June 25, 2008

The Daily Gleaner - Heart for children
Published Wednesday June 25th, 2008

Fundraising concert | Rosemary and Miles Blair are holding a fundraising country gospel concert to help raise money to feed and educate the children of Haiti
By LORI GALLAGHER

Music brought Miles and Rosemary Blair together and now music is one of the ways they help the children of Haiti.

The couple, who run the charitable organization Blair Hope International Inc., are holding a fundraising country gospel concert on Saturday, June 28 at the Salvation Army on St. Mary's Street.

The event, which gets underway at 7 p.m., features the band True Country as well as radio station CJRI's Ross Ingraham as emcee.

Special guests include The Four Friends, Tom and Nancy Donovan, Reid Merritt, Barry Sullivan, Brent Hickey and Keith Young, as well as Miles and Rosemary Blair.

A freewill offering will go to help feed and educate the children of Haiti.

"We've had a lot of concerts over the years and have raised a lot of funds that way," says Rosemary Blair. "We're constantly fundraising." ...

Read the full article at The Daily Gleaner web site.

May 8 , 2008

Dear Sponsors, Friends & Family:

PRAISE THE LORD!!! It seems like "forever" since we've sent out a newsletter! We sent out information on Miles' brother's illness and passing in March. We first need to thank you all for your prayers and words of encouragement. We were able to pass many of them onto the family and received great comfort from them.

We have not shared about Haiti for a long time and as usual there is so much to tell. Things are so exciting and so overwhelming all at the same time. We need to be in constant prayer, and are in need of constant prayer.

We are running 9 schools in 8 villages right now. Feeding and educating about 1400 children and will be up to 2200 by September. We have a staff of 70 teachers, cooks, cleaners, and administrators. We are planning for the future by purchasing more land at Chabin. We are adding a second floor to the main school there and will begin high school classes in September with 4 more classrooms. This will be our only high school. For the first year or two, we will be busing children from our other communities to the high school in Chabin. This means we are going to need a bus. We also plan to build a mission house there, hopefully in the next couple years.

We are also looking at buying some property with a building on it in Jacmel to expand the school there. This will also give us a place to stay when we go there instead of having to stay in a hotel, until the mission house gets built. When we know more on that we will let you know. The school in Thiotte should be finished in May and will be ready for classes in Sept. It will have 10 classrooms on the main floor, with the possibilities of a second floor eventually. We are running a school in Port au Prince and planning to build on the property we've purchased there.

We are always looking for ways of raising funds to build with and to keep all these schools running. We have some supporters who have taken on the running of a school for about $2000 per month. We have other supporters who have taken on the cost of buying a water truck or a gravel truck at a cost of about $35,000, so that we can begin to be self supporting. It will generate a yearly income of about $20,000 which will run one of the bigger schools. We already have 30 clients lined up to use our water truck service when we are up and running.

A filmmaker out west is making a documentary, which will be shown at a fundraiser on our behalf out there. Later it will be shown on TV and the filmmaker is planning to send it to OPRAH to get some international attention for this cause. We have girl in BC who has been working for a couple years on a volunteer basis trying to get children sponsored and she and a photographer friend are going to Haiti in September to spend a month taking photos of all the children to help get them sponsored. What a blessing these two things are!

As you may already know there have been a lot of riots in Haiti recently due to the costs of food getting so high. The costs of everything including rice, beans, cement & rebar has doubled in the last year and so everything we plan to do keeps getting more expensive. Please pray for all these concerns along with peace for Haiti.

We thank God for all our supporters. We have always known we could not do all this without you, but the bigger it grows, we are reminded more and more how important the you are no matter how big or small your contribution, and whether it is monetary or prayerful. We pray for all you supporters for good health and prosperity and that God will continue to bless you all so that you can continue to help us bless the children of Haiti. We pray for more people to come alongside of this ministry. Please feel free to pass this letter onto whoever you would like along with the info on our website. Well must close for now. Hope to have more info soon.

Please consider a special one time contribution to help us end off the school year and prepare for the coming year. You can do this by clicking Support us on this webiste. Hope to hear from you soon!

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One more exciting thing I wanted to tell you all by itself!!!

We are looking for a "FEW GOOD MEN" (and women) to help with a major fund raiser!!!

We want to build a Pyramid of sorts.

Help us build for the future in Haiti, by Building a Financial Pyramid.

Funds raised will be used to build in Haiti- Churches, Schools, Residences for staff & students, mission headquarters etc…

Register to Raise $1000 & get 2 friends to do the same.

Raise the funds any way you'd like. Have a breakfast, carwash, yard sale, concert, etc. use your imagination!!

We’ll help you, help us by providing photos, info, etc. Anything else you need to raise the funds!

You’ll have the choice of getting a receipt for the $1000 or a 1 week stay at the mission house when it’s built!!!

Just imagine you can own your own little piece of Haiti!!! Contact us to register today.

Hope to hear from you soon! Take care and God Bless!

Take care and God Bless

Miles & Rosemary Blair