Ten days after the Jan. 12 earthquake devastated his native Haiti, Jodel Charles was on a plane bound for home.
His initial goal was to provide 100 pounds of badly needed medical supplies to his country, an amount that quickly grew into 6,000 pounds of provisions as well as a team of 14 medical professionals, including his wife, Sue, a nurse. The team of doctors, nurses, a pharmacist, a pastor and members of the Navy Reserve spent the next two weeks helping earthquake victims.
“It was as if the team was hand-picked by God,” said Charles, a systems engineer for Visa in Highlands Ranch.
Five days after returning to Denver on Feb. 8, Jodel and Sue Charles founded Renewal 4 Haiti, a nonprofit organization committed to bringing long-term change to the people of Leogane, the epicenter of the earthquake and Jodel Charles’ hometown.
The organization has since sent tens of thousands of pounds of medical supplies to the country.
“If we don’t do it as Haitians, we can’t expect anyone else to do it,” Charles said.
On Saturday evening, Renewal 4 Haiti hosted an event at Kent Denver School aimed at raising money to support the building of a new hospital in Leogane, where Jodel Charles’ parents have served as doctors for 27 years.
Hospital Camejo was scheduled to open March 1 after eight years in the making, only to be destroyed in 37 seconds by the January earthquake.
Though 90 percent of Leogane’s buildings were destroyed and more than 40,000 of its 134,000 people were killed in the disaster, the world’s attention was on neighboring Port-au-Prince, which had a population of about 2 million people.
“Nobody was talking about Leogane,” Jodel Charles said of his hometown. “We founded Renewal 4 Haiti to support Leogane and raise awareness about the city.”
The event, which featured entertainment by Cleo Parker Robinson Dance, Haitian-American jazz artist Jowee Omicil and Purnell Steen & Le Jazz Machine, was attended by many of the volunteers who made the trip with Charles, as well as Raymond Joseph, Haitian ambassador to the United States.
Joseph, who attended the 2008 Democratic National Convention here, said he was pleased to be back in Denver.
“But my pleasure is tinged with sadness for what’s happened to my country,” he said.
“The earthquake has changed the whole nation, and in some ways has changed the whole world. The world since that day has come to find out what Haiti is. All of the world is coming around and embracing us.”
Margaret Jackson: 303-954-1473 or mjackson@denverpost.com
