Project log · Phase 5 of 9 complete

We stopped waiting for someone else to build it.

Rebuilding Haiti, One Layer of Brick at a Time is a family-led construction project on land we bought and paid for. The perimeter wall is standing. The steel gate is hung. The foundation is poured. Two septic tanks go ten feet into the ground. Every course of block was laid by Haitian hands, for Haitian wages.

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Phases done: 5
Trades hired: 5
Septic depth: 10 ft
Built on site: 100%

Why we are building

You should not feel like a tourist in your own land.

Many of us left Haiti carrying an address we can no longer go back to. Family land sits empty or unsafe. When we visit, we sleep in rented rooms in our own country and leave again after a week. That is the feeling this project exists to end.

So we started with the least glamorous, most necessary work: buy the land outright, wall it, gate it, and put a real foundation under it. Not a plan on paper. Block, steel, and concrete you can stand on.

The house is the visible part. The rest is the point. Every phase is contracted to people who live nearby, and every bag of cement is bought from suppliers in the area. A build that hires locally leaves something behind after the last truck pulls out.

“A wall keeps a family safe. A payroll keeps a town alive. We are trying to do both with the same pile of block.”
Jocely Emile, campaign organizer

Build progress

The wall, course by course

Filled courses are finished and paid for. Outlined courses are what your donation goes to next.

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Ground level ↑ · read from the bottom up

Where the money lands

Five trades, paid on site, in Haiti.

Construction money moves through a community faster than almost anything else. A day of block work becomes a day of school fees, a market run, a fuel tank. These are the people the build pays.

Trade 01

Masons

Mixing, laying, and pointing every block in the perimeter wall and the structure above the foundation.
Trade 02

Steelworkers

Cutting and tying rebar for the foundation, and fabricating the entrance gate by hand rather than importing one.
Trade 03

Plumbers

Setting the drainage runs into the two ten-foot septic tanks and roughing in the water lines for the house.
Trade 04

Truck drivers

Hauling sand, gravel, block, and water to a site that no delivery service reaches on its own.
Trade 05

Local suppliers

Cement, block, and hardware bought from nearby shops instead of shipped in, so the margin stays in the community.
The multiplier

Wages, not handouts

No wage leaves the country. Fund a phase and you fund a payroll.

Fund the next phase

From the site

Progress log

Documentation

Photos and video from the build

Three ways in

Money, materials, or a partnership.

Option one

Give money

The fastest way to keep crews working. Donations go through GoFundMe, which handles payment security and shows every contribution publicly.

$25 — a bag of cement
$150 — a mason's week
$500 — a truckload of block

Donate on GoFundMe

Option two

Pledge materials

Cement, rebar, block, roofing sheets, tools, a generator, a water tank, or the use of a truck. Tell us what you have and where it is, and we will tell you whether we can use it and how to get it there.

Option three

Partner with us

For companies, congregations, NGOs, and diaspora associations. Sponsor a named phase, match donations from your staff, or bring engineering and logistics support to the site.

Progress updates

Get an email when a phase finishes

Photos and a short note from the site. A few times a year, never more than once a month.

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Share the campaign

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We stopped waiting for someone else to build it.

You should not feel like a tourist in your own land.

The wall, course by course

Five trades, paid on site, in Haiti.

Masons

Steelworkers

Plumbers

Truck drivers

Local suppliers

Wages, not handouts