Why Visit Haiti?

"Are you crazy?" This is often the first reaction some people get when they tell others of their plan to visit Haiti. Haiti is portrayed in the news as a violent and dangerous place with nothing but poverty and misery to offer. Why would anyone in their right mind decide to go there?

While we wouldn't want to minimize the difficulties of life in Haiti or the risks visitors face, we don't believe people are crazy for deciding to come to Haiti...if they are coming for the right reasons.

Here are some reasons why we think people should risk a visit to Haiti:

1. To Learn:

Why is our world so very divided? Why do some people die of chronic hunger while others die of chronic overeating? Why is poverty so persistent in some places while others remain isolated in pockets of persistent priviledge? Where is God when babies starve, when children are sent into slavery, when hearts grow cold with indifference?

While important questions like these can be pondered anywhere, our answers are often shaped by our place in the world. Visiting Haiti will give you a whole new perspective on these questions and a new way of looking at the world.

Traveling to Haiti with Beyond Borders can even be combined with an academic program. Beyond Borders has hosted students in both university and seminary programs. But whether it is part of a formal program or not, learning is central to what we think is most valuable about visiting Haiti.

2. To Love:

The richest fifth of the world's population controls nearly 90 percent of the world's wealth, while the poorest fifth struggles to survive on less than one percent of the world's economic wealth. While this injustice mares humanity, it also isolates humanity one from another.

Visiting Haiti with Beyond Borders is a way to build authentic relationships with people on the other side of the global economic divide. Through these relationships love can grow and in a small way the rift that divides our world can begin to heal.

3. To Be Changed:

Too many groups travel to Haiti thinking that Haiti is a problem to be fixed. That the change needs to happen in Haiti. They are often blind to the way suffering in places like Haiti is often rooted in decisions made by powerful people outside Haiti and the economic and political structures built to protect the power and wealth of the privileged. These groups are also often unaware of the amazing non-material wealth possessed by oppressed people. People in Haiti and the groups visiting them would be far better served if we all understood that change is as badly needed in those of us born to privilege.

We call the trips we organize to Haiti Transformational Travel. That's because the act of meeting with, staying with, and getting to know our neighbors in Haiti is almost always a deeply transforming experience for the visitors. Visitors can begin to see the world from the perspective of the "bottom billion" who struggle to survive on incomes of less than a dollar a day. Assumptions we've made about our choices and about how the world works become clearer and can be questioned. Values we've held tightly to can be examined often for the first time.

4. To Make Change:

It isn't just visitors who are changed, though. The host communities and families in Haiti are often deeply touched and changed by the experience of hosting people who come from abroad with a sincere desire to learn, understand, and find ways for building solidarity with them. Feelings many Haitians have of themselves, that their language or culture is inferior, that they don't count in the world or that they are invisible--all these feeling are challenged when visitors come with a sincere desire to learn from them and show then the basic respect they may have felt they didn't deserve. So, host families are also transformed by the experience of receiving visitors into their homes, lives, and communities. 

Learn more about the Transformational Travel program and how you can participate.