Jeff Swope

CNN visits Haitian orphanage where Franklin County family volunteers

By Vicky Taylor Staff writer

Jeff Swope and the orphanage he helped build in Haiti were visited by CNN's Anderson Cooper last week and featured on Cooper's news show.

The segment talks about the orphans and abandoned children being cared for at the Caring and Sharing Foundation orphanage at Williamson, Haiti, and its mission there.

Swope, his father Lester, wife Terrilee and daughter Kelsey are in Haiti this week working at the orphanage. Jeff and Kelsey Swope are interviewed by Cooper in the news segment.

The family - including Lester and Delores Swope of Chambersburg - has been involved with the orphanage for several years and in mission work in Haiti for decades.

Jeff Swope, a Quarryville building contractor, helped build a new orphanage for the foundation last year. More than 100 orphans were moved to the new facility from Port au Prince last fall.

In the interview, Jeff Swope told Cooper that the goal of the orphanage is to make sure the young children at the orphanage have a good life in Haiti instead of putting them out for adoption overseas. About 70 percent of the children have physical or mental disabilities, and some have terminal illnesses.

He talks about the orphanage's mission of caring for and educating Haiti's orphan children in country instead of finding adoptive homes for them outside of the country.

Swope said he thought that what some Americans might see as good intentions for Haiti's orphans and disadvantaged children don't turn out to be best for the children.

The orphanage's goal is to keep their young charges in Haiti, educate them and turn them into productive citizens who can someday help make Haiti a better place to live.

"We want to raise them here, to help their country," Kelsey Swope said. "If we took them all away, who's going to help out down here?"

Swope, who first came to Haiti himself as a young child when his parents, Lester and Delores, were serving as missionaries, often comes back to the Caribbean country with his own family for short-term missionary work with the orphanage.

"These kids get into your heart and they won't ever leave," Swope told Cooper during the interview.

The video footage of the Anderson Cooper news segment can be seen on the Web at http:// www.cnn.com/video/?/video/bestoftv/2010/02/12/cooper.orphanage.haiti.cnn&hpt=C1. At the site, click on "Haitians want orphans to stay."

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