As many of you know, I was away on vacation last week. While I was definitely ready for a bit of R&R, I was upset that I would be missing a key event: Kindergarten graduation! We had eight children “walk” this year from the Mission of Hope International School, and thankfully Len and Cherylann came down to Haiti to cover for me while I was out and to be sure these children who have worked so hard got their due recognition and celebration!

It’s a bit strange watching things happen at Brit’s Orphanage on facebook from a place far away ~ I am so accustomed to being here and making sure that everything is in order for these types of events (among a few other things!) that I very much felt like a fly on the wall. I would eagerly pull up the Be Like Brit facebook page each night to see what was going on with the kids and to get a sense of how the week was going. Imagine my surprise when I clicked on the photos from the actual graduation ceremony itself, and could not even recognize our girls! Yes, one of our caregivers is a bit of a hair stylist, and she decided to make our girls look very pretty. With long, curly hair! It literally took me several glances to figure out that those girls were our girls – and they have not stopped talking about how pretty and how grown up they were for their special day! A bit of a confidence booster, I suppose, never hurt anyone!

With school out for summer, we have lots of free time to pass, and with 45 children on hand, making sure we have a plan for each day can be the difference between order and chaos! We’ve slowly learned that it’s simply not possible to have all of the children and staff do everything together all the time ~ Certainly we can pile the children on our 14 passenger bus with the staff, cramped as it may be, and go to the local park or soccer field – but that’s becoming less and less fun as we grow! Many of you know that one of our most pressing needs has been and continues to be getting another vehicle: a 15 passenger van or a small bus so that we are able to break the children up in to two groups so that our outings are both more comfortable and safer!

With school out for summer, perhaps some of you know of an organization or school who has a vehicle they are looking to donate! We have plans to take the children to Port-au-Prince to visit the National Museum, to Leogane to visit their public square and playground (an impressive sight!) and other places, too! With things on the horizon like swimming lessons and trips to the beach, if would be an incredible blessing if we were able to secure this donation for the summer!

While we anxiously await report cards (which are due in the next few weeks!), we are excited about a new addition to the Be Like Brit educational program. When Peter Smith from Kid Orange Tech reached out to Len, we knew we had to learn more about this program his company distributes. The program is called ABC mouse and it is an online learning tool, you might have heard of similar platforms like Simplilearn (https://learnacourseonline.com/simplilearn-review/) or Duolingo. ABC Mouse is one that focuses primarily on schoolchildren and school education. Peter wanted to do something to contribute to Brit’s Orphanage, and offered up this program, software and hardware, free of charge! ABCMouse has over 1.5 million users worldwide, and their Online Learning Academy is one of the most popular and effective programs available! Many students praise online learning it as productive and efficient, as outlined by this source here; it comes as no suprise, therefore, that ABCMouse is running successfully.


When Peter and I met via GoTo Meeting, one of my concerns was the simple fact that our children do not speak English, and the program is not available in Haitian Creole. Peter reassured me that he had tens of thousands of preschool aged learners in places like China who had successfully developed English proficiency and fluency in as little as six months in many cases! I admit that I was a bit skeptical at our children’s ability to navigate this interactive program for two reasons: The language, and the fact that it’s computer based learning. While our children have been introduced to basic laptop training, they certainly don’t possess the skills to successfully navigate an interactive, online learning platform (or so I thought!)


I would stand corrected, however – as when Peter and his daughter Kylie flew down to Haiti on Saturday with Len to help us launch the program, the children’s excitement and engagement level were incredible to witness! We started with Dalandya, who has the highest marks of any of our children, to see how difficult it might be for her. In less than fifteen minutes, Dalandya was navigating the program with ease, and we actually found ourselves increasing the difficulty level of the activities to challenge her more!


Her success and the fun she had with the program garnered a lot of interest, and it wasn’t long before we had a group of children packed into the office anxiously awaiting their turn to work with the ABCMouse.com program! As a result, this will be an integral and focal part of our summer learning program – with the primary goal being the development of English language skills! We’re confident this program will help our children reach proficiency over time – and everything else they will learn is all a bonus! We can’t thank Peter enough for this so very generous gift! Take a moment and visit abcmouse.com today to learn more about this innovative and exciting program! We are also looking towards some customized apps to help the children learn more efficiently. I have been looking at various Guide to bespoke software to learn more about it.

Everyone knows with Len’s background as a builder that we are always in the middle of a construction type undertaking! We have been working on acquiring a piece of property next to us for some time now, with the ultimate goal of putting in a soccer field and perhaps even a heliport! Last week, we got one piece of that land, and work started on extending the security wall across the southern property line. It’s been incredible to see how quickly our workers have been able to get this wall up! The retaining wall was first, and the blocks are going up now. Our workers carry these blocks up one-by-one (I’ve seen some of the guys put one on their head so they can carry more in their hands!) The amount of work this requires is incredible and our guys are truly some of the most hardworking guys I know!

At this rate, this summer project will be done sooner rather than later!

Our first Britsionary group of summer has arrived, too! We have a wonderful group of friends here this week who are already hard at work! We are so fortunate to have among this group some old friends who have been with us many times before, as well as Lisa and Megan Birch, whose husband and father Jim died at the Hotel Montana with Britney, and for whom the Courtyard Play Place is named. We were happy to welcome them here on Friday afternoon and look forward to an amazing week!

On a less happy note, the chikungunya virus is hitting us hard at Be Like Brit! To date, we’ve had more than 15 employees and 10 children fall sick with this painful and debilitating virus. Yesterday alone, I had 5 children come to my office with fevers around 104, with full-body shakes, chills, and sweating. As I was sitting at my desk on Friday night, I noticed that I was starting to feel “odd” ~ my body was feeling weak and my ankles began to sort of throb. A hallmark of this illness is the incredible joint pain it inflicts – the meaning of chikungunya is “contorted with pain”, as I felt myself getting sicker, it became almost impossible to stand. Len insisted I go lay down last night at 5pm when it was clear the pain was making walking upright miserable for me…

I went to bed at 5pm last night, and would top out with a fever of 104.8! For whatever reason the dreams and the confusion I felt under this fever were disorienting and even comical – I woke up in the middle of the night to find that I had hidden my computer and all of my money in my room – under my bed – in some kind of paranoid, febrile induced stupor.

Even today, I am moving slowly. The joint pain is brutal, and I can’t imagine how badly our poor children feel with this! The only treatment is to treat symptoms, and so we’ve gone through loads of Tylenol and Ibuprofen with this crisis! But of course, this can only do so much in helping to relieve any joint pain that we are experiencing. It was that painful, that at one point I even considered looking into the likes of CBD oil to see how this could help to relieve our pain. I know that it is effective as my friend has tried it before. But I came to the conclusion that this might not be an option for everyone, and decided to just stick with the relief that we already had to see if the pain would subside. If you are looking to donate items to Be Like Brit, would you consider helping us replenish our stock of children’s medicines for fever and pain? We’d be so appreciative!

Enjoy these first smiles of summer, and as always, thank you for helping us help the children of Haiti at Be Like Brit!