to us. She was less than a year old and she had about 3 days left to live. After we took her, she’s doing great. She’s a little over a year old now.”
How do the articles and news stories compare to what is actually taking place in haiti right now? “They aren’t telling enough, especially about how bad it is in the tent cities. These thousands of people are living together in these communites and they basically elect someone who is in charge. The police aren’t going to go in. The gangs run the show. At night, there’s no electricity, so there’s a lot of bad stuff that occurs. And no one really advertises that. You hear stories of how bad child molestation and rape is, but they don’t come anywhere near how bad it really is.”
Are the amount of orphans after the earthquake something that is very noticeable?
“If we were to go out looking for them, then yeah, we would notice them. We’ve had to turn away a lot of kids that are around 11-12 years old because they are just too old to be with us right now. We don’t take in all the kids that are offered to us because we can’t afford it right now. The budget right now for these kids is about $17,500 a month.”
Do the kids have plans of their own for the future? “Most of the kids are too young and they don’t really know what it’s like outside the walls of what we have at this point. They wouldn’t know what to do or be. They don’t know what they can be either because they’re kind of in a little cocoon right now.”
Where have you received most of your funding for everything that ovi is doing? “Individuals. 90% come from individuals. People giving $50 or $100 a month. When I’m in town, that’s what I work on. I’ll take people to lunch, share the story, and what our needs are. We have a couple of churches that are helping out and we’ve done a few fundraisers but they don’t bring in the majority of the funding. The orphanage that we are building is about $250,000 and that’s for a pretty good size orphanage. It will house a lot of kids. You can build one a lot smaller and for less expensive.”
How would you describe the conditions in haiti right now, in comparison to what it was like before the earthquake? “It’s hard to explain. The country is almost just the same as it was before. The only thing different is there are less people, because close to 250,000 people died, and a lot of buildings are collapsed. They’ve only cleaned up about 2% of the rubble. What it looked like on day one, it basically still looks the same today. As far as what has changed, there are a lot of tent cities along the road but Haiti is still the same. It’s like a bomb was dropped on it and you can’t even tell the difference. Right after the earthquake, there was a lot of shock and a lot of anxiety going around but everything pretty much went back to the same. They didn’t have anything before, so it’s not like they lost that much.”
What does ovi need the most right now for promotion and funding? “More people helping out and getting involved. Right now it’s just me. The more people we have doing simple things, even things as simple as a car wash, would help out a lot. The more people we have out there advertising and sharing what we do, the better. I’d like to figure out a way to really publicize but I’m not really sure at this point what to do. The difference between One Vision and other non-profits is that we encourage people to go. We don’t just ask you to give, but we ask you to go and see what your money is going towards. Maybe if some big magazine could pick us up or something, that would be awesome.”
Where are you currently in the building process? “We are building an Outreach Hub, which includes an orphanage, a school, a church, and a medical clinic. It’s taken a little longer than expected because of issues with the architecture plans and Haitian laws. We currently have started the exterior wall that surrounds the orphanage. When the wall is finished then we will start on the actual building of the orphanage itself. There will be 40 kids in each dorm. We are also working on the well right now. We’re at 200 feet and there is still no water.”
How long has the entire building process taken so far?
“Well, we found the kids in the night club in January of 2009 and moved them to a temporary location as we began to raise money for the orphanage. However, when the earthquake hit in January this year, we had to completely start all over. It took about 4 months to get back on our feet again and figure out what we were going to do. We broke ground on the new property a little over 2 months ago.”
How much longer do you estimate until everything is built? “Well, there are few different phases. The orphanage will take at least another year to complete. Phase two will be the school and church. The school will accommodate our 100 kids plus 200 more kids from the surrounding villages. Phase 3 will be the medical facility. The whole project is going to take about 10 years to get everything on the hub.”