A couple from the Landmark area have set up a foster home in Haiti for rescued slave girls.

Gary Unger and his wife Mavis moved to Haiti in 2016 in an effort to adopt their daughter Mitchella from a Haitian orphanage. He notes in the year they spent working on that process and serving in the orphanage they saw a huge variance in the status of local children with some children looking healthy and well dressed next to kids who appeared to be malnourished. He adds that is when they learned the term Restavek.

"What a Restavek is, is a child that is given away or sold by their birth parents just because of extreme poverty and these kids are treated much worse than the family dog would be treated. Barely given food, up well before the kids go to school, well before the family to get breakfast ready and well after the family is in bed, they are still working. Mentally, physically, and in most cases sexually abused children."

Unger says the term Restavek changed their lives. He notes they knew that they needed to do something to help and provide for these children in need.

"In the early spring of 2017, we told the people back home, friends, family what was happening and what we wanted to do so we got together with a few local guys, local businessmen, local farmers, people from our church and formed a board and we became Beauty Out Of Ashes, that is the organization, we are a non-profit organization and we went back with the goal of reclaiming these kids from their slave masters."

Unger says many of these kids need to be rescued by police as it is an illegal practice in Haiti. He notes Beauty out of Ashes is a licensed home with the Haitian equivalent of Child and Family Services and works closely with them. He notes they now live in Haiti full time to care for these rescued slave girls.

"We are giving these kids a childhood. We are showing them the love of Jesus. We would be considered long-term foster care, we are not an orphanage because we are capped at 12 kids, so we are a family, they call us mom and dad, me and Mavis, and Mitchella is their big sister. They have got a life now and every day their smiles show it."

Unger says many of the girls have started to open up about their past experiences far sooner than they expected. He notes with some of the horrendous things they have been through, they will also be providing them with counseling to help the girls heal years of abuse and emotional scarring. He adds they now only visit Canada and the US once a year, but are committed to living with these kids as family.