PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – from www.nydailynews.com – She’s a beautiful woman on an even more beautiful mission: Save the children of Haiti, help rebuild the country.
Susie Krabacher, a curvaceous blond, who once graced the pages of Playboy magazine, may seem an unlikely hero who has little in common with the people of Haiti. But she’s been lending a hand for years, and plans to be there for many more years to come.
In a country notorious for violence and poverty, Susie Krabacher may look like she doesn’t belong.
Despite her cover girl looks, expensive jeans and designer sunglasses, she’d say she belongs as much as anyone else.
In an interview with ABC’s Leon Harris, she confides, “I had a dream that I wanted to take care of kids that nobody chose for the orphanages for adoptions.”
Living a life of wrenching ups and downs, Krabacher was a former foster child herself, who went on to model for Playboy in the ’80s. Years later, in 1994, she answered a different calling.
“I didn’t feel like I had an adult that was caring for me like I saw other children’s parents loving on them,” Krabacher said.
Over the years, she’s built orphanages, schools and clinics — under the nonprofit Mercy and Sharing. In Cité Soleil, she’s learned to work with some of Haiti’s tougher residents, like negotiating the use of the school’s basketball court with local gang members.
“That’s pretty smart, pretty quick thinking for a Playboy bunny,” Leon joked. “Oh, please!” Krabacher responded. “You must not know very many,” she quipped.
But when Krabacher enters her orphanage, she’s simply known as Mama Susie. She and her staff of 160 care for 5,100 kids.
At the same time that their orphanage in Cazeau was destroyed, many more children came to need her help.
Since the earthquake in January, she’s taken on a number of new children.
“All of them are traumatized, all of them were in shock,” Krabacher explained.
Many of the children at Mercy and Sharing have disabilities, and won’t be adopted or even live to adulthood.
“They will never leave here because there’s no place for them to go,” Krabacher explained. “We try to give them a very happy life, to try to keep them comfortable.”
“This may be an orphanage, but the people here tell me they don’t want to see the kids adopted out of here,” Krabacher said. “First, they hate having to explain to the disabled kids why they didn’t get picked.
And they also think the ones that grow up here have a special mission here in Haiti. They come and change their country, learn to be leaders, they are the engineers and scientists and teachers, professors, doctors.”
One young man who Leon met, Aslin, is a student at Mercy and Sharing.
Through a translator, Aslin says he studies a lot, and already shares Mama Susie’s mission, aspiring to become a doctor.
Even though the rubble has yet to be cleared, Aslin is already a believer that he and Mama Susie can rebuild Haiti one child at a time. Board members for Mercy and Sharing cover the costs of overhead and administration. Private donations are used to pay for schools, food and clinics for the children.
But Mercy and Sharing is just one of many organizations asking the same question: Where is the money that’s been promised since the earthquake to rebuild the country? Expect future reports on that.
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