Chances For Children

Providing Hope For Children In Haiti

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Empowering Women

Our Goal within our Women’s Empowerment Programs

Our goal is to help Haitian families stay together. Skill development, employment and business development address the needs of families suffering from extreme poverty before they are at the point of desperation: driven to give their children to an orphanage for the sake of their survival.

Chances for Children established Zel Haiti (formerly Ila Joi) to help align with this goal by providing jobs to artisans and seamstresses. Our Microloan Program began in 2018 to give women opportunities to expand their businesses and become more self-sustaining through 0% interest loans. The goal of both of these programs is to empower women to earn an income to keep children out of orphanages.

Through these programs, Chances for Children is supporting Haitian families to be able to remain together.

Meet the Staff

Zel Haiti

What is Zel Haiti?

Zel Haiti’s mission is to keep families together by empowering seamstresses and artisans to provide for their families. The Haitians employed in the sewing part of our Zel program have learned best practices as professional seamstresses and are using their skills to create their own line of boutique medical scrubs and fashion yoga mat bags. Patterns have been created and fabric specially chosen for customers who value quality, comfort, and style. Each piece is carefully cut and sewn with human hands.

We also have 4 artisans in our program who craft jewelry, ornaments and more. These artisans use various mediums from discarded materials such as cereal and cardboard boxes, recycled plastic bottles and genuine leather to create beautiful “upcycled” pieces of jewelry and homegoods. Not only are these women cleaning up the Haitian landscape with their recycling efforts, they are also bringing new hope to their families by earning the means to pay for their children’s food, shelter, and education. This means fewer orphans, less garbage, relieved stress, and a whole lot more beauty!

How can you partner with us?

While we are run like a business and individual product sales from our website directly support our efforts – we also rely on partners to keep this program going. We have a few opportunities for you to partner alongside us and support our efforts. If you sign up to be a monthly donor, you become part of our Family to Fanmi program where you are assigned an artisan and you receive quarterly updates on her and her family. Through this program you will also receive exclusive updates and offers on our products and program. You can sign up to be a monthly sponsor at www.chances4children.org/sponsor/

Another opportunity to partner with us is to host a “Sak Pase” party – basically a jewelry party! We will pack you up a box of Zel Haiti items and you can have all your friends over for dinner, or whatever you would like, to try and sell some of our products.

If you are interested in this, email zelhaiti@chances4children.org and we will get you set up!

Learn more about our microloan program