Name: Mitch Albom's Haiti orphanage, a small oasis for children inside a gang-controlled city
Uploaded: 2026-03-16T21:32:35.000Z
Duration: 13 min 17 s
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It's rare you hear about something good happening in Haiti 16 years after the devastating earthquake, which killed some 200,000 people and left more than a million homeless.

The government has all but collapsed, and gangs battled for control of the capital, Port au Prince.

But tonight, we want to take you to a small oasis in that besieged city where children may be growing up behind walls, but.

It's an orphanage called have faith Haiti that's run by best selling author Mitch Albom and his wife Janine.

Since the earthquake, they've been taking in the most at risk kids.

Abandoned infants, toddlers with disabilities, children begging in the streets.

It hasn't been easy, but with love, faith and a focus on education, the results have been extraordinary.

It's too dangerous for international flights to land in Haiti's capital, so every month, Mitch Albom flies the two hours from Florida to the northern city of Cap Haitian.

That's where we met him and boarded a helicopter to reach Port au Prince.

From the air, much of Haiti is a maze of dry riverbeds and rugged mountains stripped of trees.

Then appears Port au Prince, a dense sprawl of chaotic streets and dilapidated buildings.

Once on the ground, heavily armed guards drive Albom to the orphanage in a convoy of bulletproof vehicles.

Just what it takes for you to get in and out of here.

From the outside, it looks like a prison.

The concrete walls are 30ft tall with barbed wire and guard towers.

To enter, you have to pass through a series of locked gates.

But once inside, it feels like another world.

Mr. Mitch, they're chanting, Oh, my goodness.

Do you get greeted like that every time you come?

There are 56 children living here and more than 50 teachers and staff.

The kids range from infants and toddlers cared for by nannies to teenagers living in dorms.

Most haven't left this seven acre compound in more than four years.

They play here, do chores, go to church, and eight hours a day go to school.

They're taught in both French and English and prepared to go on to college.

All children deserve to feel like they have a future and the future is possible.

And there are a lot of children right on the other side of that gate, and

their bellies are swollen and they're not eating, and that's not fair.

And if my wife And I can do anything to change that.

Even if it's a drop in the bucket, that'll be our drop.

You're not doing analysis of a two or three year old and seeing what their cognition is and what they're capable of.

You are just picking kids in the most difficult circumstances.

We don't give aptitude tests to get in here.

Most of the kids that come to us aren't even speaking yet.

But if you put them in the right environment and you surround them with other kids who are aspiring to do certain things, they'll grow.

Many were brought here by a desperate parent or family member who couldn't afford to feed them.

We try to set the conditions because otherwise it's hundreds and hundreds of children.

So we say only if there's one parent, not two.

Only if there's no home, no actual structure home, you know, or if there's a case of a sickness or something like that.

He was six weeks old and he was starving.

So those stories, those interviews, they broke me in half, but

they also cemented me to Haiti and cemented me to this operation, which I will do for the rest of my life.

Mitch Albom is The author of 19 books, including Tuesdays with Maury and his most recent bestseller, Twice.

He first came to Haiti in 2010 after the earthquake.

That's when Albom, who's Jewish, began fixing up a Christian orphanage run by an elderly pastor.

The pastor basically said, I don't have any money to run this place, and I'm 84 years old.

And I kind of blurted out, well, I could probably run it.

Bettany was brought here around that time.

A year and a half old, her father died in the earthquake and.

Lorvens was malnourished when he came at 3, and Gino was left here by her father at 5.

I could say I was a little bit scared because there were a lot of new faces and just a lot of people staring and smiling.

Were you angry at all when you learned your Story, Honestly, not really, because I know my mom is human and I don't think it was a really bad choice for her to bring me here because she was looking at my future.

You'd said that there was a sense of betrayal for you early on because I feel like, why would your own family leave you in a place where you don't know anybody?

That feeling of abandonment is something Yannel, the Haitian director of Half Faith Haiti, knows well.

He was left at the old orphanage 36 years ago when he was five.

Yannel's father had three other children and couldn't afford another.

I thought that they hate me back then because they just, you know, kicked me out.

But later on I would understand why they did that.

That's why I forgive him, you know, because I think they do it out of love.