Micah 6:8

“….And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly^[a] with your God.”

2021 was a year of incredible growth and impact for The Dalton Foundation and we are excited to build on that momentum as we launch into 2022. In case you missed it, here’s a glimpse at our 2021 year in review.  

Our Team is Growing

Return of Fuel to Haiti Leads to Devastation

The irony is truly heartbreaking. For months the people of Haiti were plagued by an extreme fuel shortage that affected all aspects of life. Lack of fuel meant no transportation, inability to move food, water and other essentials around the island, and the inability to generate electricity. Many healthcare facilities had to shut down and nearly all had to drastically cut hours and services. Then in early December some relief came, and fuel became accessible again.  

On December 14, a fuel tanker arriving in Cap Haitian, overturned and the outpouring of fuel attracted many to begin collecting what they could. Shortly later the tanker exploded killing over 90 and injuring dozens more. Sadly, fuel explosions have been very common with more and more people gathering and storing fuel in homes. This occurred about 3 blocks from our Haiti offices, and we were blessed that no one from our team was involved in the blast. The outpouring of support and the way the members of The Haiti Health Network responded has been incredible. To date, three shipments of medications and wound care supplies have arrived and two more are due this week. Our team has been able to work with partners and The Ministry of Health to get these supplies to hospitals and burn treatment facilities caring for the chronic needs of survivors. We’d like to thank network partners like Hope for Haiti who were able to get supplies from Les Ceyes into Cap Haitien very quickly and for Blessings International with your support for additional much needed medications. In addition, several individual Haiti Health Network members contributed to the donation efforts. We are truly grateful for the response!

Addiction Recovery - relink.org

Focus on Families in 2022

Relink.org will be expanding its service offerings in 2022 to include resources for families throughout Ohio. New additions will include pregnancy, adoption, & foster resources, as well as childcare, youth & teen programming, and education to support families. We’re aggregating and vetting organizations now. If you know of great family resources in your area, please reach out to our Statewide Data Coordinator, Bill Picha wpicha@relink.org.

As part of this initiative, we’re excited to announce our partnership with BaseCamp Recovery Center in Columbus that will offer impactful, 15–20-minute educational online videos to help families survive and thrive when they have a family member that struggles with addiction. Goals of this program are to help keep families together and prevent addiction from afflicting the next generation. Join us for an informational webinar on January 27 that explains the program in greater depth and how you can get involved. 

Using Data to Drive Programming

Regardless of the program, we are always looking to use data to help drive our decision making and programmatic focus. Those who use relink.org do so anonymously and we always want to keep it that way. Sensitivity and confidentiality are so important when people are in need and begin to reach out for help. However, we do get a lot of information about what is being searched and where it is being searched. We’ve been analyzing the utilization data from relink.org to look for trends and key needs for the State of Ohio that will help us focus our efforts for this year. 

We’re gleaning a lot from this data and two trends that stick out are the incredible need for housing- both addiction recovery and reentry housing throughout the state. The second alarming trend we are seeing is related to individuals in crisis. We’ll be sharing this data with the hope of driving resources directly to the areas of greatest need. If you have any questions about the utilization data or need some data for work you are doing please reach out to us- info@relink.org.

Midwife Kits Arrive for Northern Haiti

We’d like to thank Direct Relief for their donation of midwife kits that will support the delivery of 14,200 babies in Northern Haiti this year! Late last month we received 284 midwife kits that will be distributed by our Haiti Health Network team and partners - Konbit Sante and Midwives for Haiti. This collaboration among organizations working in the North provides and efficient and effective way to support midwives and birthing facilities working in the region.

Support Provided for Local Pregnancy Center

We’re always looking for ways to engage locally and with new partners. We were blessed to meet with a volunteer from Zelie’s Home in Cleveland and donate some diapers and baby formula to support the new moms they are assisting.