Brad Johnson is the president of Mission of Hope, started in 1972 to address humanitarian needs in Haiti.
Federal Newswire:
How was Mission of Hope started?
Brad Johnson:
My parents in 1972 went down to lead a choir, and go to churches throughout Haiti. They saw the great need. At the same time, they saw the resilience and the beauty of the people, and they fell in love with the country.
A few years later, when I was five years old, they took me. Every year since the age of five to 18, I went with them on trips and they did various projects.
My Dad was a businessman. He would save money and build an orphanage or drill wells. After [some] time they realized that they needed a project that was sustainable, and that they could continue to see it go forward. So a friend of theirs in the country sold them 20 acres. It seemed way outside the city at that time, and they were able to have that until 1996 when my wife and I had been married a year.
We went down to Haiti on a mission trip [every year], and [one year] a father came running up to us and said his baby was sick. We went to their house and saw that she was desperately sick, and we took her to a clinic. As we got to the clinic, someone from behind us told us the clinic was closed and the baby died right there in her Dad's arms.
That changed our lives and we just felt like God asked us if we would go to Haiti and help change that country, so we went in 1998 with a vision of seeing Haiti transformed. What's happened since then has been truly miraculous. The US military was there when we [arrived] in ‘98. They built the school for us. [Our] first day we had 230 students in our classrooms, and the kids were fainting in the class because they were malnourished.
So we started a nutrition program. If you fast-forward 25 years to today, we have 16,000 kids in our school system throughout Haiti. We also have 125,000 children that we're feeding daily throughout the country. We have a technical school, sports complex, and a full hospital. We've built right around 2,000 homes since the big earthquake in 2010.
The big thing right now is we have 420 full-time Haitian staff that are dedicated to seeing their nation changed, and they're working daily right now to do that.
Federal Newswire:
Haiti and the Dominican Republic share an island. Can you explain the differences in terms of need between the two countries?
Brad Johnson:
The entire island's a fantastic island. It's one of the most beautiful.
Both people are very different, very industrious on both sides of the island. The Dominican Republic has a ton more opportunity, that's the best way I would say it, whether it be through major league baseball, tourism; the industries that are here just lead to more opportunity, which is why there's two-plus million Haitians that are over here for that opportunity. They want to be in their homeland but they lack opportunity there so they come here.
But we are able to work with local churches, schools, sports programs here throughout the country in the Dominican Republic to help them see life transformation and continue to have better opportunity for what we believe is most important. [That is] for them to have a relationship with Jesus, and then to understand the fullness of the opportunity they have that God's given them, and that's to use their skills to make their countries better.
Federal Newswire:
Why is your faith such an important aspect of your humanitarian mission?
Brad Johnson:
We see that Jesus is the hope of the world. He says that he came to give us life, and life in abundance. For us, the reason why we do what we do is because of who he is in us. We believe that Christ has called us to do more things for him. So any place we go, we work with all people no matter what background they are, no matter where they come from, because a need is a need, and we want to help meet that need. But the reason that we personally do it or organizationally do it is because of who Jesus is to us.
We believe that He's called us to go in and be his hands and feet and the body of Christ here on earth. We bring missions. We bring medical trips to Haiti and the Dominican Republic to meet the need. And in the process, we're going to tell the folks why we're there. The ultimate need that we want to address is the need of the soul.
Federal Newswire:
Why is hope important in your work?
Brad Johnson:
Haiti has taught me personally so much about life and about faith because growing up in North America, so much of our faith is based on things, comforts. When you strip all that away you have nothing but faith. That's what I've learned from the people of Haiti, is they've stripped it down to a relationship with God. What helpls them exist many days, it's that hope.
They've taught us, because while they have so little, when you walk into their village you go, “Wow!” They have maybe a little piece of land, but they have crazy joy, they have peace. That teaches us that what we really need is maybe not all the stuff, but a relationship with the living God.
Federal Newswire:
How much time do you spend down on the island, either in Haiti or in the Dominican Republic?
Brad Johnson:
It fluctuates. Right now, not much in Haiti just because of politically where it's at. About half of my time right now is spent here in the Dominican Republic as we launch this campus and the ministry here. The rest of the time for me personally is going to be spent speaking in churches, meeting with individuals to help fulfill the vision that we feel like God's called us to here.
