About Hope for Haiti Mission | Christian Ministry Serving Haiti
Mission Statement
To be an instrument of Christ by giving the Haitian people hope.
Hope for Haiti serves alongside Haitian churches, families, and community leaders with practical care, faith, and lasting partnership. Through Food, Access, and Vision, we respond to locally identified needs while sharing the love and hope of Jesus Christ in both word and action.
Hope On The Ground Since 1999
Hope for Haiti has led more than 50 mission trips and brought more than 500 high school students and adults from the United States to Haiti. Together with Haitian partners, teams have helped build four Lutheran churches, two Lutheran schools, and an orphanage. We have distributed food in communities facing malnutrition and provided thousands of pairs of eyeglasses to people who otherwise could not afford the ability to see clearly. Our ministry is rooted in faith, practical service, and relationships that have grown over decades. Over time, we have become experts in administering to the needs of the people and working with tight budgets.
Yet our most important legacy is not measured only in buildings, trips, or supplies. It is measured in trust.
Keith and Kim Waller
Our Founder’s Story
A first trip that changed everything
Hope for Haiti began in 1999 when Kim Waller, a youth director from Warren, Michigan, joined two other churches in planning a mission trip to Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The group included 22 high school students, eight adults, and two members of Kim and Keith Waller’s own family: their 19-year-old daughter and 15-year-old son.
At the time, the trip felt like an exciting but uncertain adventure. Kim did not yet know how deeply Haiti, its people, and the experience of serving would shape her life, her family, and her understanding of what it means to follow God’s call.
Keith, Kim’s husband and a police officer, had a different perspective. With much of his family traveling to a place he understood to be dangerous, he joined the trip with one primary goal: to help protect them. He could not have known that Haiti and its people would soon become an important part of his life as well.
Different gifts, one calling
Kim and Keith experienced their first trip in different ways, but both discovered a deep calling to serve.
Kim was drawn to the people she met in hospitals, orphanages, schools, and communities. She valued the personal relationships that formed while visiting those who were sick, encouraging families, caring for infants, playing with young children, and preparing teams and supplies in the United States.
Keith found purpose in hands-on service. He helped build church walls, paint a Christian school, support the practical work of the team, and use his gift of music by playing trumpet during church services.
Their gifts were different, but their response was the same: a growing passion to support the people of Haiti both physically and spiritually. They returned home asking how God might use their time, abilities, resources, and relationships to make a meaningful difference.
A ministry built on faith
Hope for Haiti grew from a commitment to keep returning, to invite others into service, and to respond to needs shared directly by Haitian friends and ministry partners.
Over the years, Hope for Haiti has worked to provide food and support for families, assist with construction and community projects, encourage child sponsorship and Christian education, support local churches, share the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and help people in the United States better understand the people and needs of Haiti.
The ministry has always believed that physical and spiritual care belong together. Food distribution, eyeglass clinics, community projects, Vacation Bible School, prayer, church gatherings, and conversations of encouragement are all opportunities to demonstrate the love of Jesus through both word and action.
Our purpose is not simply to bring assistance into Haiti. Our purpose is to walk alongside Haitian churches and communities in ways that strengthen relationships, support local leadership, and honor the dignity of every person served.
Listening before acting. Partnership, not dependence
For more than two decades, Hope for Haiti teams have returned to the same communities and developed trusted relationships with Haitian pastors, workers, families, orphanages, churches, and community leaders.
We do not begin by assuming we know what Haiti needs. We listen, learn, and respond.
This approach shapes how Hope for Haiti serves. We work through trusted Haitian church relationships and local leaders who remain active in their communities throughout the year. When possible, we hire local workers and help keep resources within the communities being served.
Our goal is not to create a ministry dependent on visiting Americans. Instead, we seek to strengthen Haitian churches and leaders so that families remain connected to the care, encouragement, resources, and spiritual community available through their local congregation.
The people who make the work possible
Hope for Haiti’s story is not only the story of mission teams traveling from the United States. It is also the story of Haitian pastors, translators, workers, families, and leaders who provide cultural knowledge, continuity, friendship, and direction.
Over the years, nine Haitian workers have helped support Hope for Haiti mission trips through translation, security, local knowledge, and trusted relationships. They are not temporary additions to a visiting team. They are long-standing partners who understand the people, communities, churches, and needs that make the ministry possible.
The ministry is also supported by board members, volunteers, churches, donors, schools, organizations, and families in the United States who pray, give, pack food, organize events, share stories, and help carry Haiti’s needs into their own communities.
More than 500 students and adults have traveled with Hope for Haiti. When they return home, many become advocates who share what they have learned, help raise support, and encourage others to care about the people of Haiti.
