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Ellijay native Dedra Key, sitting in front, is shown with some of the 575 Haitian children who now attend school and are fed with funding from her nonprofit, Present Hope Ministry.
An Ellijay native is making good on her mission to educate impoverished children in Haiti.
Dedra Key was enjoying some time with family in her hometown last week before returning to Ouanaminthe, Haiti, where she’s lived since 2013. The city, in northern Haiti, lies on the border with the Dominican Republic.
Key first ventured there on a 2007 mission trip with her dad, Randy. It turned out to be a fateful trip, which set the course of her life up to the present day.
“Dad took his first mission trip in 2006. He worked at the post office then and had asked a coworker if they knew of any mission connections. He was connected with someone who had contacts on the ground in Haiti,” Key remembered. “He came back from that first trip in 2006 and said, ‘I have pictures, but pictures don’t do it justice, the needs that exist in Haiti. We have it made here, and I think we, as a family, need to do something about it.”’
Along with others from Gilmer County, members of the Key family eventually went on mission trips to Haiti once or twice a year. Shortly after the devastating 2010 earthquake, Key was on the ground in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, where she and family members provided various forms of aid including helping to set up mobile medical units.
That three-month experience was another life changer for her.
“After the earthquake is when I guess I started negotiating with God as to how I was feeling the conviction to live there full time,” Key said. “I had a good life here, and I have a daughter. I knew what God was asking of me, so how was I supposed to leave everything behind and fulfill that assignment?”
Her missionary work eventually led to the formation of a Christian humanitarian organization, now called Present Hope Ministry, which is dedicated to working with children and families in Ouanaminthe. Today, the ministry makes faith-based primary and secondary education possible for 575 children there. Key said many of the school’s students would not have the opportunity for an education otherwise.
There are government-run public schools in Haiti, she said, but also numerous problems including lack of teachers and lack of pay for those who do teach. Many Haitian children must work to support their families, so when it comes to enrolling in a private school, it’s often a matter of paying for education or food, Key noted.
“Some of the schools in Haiti have significant tuition costs. The average Haitian income is $30-$50 per month, and most of them have many children in the household,” she added. “Many (kids) sell peanuts, mangoes or whatever the natural resources are on the streets. Or they just roam the streets.”
Present Hope’s main campus school currently provides primary education up to the fourth grade level. The ministry also leases homes in outlying villages that are used as satellite schoolhouses.
Key said a current construction project includes adding a second level to the main school, which will eventually accommodate students from fifth grade on up. In Haiti, there are 13 grade levels, she noted.
“Through our donors, we are still able to offer their education for free. We are a fully accredited, registered school, so we must comply with Haiti’s academic requirements,” said Key. “It’s a privilege for us to be able to offer this at no cost, so you can imagine the lines of parents we have wanting to get their kids in.”
The Present Hope schools are a product of fundraising and donations made specifically for school construction. They also plan to teach such trade skills as mechanics, sewing, cooking and construction in hopes that the students will, one day, be able to use those skills to earn a living. With the grade level expansion, the new wing will allow for the first full cycle of students to graduate from the main school if they remain enrolled. It will take $32,000 to finish the construction, Key noted.
“We do a newsletter each month, and we reach our contacts the best we can. We have mission groups who come and work here, and they tell people in their circle of contacts. (It doesn’t matter) if it’s $5, $25 or $100. It all makes a difference,” she added.
With hunger one of the most pressing challenges faced by most Haitians, donations made to Present Hope’s child sponsorship program help not only educate, but also feed students. An onsite portable water system provides clean water for each of the three schools, while growing vegetable gardens for the school feeds students while also teaching them how to grow food.
“Our goal is to make sure all of the children are sponsored and fed each day because it’s most likely the only meal they’re going to have that day,” she added.
It’s all a labor of love for Key, a 1998 Gilmer High School graduate. She knows there’s much at the root of the island nation’s ills she can’t change, but Key said she “can work with one or two or even 575, and they can make a difference in their generation.”
Looking back on the progress her nonprofit has been able to make over the past 10 years, Key said her dad, with whom she embarked on that first mission trip in 2007, was the biggest inspiration for her to start the ministry.
“We were raised in the Baptist chruch. Not just being there physically, but it’s what we knew in our home. My parents lived that out,” she added.
Key plans to return to Haiti in October to guide the students, many of whom know her not as dean or director, but “Mommy Dedra.”
“School actually started there today, and it’s the first time I’ve not been there for the start of school. It’s been challenging for my team, but they all stepped up,” she said.