We invite you to include in your circle of sharing some who have been excluded from our world's abundance. Below are seven gift ideas.

More than six million Haitians (over 80 percent of Haiti’s population) live on a dollar or less each day. Many of us could reduce what we spend each day by a dollar or more without even noticing. As an expression of solidarity with people for whom a dollar is more than they can count on each day, Beyond Borders invites you to make the Dollar-a-Day Solidarity Pledge. By making this pledge, you commit to making the sacrifices that will free you to share at least a dollar a day ($30/month) to support Beyond Borders’ work in Haiti. You will receive a monthly receipt for your pledged gift and a monthly update on our work in Haiti.

For $300, you can underwrite the entire cost of teaching someone in Haiti to read and write. With your pledge to give $25 a month for a year to the Literacy Scholarship Fund, you will know that you are sharing the gift of literacy and giving someone a powerful tool they can use in their struggle for dignity and a better life. Beyond Borders will send you periodic reports that tell the story of someone learning to read through the Literacy Scholarship Fund.


Through the Partnership of Hope you give the gift of hope to a Haitian community by supporting an entire local literacy center. The cost of supporting a literacy center is $200 per month, or $2400 per year, which covers the cost of teacher training and salaries, books and supplies for students, and most of the cost of managing a literacy center for an entire year. The local community provides the locale for the center, and local leaders provide oversight. As a literacy center partner, you will receive a Partnership Portfolio, which includes a brief description of the center you are supporting, the conditions in the surrounding community, and photographs of the students. You will also receive a video that takes you into the heart of Haiti and the lives of some of the children and adults benefiting from the literacy program. In addition, you will receive an annual progress report on the center with which you are partnered.

As part of our Children's Rights Campaign, Beyond Borders is leading in the development of a coalition of groups in Haiti that are struggling to end the exploitative rèstavèk system that keeps hundreds of thousands of Haitian children in slave-like conditions. The coalition is working to change the public attitude about this practice in Haiti through an awareness campaign. The coalition has developed a strategy that includes such things as the creation and airing of thought provoking ads for radio, distributing bumper stickers and posters, and training regional leaders and educators in children’s rights. The coalition has also been meeting with government officials and pushing for the enforcement of laws designed to protect children that are already on the books. A gift of any size will be a great help in this effort. The cost of printing the bumper stickers alone is about $7,000.

Few teachers in Haiti have ever received any training to teach. As a result, most teachers teach the way they were taught, perpetuating an often violent and humiliating tradition that makes little use of students’ inherent curiosity. Students often remain functionally illiterate, even after many years of instruction. Beyond Borders supports a number of initiatives that provide teachers with more humane and effective teaching methods. These methods emphasize student participation and the use of native-language materials that are tailored to Haiti’s needs. The cost to Beyond Borders of a day of training for a teacher varies greatly. Depending upon the type of training and the amount of local participation, the cost may be as little as $6 per day but is ordinarily closer to $20 per day. Regardless of the size, your gift to the Teacher Training Fund will be an investment that will continue to grow, making a difference in the lives of students year after year.

School books present a variety of problems in Haiti. First, few schools provide students with books and they are often too expensive for families to afford. Secondly, most of the school books in Haiti are not very good and are written in a language foreign to the students. The lack of quality native language books for Haiti’s students makes academic progress tremendously difficult. By contributing to Beyond Borders’ Book Fund, you provide Haitian students with books printed in their own language, Haitian Creole. These new books are generally used in classrooms where teachers have participated in the training programs mentioned above.


Last year, one of our Haitian staff members was robbed at gunpoint outside her home in Port-au-Prince. Her car was eventually recovered but not the office laptop computer that was with her. We still haven’t replaced this computer. This is an opportunity to give toward its estimated expense of $2000 (hardware and software). We’re also open to used laptop computer donations and can give receipts for this. They can be put to good use in Haiti. Our need is for computers that run Windows 98 or later. Laptops are useful because our only reliable source of electricity in Haiti is solar power, and laptops use much less electricity.

A contribution of any size will be greatly appreciated. You can donate or pledge your support to Beyond Borders, using any of the three options on the left.