Choose GCF on Giving Tuesday

Dear Friend:

2020 has been a year of extraordinary hardships. We hope you and your family are keeping safe and healthy. As you can imagine, due to Covid-19, GCF cancelled all its major fund raising events and has raised any funds for its programs.

We need your support more than ever to help keep our health and education programs alive. Please choose the Gaskov Clerge Foundation (GCF) for your year-end giving.

We are counting on your generosity to keep hope alive for all the patients and the students we serve in Haiti. Please donate today at www.gaskov.org.

With gratitude,

GCF

2019: A Year of Unwavering Faith!

“As you believe, so it shall be done on to you”

One of the most significant fortune Gaskov’s tragic death left for many of us is faith. Faith is to know that it CAN get better. It is that faith and our conviction that allowed us to manifest all that we have done for our community through the Gaskov Clergé Foundation.

It takes faith to bring forth the vision for GCF’s very first medical mission in 2000. We trusted and believed that it would actually materialize – and sure enough, every thing that we needed for the mission, mysteriously appeared in abundance, which allowed GCF to travel to Les Cayes, Haiti with a large team of medical professionals. That first year, we served over 2,000 patients in one week.

It takes faith to manifest what you see today at Klinik Fonfred. Once we envisioned and visualized what it would feel like for us to establish a world-class medical center for the underserved, we were confident that we will have what we needed to build such center. We were confident it would flow abundantly, and it did. Through our partnership with Forward in Health, we DID IT…and we continue to do more.

It takes faith to believe that things CAN be better. We choose to believe that regardless of the fear and the negativity assumed about Haiti, the situation CAN get better. In fact, GCF, through its scholarships, sports tournaments and Klinik Fonfred, is making things better for a community; We CAN make things better for our scholarship recipients; we CAN make things better for the 20,000 patient encounters the staff at Klinik Fonfred serves every year; we CAN make things better for our staff at Klinik Fonfred. Even when that is just one stone thrown in this massive ocean, WE ARE making a difference through its ripples. Your support continues to prove that where there is a will, there is a way.

It takes faith to start the year with very little funds in the organization’s bank account, yet we know that somehow, someway what is needed to continue with our programs for the year will flow abundantly. In fact it did in 2019 and it WILL in 2020! Here is what 2019 looked like:

· $224,772 raised through our partnerships and GCF's fund raising activities

· $113,162 spent on Klinik Fonfred’s operations

· $ 32,098 spent on a modern laboratory thanks in part to a $20,000 grant from

South Florida Hurricane Mathew Relief

· $ 9,561 to purchase an ambulance to transport critically ill patients

· $ 8,250 invested in 120 student’s future

· $ 1,675 spent on sport tournaments that are keeping the youth active and engaged in

It takes Faith to know that we will make it through these tough times. It takes faith to know that, with less than $50,000 left in GCF’s bank account, what is needed to continue to make a difference this year, will again flow in abundance.

It takes faith to know that you will find it in your heart to contribute to that flow of abundance. As Mathew 7:7 says: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” As such, we are asking you to consider making a monthly donation and become part of this amazing journey makes health care accessible for many underserved patients and also keep under-privileged children in school and engaged in sports. As it has been proven, those children are future Doctors, Nurses, Lawyer, Engineers, etc. They are the future of Haiti…and YOU are helping to create their future by believing in our work and trusting in GOD: the force that guides our faith and conviction. Please find it in you to make a monthly donation today at www.gaskov.org

Dr. Elise Renaud from Trinidad, serving along with GCF during the 2017 Medical Mission

Grieving Through Giving: A Profound Healing Factor in the face of a Tragic Loss

My brother Gaskov Clergé ‘s death in 1999 left us with Chaos, disbelief and horror. He was the life of a party on Friday; got hospitalized on Saturday; and succumbed to liver cancer on Sunday at 38, at the dawn of a promising and fulfilling life.

During the days following that excruciatingly painful reality, we, his family and friends, decided to grieve his loss by giving a part of our modest lives back to our community, hoping to someday stop the tears and heal the wounds. That pledge yielded the Gaskov Clergé Foundation-GCF. Instead of surrendering to depression, we spent our time on countless lively discussions which shaped the organization’s character and future. We defined our mission to be one that will empower individuals by giving them access to education and health care. With modest contributions from relatives and friends, we completed the tax-exempt recognition process and embarked on carrying our mission the following summer. Our goals were to implement a medical mission in Haiti and to provide scholarships to as many children as we possibly could. In August 2000, with a team of approximately 30 doctors, nurses, a support staff, and many bags of donated medical supplies, we traveled to Les Cayes, Haiti on a shoe-string budget, with the goal of seeing 500 patients in 5 days.

We exceeded that goal by the second day. By the 5th day, we examined 1,500 patients with hundreds more not seen by our volunteering Physicians. As for the scholarships, we started with 10 children as recipients and also had to turn away many more. On the trip’s last day, I was tired, brokenhearted and tearful. The tears were partly from the liberating feeling of being at peace with Gaskov’s death through the lives we just touched. Also, my tears were from an overwhelming feeling of inadequacy…in the face of such unfulfilled basic human needs…the right to a decent education and health care.

Since 1999, GCF’s medical missions became the main source of medical care for many who can’t afford to see a doctor. The yearly missions offer free health care and medication to an average of 2,000 patients in the region, many of whom travel from the most remote areas. We have provided financial assistance for several life-saving surgeries in Haiti and we are now operating a world-class medical center (Klinik Fonfred) in Southern Haiti. For our growing Education component, we sponsor 100+ children and now our students and our youth volunteers are graduating as Nurses, Nurse Practitioners, Lawyers and Doctors. Most importantly, we are blessed with the love and the deep gratitude of those we serve.

Through that love and gratitude, we accept Gaskov’s death as a priceless and precious gift. The gift of knowing that it is making a significant difference in many lives and will continue to do so, God willing, with no end in sight. That I believe, has profoundly transformed my grieving experience from detrimental to one that is therapeutic, serene, satisfying and complete. With that said, do you still ask “Why should I support the Gaskov Clergé Foundation?

Seven Reasons to Support GCF

1) We exist to empower individuals both here in the US and in Haiti and have been doing so since 1999 through #health, #education and #sport

2) We have a volunteer Board of professionals who are dedicated to serve our community. We believe we are the change agents who can solve our community’s issues.

3) We are doing amazing work with very limited resources.

4) We are transparent. You can see exactly what we are doing with any funding we receive. They all go directly to the cause.

5) We provide scholarships to about 100 students a year in Southern Haiti. Some of our scholarship recipients are now lawyers, nurses, Nurse Practitioners, and Agronomes.

6) We believe our community deserves access to health care. It’s a fundamental human right. So 4 years ago we build a world-class medical center in Fonfred, a rural community near Les Cayes, Haiti. Thousands of patients receive continuity of care at Klinik Fonfred. Most importantly, we treat all of our patients with utmost respect. It could have been any of us in dire need.

7) Our operating budget for Klinik Fonfred is slightly under $200,000 a year and this year alone, we’ve cared for over 10,000 patients and have saved many lives.

How You Can Help

Contributing to this cause is making a tangible difference in many lives. Please support our community and contribute to the causeat:

https://gaskov.nonprofiteasy.net/PublicPages/Donation/ViewAll.aspx?mid=491