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Camas couple partners with nonprofit to build Haitian home

By Tom Vogt, Columbian Science, Military & History Reporter
Published: October 27, 2016, 6:04am
5 Photos
Jen Goheen meets a young Haitian during a break in the house-building project organized by Forward Edge International.
Jen Goheen meets a young Haitian during a break in the house-building project organized by Forward Edge International. (Courtesy of Jen Goheen Camas resident Ken Goheen, left, and his young helper head for another wheelbarrow load of construction material.) Photo Gallery

After Ken and Jen Goheen helped build a new house for a Haitian family, they headed back to Camas. The next day, Hurricane Matthew blew Haiti apart.

But the house is still there.

Two days after the hurricane hit, “We checked in. They lost their belongings,” Jen Goheen said. However, “The house stood; they had a place to be.”

The Goheens and fellow Camas resident Wendell Robinson were part of a 10-person team organized by Forward Edge International, a Vancouver-based nonprofit.

The Haitian widow, Chantel, and her four children lost their previous home in the 2010 earthquake; they had been living in a tiny shack built with salvaged material and the one wall left standing after the quake.

On the Web

Details about Forward Edge mission trips are at forwardedge.org

For the Goheens, building that home wasn’t just a hands-on project; it also involved some footwork. Ken and Jen ran on the Forward Edge entry that took part in the 2016 Hood to Coast Relay and decided to turn it into a fund-raising opportunity.

“We raised $11,000,” she said.

As Forward Edge provides relief for disaster victims, it works with local partners. For this project, in a community of 400,000 outside Port-au-Prince, their contact was a Haitian pastor.

“He identified three families,” she said. Since a house costs about $10,000, they had enough to help the family at the top of the pastor’s list.

“The next time we can come, we will build another one,” Goheen said.

The new cinder block house is 22 feet long and 11 feet wide. It sounds compact, yet it’s four times bigger than where Chantel’s family lived after the quake, Goheen said.

Robinson, senior program officer for Forward Edge, stressed that their teams don’t work for people in disaster sites: The teams work with them. Chantel’s home was already underway.

“We joined them when we arrived, and the work accelerated,” Robinson said. At one point, “Two young men came over to see what was going on and rolled up their sleeves.”

There was plenty of work for the volunteers, and a lot of it didn’t require construction skills.

“I ran a wheelbarrow up and down a hill,” Robinson said.

“I shoveled and carried rocks,” Goheen said. “They delivered a truckload of blocks, and we passed them in a chain to the builders.”

They provided additional disaster relief. One team member has a connection with sports apparel company Under Armour and brought 100 pairs of shoes.

“We put together food baskets — beans and rice — from the funds that were raised,” Robinson said.

Team members also established person-to-person contacts during their weeklong stay.

“We went to the pastor’s school and did crafts with kids,” Goheen said. “That was a lot for a week.”

“These are multifaceted trips. The tie that binds is the relationships,” Robinson said. “It’s not just about money. Money can’t hug a broken mother whose child just died.”

“There’s always an opportunity to put the shovels down and sit with families,” Robinson said.

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Columbian Science, Military & History Reporter