Our staff in the United States predominantly supports the field work in Haiti, the 420 staff [down there]. They're supporting them, helping them do what they do. Then we're building the Dominican staff here. So at some point we'll back out and allow them to run, and we'll be a support base to them as well.
Federal Newswire:
How has Haiti changed during your time working there and what still needs to change?
Brad Johnson:
I’ve lived through multiple leadership shifts in Haiti, from my early years of going as a baby to the final years leading up to 1986, and then watched Haiti find its foothold in democracy as it attempted for many years while under dictatorship. Then, all of a sudden they have freedom to vote and choose their leadership.
The way the constitution was formed, they almost hedged it against dictatorship, which tied the hands of the President. He couldn't choose his prime minister, they had to be elected or ratified by the parliament. All of that created issues going forward.
But what I've seen that I think is good is since 1986, Haiti has become more open to the rest of the world, which has allowed them to see a higher standard of what they could be. They've been able to see what's happening in the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica, with their tourism.
Then they look at their own island and go, “hold on, we have all the natural resources here, why aren't we experiencing this economic growth of people wanting to come and visit our island?”
I think that's been a real value-add. There has been a focus on education, there's more folks that are educated across the island, which lends itself to a better understanding of what Haiti could be.
The downside is its stability. When you lack stability, it takes opportunity from people.
The one thing I wholeheartedly believe is that if we can give the people of Haiti the opportunity to touch the bottom rung of the ladder of success, they will climb it without any help. They just need the opportunity, almost the stool, to get up to that bottom rung and then they're going to climb.
We've seen that through all of our education systems, technical school, and sports. Every time they've had the opportunity, they haven't squandered it.
For us, organizationally, what we believe is we want to give every person in Haiti just the opportunity to be successful, to understand who God made them to be, and how they can be a part of seeing their nation thrive. When they do that, we see great growth.
Federal Newswire:
Has your organization looked into micro-lending?
Brad Johnson:
We feel like our niche is education. [However], we [do] partner with multiple organizations that do micro-lending.
Our basis has been that if we can educate somebody that hasn't been to school but is just educated on how to do business, and then give them the micro-loan–or have them meet somebody that does that–they're going to be much more successful.
An example of that is our technical school. We started it with the employers and said, “what trades do you need?” We've built our technical school to meet those needs.
When we've been able to graduate the kids out of there, we've had 80% job placement, which is good anywhere but in Haiti that's almost miraculous.
Federal Newswire:
How widely are cell phones used in Haiti or is it mostly cell phone free?
Brad Johnson:
No, actually, I don't know the exact date on this, but Haiti was one of the first countries because they didn't have landlines to be all cell phones. There were several companies that came in and made it very cheap to own cell phones, and made it easy to pay on a daily basis for usage versus a monthly payment. [This] allowed people to have cell phones, and now cell phones are countrywide. Smartphones are pretty countrywide as well. Now there is the ability to communicate throughout.
Federal Newswire:
How many students are in your schools in Haiti?
Brad Johnson:
We have 16,000 kids that are in our schools. To be quite honest, we have that many on a waiting list. We're running right now to get those kids, the 16,000 we have sponsored so that we can open the doors for the next 16,000.
Part of that for us is nutrition. We feel like it's very important. Those two run hand-in-hand. If a child doesn't have the nutrition they need in a day, it's very hard for them to focus in the classroom. So we've paired all of our nutrition programs with schools. Even the 125,000 kids, those are predominantly in schools where we're feeding those children.
The reason we do that is because what we found in baseline data is, not only do their height and weight go up, but their GPA goes up, attendance goes up, and the school's enrollment goes up because Mom and Dad go “if I send my child to this school, they'll have a meal and an education.”
So the meals have played a critical part in us expanding and seeing transformation in a lot of children.
Federal Newswire:
Are you doing similar work in the Dominican Republic? What's the school population there?
Brad Johnson:
Yeah, we've just launched education here. We walked a little slower because they do have a fairly good education system already in place. We've met with the Minister of Education in the Dominican Republic, and we're asking how do we walk alongside [your system], are there underprivileged children that we can work with? They're introducing us to those children.
The other thing that we're trying to figure out–this is not just the Dominican Republic, but in The Bahamas, Turks and Caicos–is how do we work with the Haitian population that are there but can't get to school? Because they don't have the right paperwork to be legal in that country. That's something that our team is addressing right now. How do we educate Haitian children [no matter where they are] who don't have the opportunity for a good education?
