Lighthouse Point girl's fundraising pays for new Haitian village

It took a child to raise a village — the village in Haiti, the child from Lighthouse Point.

That child, Rachel Wheeler, 11, has spent the last two years telling people about the desperate poverty in Haiti and asking them for money to help build homes there through Food for the Poor.

She has raised more than $170,000
"Most people have a hard time saying no to her because of her conviction and her age," says her mom, Julie Wheeler. "Most 9-year-olds are asking you to take them to McDonald's or Target. They're not asking you for $2,600 to build a house in Haiti."

If it takes spunk, this red-belt karate kid has shown it. As for stamina, the fifth-grader at Zion Lutheran Christian School in Deerfield Beach was a member of a school basketball team. And while she can be a bit of a ham, drawing laughs from her family when she talks about how shy she is, she has no trouble getting serious.

"Haiti is one of the poorest countries on the planet and we need to change that," Rachel says.



Rachel and her family travel to Leogane, Haiti, on Wednesday to see the 25 homes she helped create, and to receive thanks from residents of the new community named Rachel's Village.

Her efforts have not gone unnoticed. This month she was named one of the country's top ten youth volunteers in the Prudential Spirit of Community Awards competition that included more than 29,000 participants. She received $6,000 in personal awards that she plans to use for college and $5,000 that will go to her project.

The whole thing started when the family's 2009 Spring Break trip to Key West was briefly interrupted. Her mom had committed to attending a Chamber of Commerce gathering at the Coconut Creek-based Food for the Poor on the first day of the break, so she dragged Rachel along and saw her daughter transformed during the presentation by the nonprofit's president and CEO, Robin Mahfood.

"She's very prayerful and motivated," Mahfood said, remembering the beaming, smartly dressed girl in pigtails he met that day. "After the meeting, she came up, gave me a hug and said, 'I want to help provide for the poor.' "


Islande Vernet, a 23-year-old mother lives in a home built with money raised by Rachel Wheeler. She still cannot believe she no longer has to sleep outside. Her children, Junie2, and baby Andres, 3 months, now have a solid roof over their heads and four strong walls surrounding them as they sleep. Their house has an attached bathroom and is reinforced to resist earthquakes.


Rachel peppered him with questions. Her mom says Rachel was in tears during the drive to the Keys as she looked at the pictures of poverty displayed in a book Mahfood had given her.

Julie Wheeler remembers calling a chamber friend during that drive and telling her, "I think we've traumatized my kid. She wants to save Haiti."

"I wanted to help, but I didn't know how," Rachel says. Mahfood had an answer: Help him build homes in Haiti.

Initially, the family's plan was to have businesses donate $200 each. It would take 13 contributors to raise the $2,600 then needed for a home and they set a goal of building 13 homes — an effort that became Rachel's Baker's Dozen.

However, Rachel was so good at connecting with potential donors that the mission soon expanded to building a 25-home village with larger homes that cost $6,400 each. Now she wants to add a school to the project.

Rachel appeared at chamber meetings, sometimes standing on a chair to speak and be seen, asking for donations and handing out stamped, self-addressed envelopes to those who did not have their checkbooks handy. She appeared on television news programs and spread the word at school and in the neighborhood, and she had a page created on the Food for the Poor website.

Her online plea caught the eye of Erik Dahle of Broetje Orchards in Washington state, which contributed $48,000 through its "first fruits" charity campaign in 2009. Dahle sat on a selection committee and recommended Rachel's project to other workers at the cherry and apple orchards, who have the final say.

"I came across Rachel's project and thought it was really neat," said Dahle, who himself has an 11-year-old daughter named Rachel who has raised money for causes such as orphans in Kenya. "I guess what I really liked about the project was that is was very ambitious for such a young person, and I wanted to encourage her to keep going and perhaps even expand on it."

Rachel didn't just leave it to others. Along with her younger brother, Trey, and a friend, Nikki Capocefalo, she set up a lemonade stand in the family's front yard, made bracelets and potholders to sell with the lemonade, and raised more than $300, her mom said.

When the 2010 earthquake struck Haiti with the epicenter next to Leogane, it devastated Rachel.

"I was really sad because I thought it hit my village and I would have to start over," Rachel says. She didn't realize that even though she had been raising money for months, the construction work had not yet started.

This week's village visit is not so Rachel can wrap up her fundraising and move on to other things. It's just a time to appreciate what she has accomplished so far.

"When I won the gold medal for the Prudential, I didn't say, 'OK, I won a gold medal, it's time for me to quit.' I said, 'OK, it's time to keep truckin'. Let's go.' "