Utahns build 'village of hope' in Haiti

OREM — It took two Utah County men and 401 local volunteers more than two years, 15 airplane flights and more than $850,000 to get a cinder block orphanage built in La Model, Haiti. Now they are ready to take on similar projects in Mexico and China.

"Our intent is to do this all over the world," said Paul Cook, who, along with Provoan Weston Whatcott, set out three years ago to help a big-hearted LDS Haitian couple who were trying to care for 17 orphans in their tiny tin-roof cottage.

The new 14,000-square-foot building, which was designed to be hurricane- and earthquake-proof, was dedicated Aug. 12 by a Catholic priest and an LDS branch president in front of several thousand Haitian villagers who are ecstatic over their good luck.

The orphanage not only provides a clean, spacious facility for hapless infants and youngsters up to the age of 6, it provides jobs and ongoing opportunities for major improvements in their lives.

"What a payday! It was a great occasion," said Cook, the director of A Child's Hope Foundation. He and Whatcott, the owner of the West Sands Adoption Agency in Provo, started on the Haitian project after they met Guesno and Marjorie Mardy and realized the young couple needed serious help.

They banded together, got the word out and started stumping for funds. They started enlisting other interested organizations as well.

"Our vision is not just to be an adoption agency but to create a "village of hope," Cook said. "We want this to be a community center, a training and development center, a place everyone can come and feel welcome and useful."

The new orphanage has a concrete roof, tile flooring, clean running water, indoor toilets, kitchen facilities and bed space for up to 300 children.

When Whatcott and Cook started, they were planning to build a much smaller facility and hadn't planned on a number of additional projects such as digging cesspools and trenches for sewer lines and laying 40,000 feet of fence.

What looked at first like a one- or two-trip process turned into an ongoing series of trips — with volunteers who paid their own way to defray the costs.

Whole families and Boy Scout troops signed on to help, and all came away with a new appreciation for the basic necessities of life they're used to in America.

They had to deal with heat, humidity and strange foods. They hand-carried generators and power tools to the area and lived out under the stars, for the most part.