One Year of Transition
Updated: Sep 27
Building a Stronger Haitian-Led Child Welfare System
One year after the transition of the Les Cayes campus began, we are seeing something we have prayed for and worked toward for years: Haitian leadership, committed partnerships, and compassionate care coming together to create a stronger system of protection for Haiti’s children.
September 2026 marks one year since Overture began transferring the former ESPWA orphanage campus to Haiti’s national child welfare authority, IBESR. The decision represented more than a property transfer. It reflected a fundamental belief that has guided Overture’s work for years: lasting change in Haiti must ultimately be led by Haitians. Our role is not to replace Haiti’s child welfare system, but to help strengthen it.
One year later, we are beginning to see that belief in action. The campus, which operated primarily as an orphanage from 1998 to 2020, has become something very different since Overture assumed stewardship: the Complex for Child Protection, a place where vulnerable children can receive temporary care and stabilization, begin healing, and move toward the safety and belonging of a family.
This transition is taking place while Haiti faces extraordinary instability and children continue to arrive with immediate and increasingly complex needs. We are not waiting for conditions to become easier before working toward systemic change. Together with our Haitian and international partners, we are building while responding. We are strengthening the system while continuing to serve the children who need it today.
From an Orphanage to a Bridge Back to Family
Since 2020, we have shared our vision for changing the way vulnerable children are cared for in Haiti. Our goal has never simply been to create a better place for children to live apart from their families. We want to help build a system that keeps families together whenever possible and helps children safely return to family when separation has already occurred.
That means the Complex will not become another long-term institution. Temporary care must be a bridge, not a destination. Today, the Complex serves children living on the streets, youth in conflict with the law, children with disabilities or chronic illnesses, and others requiring immediate protection. Their circumstances differ, so their paths toward healing and family must be individualized.
Wijems Sainval, Overture’s Child Protection Manager, helps lead the team responsible for keeping that principle at the center of the Complex:
“Our responsibility is to make sure the Complex never becomes another place where children simply remain because there is nowhere else for them to go. From the day a child arrives, we must already be working toward what comes next - a safe return to family whenever possible or another permanent family placement when returning home is not safe. Temporary care should give a child time for rehabilitation and prepare for that transition, but family is the destination.” - Wijems Sainval, Child Protection Manager, Overture International
For each child, Overture’s Haitian team works alongside IBESR to determine what it will take for that child to safely belong in a family. That may involve family tracing, home assessments, counseling, mediation, education, economic support, caregiver preparation, or foster care when returning home is not possible. And the work does not end with placement. Continued monitoring and family support are critical to helping a child remain safe and stable.
Twenty-Three Children. Twenty-Three Families.
Over the past year, Overture and IBESR have supported foster-family placements for 23 children living with HIV or disabilities, with several more children awaiting placement with trained foster families.
Those numbers represent much more than program outcomes. They represent children who might once have spent years, or even their entire childhoods, in an orphanage or hospital. Instead, they have been given the opportunity to experience something far more valuable: a family who knows when they are afraid, notices when they are sick, celebrates their progress, and reminds them through the ordinary rhythms of daily life that they belong.
As Haiti’s crisis places more children at risk, the need for trained foster families and the support systems surrounding them continues to grow.
A System Is Beginning to Take Shape
One of the most encouraging developments of this past year has been watching different partners begin carrying appropriate pieces of the work. IBESR provides Haitian government leadership, legal authority, referrals, case coordination, and foster-care oversight. Other government programs are beginning to assume responsibilities at the Complex, including commitments toward feeding children in temporary care.
The campus school, which serves nearly 1,000 children, is working toward nationalization in collaboration with Haiti’s Ministry of Education. UNICEF and other partners are contributing technical expertise, training, infrastructure improvements, and project-specific resources, including renovations to residential areas and the clinic.
For IBESR, this partnership is also strengthening its capacity to lead:
“The partnership with Overture has helped strengthen IBESR’s leadership and our capacity to advance child protection initiatives in the South. Overture does not work around IBESR; they work with us to bring technical experience, trained professionals, and operational support that help us fulfill our responsibility to protect children. This collaboration is helping us implement plans and policies for stronger services for children and families.”— Bertrand Méridien, IBESR Coordinator, South Department
This is the heart of shared responsibility. No single organization can or should carry Haiti’s child protection system alone. Haitian institutions lead, public agencies increasingly assume responsibilities aligned with their mandates, technical partners contribute specialized resources, and Overture brings an experienced Haitian team and the daily operational capacity that helps connect these contributions to children and families.
