Haitians’ absolute love for one another is what hooked Brenda Cooper on the Caribbean nation, drawing her there 21 times in 10 years and convincing her to create the local Haiti Helpers organization.
“I remember one day teaching a group of children English and, at the end, asking them what they wanted me to bring them on my next trip,” said Mrs. Cooper, a respiratory therapist at Memorial Hospital in Chattanooga who lives in LaFayette, Ga.
“I thought they were going to ask for toys or something fun, but instead one little boy raised his hand and asked for French-English dictionaries,” she said.
The excitement from those children when she said she would bring them school supplies touched her heart, she said, and she knew from that moment she needed to go back as often as possible.
Since the Jan. 12 earthquake, Mrs. Cooper and her husband and Haiti Helpers co-founder Michael Cooper, a respiratory therapist at Gordon Hospital in Calhoun, Ga., planned a medical mission trip to the city of Jacmel, south of Port-au-Prince, to help with relief efforts.