Benefit for Haitian School Tonight!

Here are the words of the event’s organizers:To Our Chattanooga Friends, Neighbors, and Business Leaders,We represent a group of performers in the greater Chattanooga area who are gathering our talents and energies to create a benefit concert and auction in support of Outreach Haiti, a nonprofit organization that began as a partnership between the Church of the Good Shepherd on Lookout Mountain and the Church of St. John the Evangelist in the remote mountain village of Petit Harpon. The organization’s original vision was of a healthy, economically self-sustaining community, and its mission was and still is to educate the children of Petit Harpon.This year marks the fifth anniversary of the great earthquake that devastated Haiti in 2010. The earthquake destroyed thousands of homes, many lives and much of the country’s infrastructure. But now there are places in Haiti where life is being restored to some semblance of normalcy, where a particular kind of assistance could make a very significant difference in the future of a community. Petit Harpon is one of those places.The village lost its church but none of its citizens, thanks in large part to the strength and structural integrity of its school. St. John the Evangelist’s School withstood the quake and sheltered villagers and people from the surrounding areas during and after the upheaval. Since then, as part of the Outreach Haiti effort, the Good Shepherd church, in partnership with two other churches in the Chattanooga area, has supported the school, helped to rebuild the demolished church, and sponsored trips to Haiti to help with medical clinics.In 2014, Outreach Haiti began a campaign to match a $300,000 grant for the purpose of establishing an endowment that would ensure the school’s future stability. The grant deadline is March 31, 2015, and our benefit will be part of the last big push to help Outreach Haiti qualify for these funds. We believe that enabling St. John the Evangelist’s School to continue and expand its mission of educating the young people of Petit Harpon will have a permanently positive effect on the quality of life in their community and may motivate some of them to become future leaders.We do so hope that we will see you at Barking Legs Theater on March 14.Sincerely,Judith DeWitt, The Undoctored Originals, and all the performing artists at the 2015 Benefit for Petit Harpon in Haiti, Flower of Mountain Lands