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Teens Open Hearts, Wallets to Haiti
Mission Haiti was co-founded by an alumnus of FranciscanPosted: Tuesday, September 7, 2010
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STEUBENVILLE, OH—Each year, organizers of the summer youth conferences support a charity with the collections taken up at Mass during the four conferences held at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio. The teens have always been generous, but organizers have never seen anything like this year’s response.
“We decided to support Haiti, where there is such great need,” director of Youth and Young Adult Outreach John Beaulieu said. “We received a tremendous response.”
Truly, it was tremendous: The 8,186 youth donated $25,000 to help their brothers and sisters in Christ in the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.
During the four conferences in June and July, teens from around the country watched a video showing the work of Mission Haiti, an outreach of popular Catholic singer and youth speaker Sean Forrest’s organization, Movin’ With the Spirit.
“[Forrest] has been speaking at the conferences for several years, and it was great to be able to help him and help his great work,” Beaulieu said.
Mission Haiti was founded by Forrest and Franciscan University graduate Louis Merosne ’05, who is originally from Haiti. An orphanage designed to house 100 children, the first phase of Mission Haiti, opened in December 2009 with two missionaries—Johanna Sullivan and Katie Herrmann ’09, both of Franciscan University. Less than a month later, on January 12, the orphanage became home to hundreds of refugees from Port-au-Prince following the 7.0-magnitude earthquake.
More information about Mission Haiti and Movin’ With the Spirit is available at: www.mwts.org/missionhaiti.