FAIRE Garden is a non-profit Christian organization based in United States, which focuses on bringing the gospel to the Haitian citizens while striving to reduce economic, educational, social and emotional deprivation. The initials for F.A.I.R.E. carry the message that FAIRE Garden desires to teach: Faith, Assurance, Inspiration, Rêve (or Dream in French), and Exploration. Through the relationships built with the children and any available caretakers during outreach, FAIRE Garden volunteers are able to recognize each child’s specific needs and prayerfully work to address them.
This concept of empowering the people of Haiti required a plan that FAIRE Garden Foundation decided to confront through five facets.: first, FAIRE Garden seeks to address education by making it possible for underprivileged and trafficking survivor children to attend both, classical and professional school; second, it strives to improve local economies by advancing agriculture practices; third, it aims to provide necessary medical assistance by bringing qualified doctors to the communities; fourth, it attempts to offer disaster relief; and fifth, it aims to develop stable housing conditions by constructing new homes.
Get to Know Us
For the past three years, FAIRE Garden has been operating a kids’ club for underprivileged children in three different cities. These kids’ clubs take place every Saturday afternoon, and they consist of Scripture memorization, singing, dancing, playing games, and teaching Bible stories. For many of the children who attend, kids’ club is the only time they can set aside their unfathomable daily hardships and experience the joys of childhood. Through the relationships which are built with the children during these times, FAIRE Garden volunteers are also able to recognize each child’s specific needs so as to better provide for them. As the volunteers become aware of children in the most desperate situations, they notify Capricien and Severe. These co-founders pay for the children’s groceries, hospital bills, and school tuitions as much as they are able out of their own savings.
Our History
The necessity for FAIRE Garden’s ministry became apparent to Duverne and Severe in the summer of 2014. When this realization took place, Duverne had lived in the United States for four years and had nearly earned his degree in industrial management technology at Valencia College. During that summer, however, Duverne and Severe returned to Haiti for a Mission Trip and met a young girl named Frenise. Frenise was twenty-two years old and had worked as an indentured servant since she was three. On one occasion during his visit, the two young co-founders invited Frenise to join them for lunch, and as she sat at the table, she broke down in tears. “She said it was her first time eating a real meal on a real table with real people,” Duverne says. “That just broke my heart. I could not stop thinking, that could be my sister to say something like that.” Duverne looked at his sister, who was also twenty-two and had just graduated with a nursing degree, and he looked back at Frenise. “What’s the difference’?” Duverne says he thought to himself. “God does not love either one more than the other. My sister’s life is not any more important than Frenise’s life.”
Duverne found out Frenise’s father had been a businessman, but when he died, she and her mother had lost everything. Her mother was unable to take care of her, so to survive, Frenise had become a slave. She had never been to school, and as a young female, Duverne says, she had been taken advantage of in every way imaginable. Being valued as a real person was something Frenise had never felt. “I looked at Frenise and started crying,” Duverne says. “I told Frenise, ‘I’m not rich. I can’t do anything for you, but if I can do anything to help you coming out of this situation, what would it be’?” Frenise’s answer was, “I would just want to be seen as people.” Frenise was the first person Duverne and his cousin began supporting which allowed her to attend school and complete a fourth-grade education.
Duverne asked Frenise if she knew other children who had similar experiences to her own, and Frenise began counting. She gave Duverne’s family a list of children she was familiar with, but she warned them, “they don’t talk about these things.” The children’s situations are so demoralizing; they try very hard to keep them hidden. From appearances, the children seem to be okay. Duverne recruited his sisters to investigate the living conditions of the children on Frenise’s list even after he returned to the United States. Through the process, they uncovered many horrible stories. “From there, that’s when FAIRE Garden was born,” Duverne says.
The vision for FAIRE Garden’s ministry, however, is rooted in Duverne’s heritage and born from his own life experiences. Duverne says both his mother and father were always taking in underprivileged children, even before they were married. Duverne’s father has worked as a farmer and carpenter, and because he has been faithful to serve God, he has watched God bless his work. These blessings from the Lord are means God has given his family to bless others. Of the kids, he says, “The Lord blesses me, and I use God’s money to help them get uniforms and buy them school supplies.” At the time of Duverne’s birth, his father began a school for the children who are considered outcasts. His paid the professors so the children could attend the school for free. Over the years, his family has also taken 23 children into his own home to provide and care for them. Some of these children his parents have officially adopted, but some he merely housed until they could find another place to live.
Another defining feature of Duverne’s childhood which spurred on the vision for FAIRE Garden was the death of Duverne’s mother when he was eight years old. Growing up in a single-parent household, Duverne says, “I know what could have happened. I know where I could have ended up.” Upon the death of a parent, many of the children in FAIRE Garden’s kids’ clubs are separated from their families, suffer abuse or starvation, or are forced to provide for themselves. The realization that God’s grace alone allowed Duverne’s family to survive such difficult times carried him toward the ministry of sharing God’s grace with others. Duverne says the other experience that sparked his passion for FAIRE Garden’s ministry was coping with the anger he felt when he lost his mother. Duverne doubted God’s love until he rededicated his life to the Lord as a young adult. “God is still loving even in the deepest struggles I went through,” he says, and this truth is something he wants to help others comprehend.