Overwhelming needs inspire overwhelming love.
David Vanderpool is founder and CEO of Live Beyond, a ministry to the poorest people in the developing world. Their comprehensive outreach includes caring for pregnant women in Haiti, to help them have healthy pregnancies and safe deliveries, as well as help them time and space pregnancies in the future so they aren’t tempted to abort unwanted children. In the developing world, this is a key issue for preventing abortions and improving both maternal and infant mortality rates. Live Beyond initiatives include:
Maternal health
Giving birth in Haiti is extremely dangerous. Unlike the United States, the average woman in Thomazeau has 6-7 children and often experiences the same number of miscarriages in her lifetime. As the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, women in Haiti do not have access to comprehensive prenatal and postnatal care, adequate nutrition, family planning and maternal health education – resulting in an alarming maternal and infant mortality rate in Haiti.
Nearly all of these maternal and infant deaths could be prevented. The women in Thomazeau, Haiti are desperate for an intervention and hope to save their own lives and their children’s.
At-risk
In Haiti, adults and children with disabilities are often treated as outcasts. Whether it’s a physical or mental disability, individuals with special needs are neglected by their families, bullied by the community, and excluded from social activities and left alone with no one to care for them.
Living Beyond exists to care for the “forgotten ones” seeking out the vulnerable and providing for more than 80 individuals’ needs, including medical care, meals, physical therapy, education and one-on-one time to show Jesus Christ’s abounding love for them.
Orphan Care
LiveBeyond partners with Children of Hope Orphanage & Hospice (CHOH) to support 38 orphans under their care. Many of these children lost their family in the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, while others were abandoned at birth.
