 Grace Agostinho, owner of The French Cafe in Ottawa, has an ongoing fundraising goal of $50,000 to build a new orphanage and school for children in Gonaives, Haiti. (DARREN BROWN/QMI Agency)
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Haiti was the order of the day at an Ottawa-area coffee shop.
Grace Agostinho, owner of The French Cafe, has an ongoing fundraising goal of $50,000 to build a new orphanage and school for children in Gonaives, Haiti.
Wednesday her shop was a sea of red and blue — the colours of Haiti — as she ramped-up efforts to get money channelled into the country where a magnitude 7 earthquake struck Tuesday.
Although the town of Gonaives is not located near the earthquake centre in Port-au-Prince, Agostinho said there is an urgent need to raise funds to fly the Canadian “mother” of the orphanage children to them.
She’s referring to Louise Noel, an Ottawa woman whose husband Ismorin operates the orphanage and is there now.
“We want her to stay as long as it takes to be with the children there, to reassure them,” said Agostinho.
The orphanage was badly damaged during Hurricane Ike in 2008.
When asked about the red and blue balloons, ribbons and clothing her staff were wearing, Agostinho breaks down.
“I normally I love to put up balloons, but today it’s not to celebrate” she said. “Today it’s to tell people that our hearts and our thoughts and our prayers are with the people in Haiti.”
Agostinho, who just returned from Haiti, hasn’t been able to make contact with the orphanage since the earthquake.
“It was already hopelessness and now with this, it’s more than a crisis,” she said.
All the money raised through coffee sales at The French Cafe today will go directly towards a plane ticket for Noel, anything above and beyond that will be handed over to the humanitarian effort.
“I wanted to stay on my couch and cry all day,” said Agostinho. “But I had to do something, anything.”
doug.hempstead@sunmedia.ca
