Audio clip
Dr. Cherilus Ex'ante
As local doctors leave the city this month to lend medical support in Haiti, a Haitian minister will come to Chattanooga to seek assistance to educate and house Haitian orphans.
"When I walk the streets in Haiti, I saw so many kids walk naked," said Dr. Cherilus Ex'ante during a telephone interview from Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital. "The kids lost their mother. They lost their father. They lost their uncle. They have nowhere to stay. Nowhere to go."
Dr. Ex'ante wants to raise $30,000 within the next month to help build a school for the children. He's coming to Chattanooga to get help, while also working with a host of ministers throughout the United States and other Caribbean countries.
The ministers, about a dozen of them from the Bahamas, Georgia, New York and Tennessee, will gather at the Power of Touch Church on Feb. 28 to hear Dr. Ex'ante speak and organize their efforts.
He also will speak at Mount Canaan Baptist Church the same day.
Dr. Mark Sandilands, pastor at Power of Touch, is calling it a Haitian 2010 Earthquake Victims Relief Effort Day.
"It was like a war zone (in Haiti)," Dr. Sandilands said. "Everything turned upside down. We know it's going to be a long-term process, so I called some of the other bishops to help."
He said he hopes more local ministers will hear Dr. Ex'ante's story and join efforts to assist his him.
"Haiti is not like here," Dr. Sandilands said. "Kids are not in school because they are working. They're doing what we would call child labor or slavery."
IF YOU GO
* What: Speech by Haitian minister Dr. Cherilus Ex'ante
* When: 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 28
* Where: 8 a.m. Mount Canaan Baptist Church, 2800 N. Chamberlain Ave.; 4 p.m. Power of Touch Church, 3111 Calhoun Ave.
Dr. Ex'ante said he wants to build the school to train the children to be teachers, computer programmers and computer technicians so they can earn a better living.
Of the $30,000 wanted by Dr. Ex'ante, about $12,000 will go toward the annual fee of renting a building for the school, which would also serve as an orphanage, he said. Other money would be used toward paying teachers and buying supplies, he said.
"We have to buy everything," Dr. Ex'ante said. "A building. We need clothes for the kids. We need supplies. And we need money to pay the teachers."
Yolanda Putman has been a reporter at the Times Free Press for 11 years. She covers housing and previously covered education and crime. Yolanda is a Chattanooga native who has a master’s degree in communication from the University of Tennessee and a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Alabama State University. She previously worked at the Lima (Ohio) News. She enjoys running, reading and writing and is the mother of one son, Tyreese. She has also ...
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