Look closely at this photograph.
The boy in this classroom grew up in Qui-Croit, a remote mountain village in Haiti without electricity, roads, running water, or access to healthcare. Like the children we serve today, he walked to the same village school carrying little more than hope.
He never met his father, who died when he was just one month old, but the stories he heard about him shaped his life. The community called him “Doctor Leon”—not because he was a physician, but because he never turned away a neighbor in need.
That little boy would one day become Dr. Claude Louis. Education made that journey possible.
A sponsorship program opened doors that were thought to be impossible, allowing Claude to continue his education, earn his medical degree from the Université Notre Dame d’Haïti, complete his Family Medicine residency in the United States, and fulfill the promise he had made to himself as a child: to return home and create opportunities for others.
In 2008, he founded Words In Action Haiti with one simple belief:
Every child deserves the same chance he was given.
Since then, together with some close friends and his patients, Words In Action Haiti has established a medical clinic, supported teachers, expanded access to healthcare, and invested in hundreds of children and families throughout the Qui-Croit region.
That investment is already changing lives. Former students have become nurses, teachers, laboratory professionals, and future physicians and agricultural leaders—living proof that when one child is given an opportunity, an entire community moves forward.
Today, although violence has displaced many families from Qui-Croit, the mission continues. Nearly 300 children remain in school because Words In Action believes their future is worth protecting.
The little boy in this photograph is no longer the story.
The children sitting in our classrooms today are.
One of them may become the next physician.
The next teacher.
The next leader.
The next child who helps rebuild Haiti.