Children Of The Promise- COTP

CHILDREN OF THE PROMISE (COTP)

For the past 2 years I have been communicating with Tori Rayle who is a full-time missionary at COTP. She is in charge of therapy programming and their organization had a vision to start an outreach program. For the past year we were working together to find a time for her to come visit the Miriam Center and for me to come visit them in order to provide guidance. The past 6 months we set a date, I helped line up 2 possible Haitian Rehab Technicians who I felt would be a good fit for their ministry, and convinced my 2 dear friends Ashley and Erin to join me on a 3 week adventure in Cap Haitian. So thankful that my health held out so that I could experience and help this amazing organization. Since COTP has already published a write-up about our time with them I will not re-write one. Below is written by COTP staff about our 3 weeks we were there to help:

"With so many charities in one country, we see value in collaborating with existing organizations and individuals who share the same passion of supporting a stronger and healthier Haiti. Part of the culture at COTP is to seek out relationships that may lead to collaboration in the future. These partnerships produce immense blessing and lead to stronger programs across Haiti. We are excited to share with you one of our most recent collaborations.

This past month, we were able to partner with three women, Autumn Marshall, Erin Cottos and Ashley Kahila, who have been working in the therapy field, specifically in Haiti, since as early as 2010. All three ladies bring years of experience in both Occupational Therapy and Physical Therapy and each are passionate about helping therapy programs grow throughout Haiti.

Autumn Marshall partners withNorthwest Christian Mission in St. Louis du Nord. She oversees all therapy programs including the Mariam center and multiple outreach programs. She employs three nationals full-time. Her clinic was a clinical site for rehabilitation technician students and she accepted rehabilitation technician volunteers after their graduation to provide further, intensive training in pediatric therapy. Autumn is the Vice President of the Haiti Association of Occupational Therapy and is the first alternate delegate for the World Federation of Occupational therapy.
Erin founded a rehabilitation clinic in Croix-des-Bouqets in 2010. Erin’s clinic employs many nationals including an adaptive equipment personnel. She is also highly involved in therapy in Guatemala. Erin has expertise in therapy equipment building. In addition, Erin promotes exercise as a means to prevent many prevalent diseases in Haiti. She opened a fitness center in 2016 and coordinates community runs as week as national runs. She also founded the non-for-profit “Run Haiti“.

Ashley founded the therapy clinic at Respire Haiti in Gressier, Haiti. She currently employs 3 full-time nationals. The clinic is a site for rehabilitation technician students and PT/OT students from the Episcopal University in Leogane, Haiti. Ashley also leads a parent support group to provide educational and biblical principles relating to the disability population. Ashley is the secretary for the Haiti Association of Occupational Therapy. She is also the delegate for Haiti for the World Federation of Occupational Therapy. In addition, she is a part of the executive board and the Haiti Representative for the Association of Caribbean Occupational Therapists.
Every year, in February, Autumn, Erin and Ashley join forces to run the a “special need health fair”. Over a 3 day period, kids from many communities receive therapy evaluations and any needed equipment. Each child gets connected with a clinic close to their community for future therapy services. These women are doing amazing work in the therapy community in Haiti and we were eager to have them on our campus!

Erin, Ashley and Autumn, along with two Haitian rehab techs, stayed at COTP for 3 weeks in November. Their goals: to evaluate and strengthen the Special Needs Outpatient Program, make equipment for children, teach and train our Physical Therapy team, make individual treatment plans for the children in our care and to help orientate two new rehab technicians who will be employed by COTP come January. The therapy team spent time with and listened to the stories of the families in the Outpatient program. After doing mini assessments of all the children, they fit many of the kids with new braces and made 16 adapted chairs or standers; blessing these families in the program greatly!  What this therapy team provided has truly made a powerful impact on each caregiver and child in the program.
We look forward to a long-term relationship between their team and our therapy staff in order to continually increase the quality of our therapy programs!"

