Shortly after the 7.0-magnitude earthquake rattled the country of Haiti in 2010, American aid groups started pouring into the country to help.
Many of them never left.
Among them, a Point Loma-based non-profit called "Children's Heritage Foundation," which operates a boarding school in Croix des Bouquets, an urban city just outside the country's capital of Port-au-Prince.
The streets of Croix des Bouquets are crowded with drivers and lined with garbage. Follow any of the dirt roads and you'll see unfinished shacks and a poverty-stricken country on full display.
But, inside the walls of the Goodrest Mission Boarding School, you can't help but feel a little more hopeful for the country's future.
Steve Denney who runs Children's Heritage Foundation leads groups of San Diegans into the country several times a year to help spruce up the 1-acre property.
Over the past nine years, they've rebuilt most of what was damaged in the 2010 earthquake while pouring into the lives of the more than 125 children who attend school at Goodrest. More than half the children who attend the school also live there. Many of them are orphans.
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"People say, 'How are you changing Haiti?' and we just say we're a micro-development organization. We're focusing on this one acre of land and these 75 kids and 50 additional kids who come for school and we believe we're making a difference in those kids lives, which we believe will pour into the greater part of Haiti," said Denney.
To learn more about the organization and its ongoing efforts, click here.
