Making a Difference

HavServe Volunteer Service Network (HavServe) is a volunteer-driven not-for-profit 501(c)3 organization that supports community-led development through volunteerism in least developed countries. We believe that volunteerism benefits both society and the individual volunteer by strengthening trust, solidarity, cooperation, and reciprocity among citizens, and by creating opportunities to empower citizens to realize their potentials and shape the direction of their communities, their country, and the world.

Our Mission is to utilize volunteers to strive to meet the Millennium Development Goals in small towns and villages through community-led development and by empowering villagers with the education, training, and basic services necessary for them to play an ever-increasing role in determining their own futures.

Village of Lebrun

HavServe has launched a pilot community project in the village of Lebrun, which is located in southwest Haiti. Lebrun is surrounded by nine smaller communities. The village is ideally situated to serve as a central hub from which services and resources can benefit the residents of Lebrun proper as well as the surrounding communities. Approximately three hundred local villagers have been identified as volunteers and participants in HavServe projects and programs. International volunteers have already established a positive relationship with the community. They have worked with the villagers to launch educational, empowerment, and psychosocial development projects. These volunteers have also identified water and available land to meet MDGs 1, 5, and 6. A Lebrun Education Committee is working on MDG 2. Moreover, the Haitian diaspora from Lebrun is donating land for the building of an internet-ready, multi-purpose Education Center and a health clinic to meet MDGs 4 and 5. Volunteers have also established a women’s empowerment group and a youth empowerment group, addressing MDG 3.

8 Goals for Lebrun

Prior to the catastrophic earthquake that hit Haiti on January 12, 2010, tens of thousands of villagers had migrated to the capital, Port-au-Prince, in search of economic, academic, professional, and social opportunities. After the earthquake, villagers are returning to the countryside in a mass exodus. Now the villages are faced with added pressure to provide for residents and the returning migrants, with extremely scarce resources. Aside from the pervasive human suffering the earthquake inflicted, it also accounts for the biggest loss of income, assets, and human development in the country’s history. There is an urgent need to provide support to these villages. HavServe has embraced the 8 goals of the Millennium Development Goals to provide sustainable, goal-oriented, volunteer staffed, projects aimed at empowering villagers in the village of Lebrun, Haiti.

Ongoing Projects

Disasters will come and go around the world, but the fundamentals of sustainability do not change. HavServe is working to create communities that will be prosperous, strong, and resilient long after HavServe’s work is done. Countless volunteers are giving their time, energy, effort, and good spirit to achieve our shared goals and ensure the success of the community-led development projects and programs in Lebrun, Haiti.