In August, UNICEF also approved Overture as a full-capacity partner following extensive safeguarding, policy, training, and technical preparation - strengthening our ability to bring additional expertise, resources, and partnerships into Haiti’s child protection system.
Sometimes systemic progress is visible in a major milestone like this. Other times it is much quieter: a government agency assuming responsibility for a meal, another organization providing transportation, a social worker sitting patiently with a frightened child, or a foster parent opening the door and saying there is room in their family.
Each action may seem small on its own, but together they begin to change a system.
Haiti’s Children Cannot Wait for the System to Be Perfect
This transition is also happening in the middle of an extraordinary crisis. Violence and displacement continue to separate families and expose children to abuse, exploitation, hunger, interrupted education, recruitment by armed groups, and life on the streets. At mid-year, UNICEF reported that approximately 2.8 million children in Haiti needed humanitarian assistance, while 1.47 million people had been internally displaced as of May 2026.
As the crisis grows, more children need a safe place to stabilize, more families need help remaining together, and more foster families are needed when children cannot safely return home. Yet government processes, construction, funding, partner approvals, and institutional change do not always move at the same pace. Children continue to arrive needing help every day.
That is why Overture remains deeply engaged. We are working toward a stronger system for tomorrow while ensuring that the child who arrives today has someone ready to receive them, protect them, and begin helping them find their way back to family.
The People Behind the System
Buildings matter. Partnerships matter. Government commitments matter. But ultimately, people make the system work.
Private support from donors like YOU helps Overture sustain a child-protection workforce of approximately 75 Haitian professionals - social workers, protection agents, case managers, caregivers, drivers, and operational staff who respond when a child arrives in crisis and continue walking beside children and families long after placement.
Our commitment also extends beyond the Complex. Overture works to strengthen government agencies and local structures responsible for protecting children in their own communities through technical knowledge, coordination, practical systems, and support for Haitian professionals carrying out this work.
Enel Andre, Overture’s Social/Community Development Manager, explains why this role - and the donors behind it - remains so important:
“Part of Overture’s commitment is helping strengthen the government agencies that have the responsibility to protect Haiti’s children—not only at the Complex, but in the communities where children and families live. We want to help more agencies develop the tools, training, coordination, and community connections they need to do that work well. Overture does not receive operating funding from the Haitian government, and that independence is important. It allows us to support, strengthen, and collaborate with government institutions while remaining accountable to our mission and to the best interests of children. But it also means we depend on donors who believe in this work to make that support possible.” - Enel Andre, Social/Community Development Manager, Overture International
Government agencies and international partners increasingly contribute to public services, infrastructure, training, and specific projects. Those investments are essential, but they do not fund Overture’s complete child-protection team or all the flexible daily costs of responding when a child suddenly needs help.
This is where our donors play a role no other partner can completely fill. Private support gives Overture the flexibility to maintain an experienced Haitian team, respond to unexpected needs, accompany government partners in the field, and continue supporting children and families through the gaps that inevitably occur while a stronger system is being built.
The Next Chapter
Systems shaped over generations do not change in a year, especially in a country facing profound instability. But one year into this transition, meaningful change is visible: a former orphanage has become a Child Protection Complex; government agencies are beginning to assume greater responsibility; children with complex needs are entering families; foster families are being prepared; and Haitian professionals are increasingly equipped to lead.
During the next year, Overture will continue working with IBESR to strengthen crisis response, family tracing and reunification, accredited foster care, services for children affected by armed groups, and long-term monitoring after placement. We will measure progress not simply by how many children leave temporary care, but by what happens afterward—stronger caregivers, timely follow-up, stable placements, and fewer children becoming separated from their families again.
Because reclaiming a child’s future is not accomplished the day they leave the Complex. It happens in all the days that follow.
You Are Part of This Story
To every donor, prayer partner, church, organization, and friend who has walked this road with us: Thank you! Your support does more than help Overture operate a program or maintain a campus. You are helping Haitian professionals protect children, helping families remain together, and helping strengthen a Haitian-led system that can protect children for generations to come.
There will be setbacks and moments when progress feels painfully slow. But this first year has shown us that meaningful change is possible through persistent partnership, Haitian leadership, families willing to open their homes, and donors committed to the long journey.
This is not simply about transforming a campus. It is about transforming the way children are protected - one child, one family, one community, one stronger system at a time.
Together, we are reclaiming futures and helping build a stronger future for Haiti’s children.
Help Reclaim a Child’s Future
Give today and help ensure that every child has the opportunity to grow up safe, supported, and surrounded by family.
A stronger child protection system is being built - but Haiti’s children cannot wait. Your gift helps sustain the Haitian professionals who respond when a child is in crisis, strengthen families, and help children move safely toward permanent family care.
