FET MANMAN – Mother’s Day in Haiti

Every year on the last Sunday of May (Haitian Mother’s Day) the Aristide Foundation for Democracy, holds a special event to honor mothers. Sunday May 30 the AFD welcomed 3,500 women to the auditorium of the Foundation for a very special day of communion and solidarity– to offer solace, and encouragement, and a chance to speak out to women representing mothers across Haiti.

The event was planned for 2,000 people, but an overflow crowd filled the balconies, hallways and rear of the auditorium.

The event opened with a multi-denominational religious ceremony – including a presentation by Pastor Eddie Hebron, an African-American Minister from Savannah, Georgia.

Three mothers, Gladys Delouis, a long time AFD staff member and women’s organizer, Merry Roche, the coordinator of the AFD Mobile Schools Program, and Madame Florence Agenor, a community organizer from Cite Soleil who spoke in the name of the mothers of Cite Soleil, rallied the crowd.  All of them spoke of the hardships faced by Haitian mothers today.  After losing family members, children, their homes, and whatever small businesses they might have had, are now suffering in the “tents of humiliation” where they have to sleep standing up when it rains.  They also spoke of the courage and the endurance that women are showing in the face of this crisis.

Madame Agenor thanked Titid’s mother for giving them this “gwo garcon.”   Everyone present was thrilled to have the opportunity to say loudly and clearly in the presence of several foreign delegations that they want an end to injustice, that Jean-Bertrand Aristide must return to his homeland to continue to work with them for social peace and justice for all Haitians. Read more