Federal Newswire:
What kind of medical work are you conducting?
Brad Johnson:
One of the things that we feel very strongly about is that there are churches all over the world. We go into a community and we work with that local church and we say, what are the needs in your community?
Many times medical's going to come up. What we do then is we work with local hospitals, clinics, and regional governments, and we'll bring in specialists from the United States. [They’ll] work usually in the church to host the clinics, because they're in regions where it is hard to access clinics or hospitals.
Most places feel very good about us doing that because we take the load off of them. Just last week, we had one here in the Dominican Republic, and saw over 600 people just in a few days. It's a huge [part of the] ministry.
But also, for example, in Haiti, after the earthquake in 2010, we started a prosthetics lab. We have about 500 patients a year that we'll see coming through that get new limbs and readjustments. Medical is a big component, something that we take very much for granted in the States–that we can have care anytime we need it.
Federal Newswire:
How many medical missions do you send over to both countries in a year? Are you always looking for doctors and other medical care professionals?
Brad Johnson:
We're always looking for medical care professionals who will come in and work with us. Because of where [Haiti is] politically, we can't take groups in right now. Before everything started to go down, we were taking 5,000 North American people in a year. I would say 10 to 20% of that was medical. That's ramping up now in the Dominican Republic. This [time] next year we'll have over 1,000 that'll come down with us.
Federal Newswire:
What’s happening on the ground now in Haiti that is complicating your mission?
Brad Johnson:
There has been a string of what I would say disastrous moments from economic problems and inflation, that's kind of where it kicked off in 2019. But the assassination of an elected President and the silence of the world, [that said] “okay he was assassinated, we're going to do nothing about this.”
Then the rise of gang activity. In the void of leadership, we had gang activity, and now it's spread throughout the communities around Port-au-Prince, predominantly. That's the capital and that's where we are. They've gone in and taken villages over, and people who have lived their entire lives have left. The villages are empty now and only gang controlled.
It's just not safe for us to take groups in. The problem is that there's a compounding issue now, because the UN would say there are over 100,000 kids that are at risk of dying from starvation 600 miles off of the United States’ shores. That's unacceptable.
There are people being held hostage right now, literally by these gangs. But [there’s] also a whole nation being held hostage from opportunity. Kids can't go to school because gangs have been allowed to take over.
Right now our staff is still working very hard in Haiti. It's a different way to work, but they're still getting food out. 70% of our schools are still operational. We're just believing that there's going to be action that can take these gangs back, so people can have the opportunity to live normal lives.
Federal Newswire:
Do you believe greater attention needs to be paid by the U.S. in terms of leadership in places like this? This is just about helping people, right?
Brad Johnson:
It is. They are number one, they're our neighbors. When we see the mass numbers of people from Haiti that are leaving to go to the Dominican Republic, all the islands surrounding, and the United States, that is an indicator that there's a major problem at home.
Those are things just as a good neighbor we should address, but there's also some major political ramifications from not addressing this issue.
Federal Newswire:
How has this organization been a family enterprise for you and your other family members?
Brad Johnson:
It started for sure with our family and I'm very proud of my parents for introducing us and the passion that they've always lived. They're still living in and still love Haiti and the people of Haiti. My kids–two of them–were adopted from Haiti. Our oldest is a United States Marine now serving in Japan, and he's Haitian. My daughter's a social worker and she went into that predominantly because of what she experienced in Haiti. My two youngest, my youngest biological son was born in Haiti. He wants to return and work there.
The vision started with my parents, but God has brought this team around for what he wants to have done there, both Haitian, Dominican, and in the United States.
Federal Newswire:
How do folks volunteer, give, and invite you into their churches or other civic organizations?
Brad Johnson:
They can go to www.missionofhope.com and see everything that we do.
I'd love to come and speak about Haiti. They need a voice.
We're asking all organizations that serve in Haiti, and all of the folks who support us, to raise their voices to Washington and to God, and just ask for help.
The Haitian people need an intervention so they can have opportunity. We'd love to come to your church and talk about all the opportunities. You can come and work with us and serve with us for a week.
There's a misconception about the people of Haiti and about the country itself, because we live in such a small information age of news and sound bites. But Haiti is a gorgeous country with some of the hardest working people that just want opportunity.
As we give them opportunity, we'll see things that we've never seen. I believe Haiti will once again be what used to be called the Pearl of the Antilles.