I would say one of my highlights was definitely getting to spend 3 weeks with Erin and Ashley. I love that God has brought these 2 like minded sisters into my life with similar passion and goals.  Some have been dubbed us the 3 amigos and by other the 3 stooges both of these are pretty accurate descriptions of our friendship. I learned so much from both of them over the 3 weeks and we were able to create and problem solve some new adaptive equipment ideas. We had a lot of fun building and creating together.

Another highlight for me was learning and seeing how COTP was run as an organization. I absolutely love how they have set up the foster homes that the children live in. How each feels like a home and individual family. Each was different and unique but the common factor was that each was full of LOVE and HOPE and JOY!. I like how the campus feels like a little community with multiple little parks for the kids to go to play at, sidewalks that the kids could ride their bikes and scooters on and even down to how they went to school. The parents would drop them off at the school located at the front of campus and pick them up when school ended.


The first few days It was just Erin and I. We started evaluations on some of the outreach kids, make supply list of what we would need, and worked on cleaning the therapy room and learning what supplies we already had to work with. The 3 pictures below are from the day of cleaning. Highlight story a HUGE RAT jumped out of that box over Erin's Head...PRICELESS!

We were blessed that COTP had some awesome TREASURES to work with. Erin has a true gift of looking at something that 99 percent of people would say it TRASH and she can turn it into something FUNCTIONAL and amazing! Like this baby rocking bouncer thing that was broken she turned into a fun sensory rocking chair

I very Excited that they just started an outreach program. To empower families to keep, advocate for and learn to better care for them all while provided a safe community for them to form friendships and support system with other families with children with special needs. While I was there we did quick evaluations on each of the children and made a list of equipment they needed. Due to time we could not make

In the evenings we worked hard and played hard... Some nights were filled with paperwork and others we would take a break and watch movies/eat popcorn. Jenny and Phoebe spent there evenings putting puzzles together. They LOVED the puzzles

I am Thankful that during my time in Cap Haitian. I finally got to see my dear friend Stacey Ayers and her beautiful girls at OMS seminary. It had been 3 years since I made it to see them. 

I also had the wonderful opportunity of visiting some other friends and there ministry at Footprints of the Son. It was so wonderful to see their school in session and to see how much there ministry has grown. Of course my favorite part was loving on CT and Pete. Man do I miss those boys! Heather and Papito spent a year living and working at the Miriam Center before they got married and started this ministry. 

We spent ALOT of time at the workshop. I have no idea how many pieces of equipment we built over the 3 weeks but it was ALOT.

One of the big news that COTP needed for their kids living on the grounds was benches to facilitate therapy and home programming. We were blessed to have a visiting team helping build the benches and then Phoebe and Jenny covered them.

One of my favorite pieces of equipment we made was this piece of adaptive equipment to help a young man with Arthrogryposis feed himself independently. He cannot bend his elbows to bring the spoon to his mouth but he can grasp a spoon and scoop. He was able to then place the spoon in this holder that had could then move the base to best position for him to lean forward and eat off the spoon. Wish I could post a video it was a priceless moment.

The week 2 of our stay majority of time was spent on evaluating each of the kids that live at COTP and receive therapy. Then we wrote updated treatment plans and goals for each. We did the evaluations with the house parents present in order to get information from them, give some home suggestions. The other awesome part was that Phoebe and Jenny were also able to be apart of each of these evaluations as they will be the Rehab Technicians treating them here on out. 

Our biggest hinderance the 3 weeks we were at COTP was the rain. We were getting heavy rain most days we were there which made it hard to stay motivated and to get the building done. 1 Saturday when Jenny and Phoebe went to church they had to go through waste high water!!!!! Crazy amount of rain!

I know many of you may have been expecting more pictures but COTP does not post pictures of there children on social media as all there children are up for adoption or in the process of being adopted and they feel that it is their adopting parents choice to share their stories. So I intentionally only posted picture that their children's faces could not be seen.

Please keep Jenny and Phoebe in your prayers as they start working full-time for COTP the first week of January. Pray for them as the look for housing, as the adjust to a new city and move there from PAP. Pray that they flourish!