PODCASTHON SPECIAL! Espwa Means Hope

Gabrielle Birchak/ March 17, 2026/ Modern History

Today, while we are still cel­e­brat­ing Wom­en’s His­to­ry Month, Math! Sci­ence! His­to­ry! is tak­ing part in the the char­i­ty dri­ve through Pod­casthon, as we inter­view Ang­ie Mal­don­a­do, the founder of Esp­wa Means Hope! 

https://youtu.be/VUKcnqnZWA4

Please help to make a dif­fer­ence by donat­ing to EspwaMeansHopeHaiti.org — every pen­ny you donate goes to build­ing a com­mu­ni­ty with wom­en’s health care, edu­ca­tion for chil­dren, and food for the community. 

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTS

[Gabrielle Bir­chak]

Wel­come to Math Sci­ence His­to­ry. A quick con­tent note, some sto­ries in this episode are painful, includ­ing mater­nal death and infant dis­tress. Lis­ten­er dis­cre­tion is advised.

Please take care. Wel­come to Math Sci­ence His­to­ry. I’m Gabrielle Bir­chak, your host.

This month, we are cel­e­brat­ing Wom­en’s His­to­ry Month, and this week, I am cel­e­brat­ing Pod­cast-Thon. Pod­cast-Thon is a fundrais­ing event for pod­cast­ers around the world to raise aware­ness for char­i­ta­ble caus­es. This year, I am intro­duc­ing you to Esp­wa Means Hope.

This very mean­ing­ful orga­ni­za­tion helps women and chil­dren in Haiti access health­care and edu­ca­tion, and this is essen­tial because Haiti is cur­rent­ly fac­ing extra­or­di­nary insta­bil­i­ty where hos­pi­tals strug­gle, schools close, and fam­i­lies nav­i­gate dai­ly uncer­tain­ty. Haiti’s cur­rent cri­sis includes severe dis­rup­tion to health­care access, par­tic­u­lar­ly for preg­nant women and chil­dren, as well as wide­spread inter­rup­tion of school­ing due to vio­lence, dis­place­ment, and eco­nom­ic insta­bil­i­ty. In an Octo­ber 2025 report, UNICEF notes that due to the increase in vio­lence in Haiti, almost 700,000 chil­dren have been dis­placed, which is twice as many as the year before.

Armed groups are infil­trat­ing areas, and as a result, pub­lic ser­vices are col­laps­ing. UNICEF states that over 6 mil­lion peo­ple, includ­ing 3.3 mil­lion chil­dren, need human­i­tar­i­an assis­tance, and this is not an iso­lat­ed fail­ure. This is a symp­tom of long-term sys­temic erosion.

Accord­ing to UNICEF Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Cather­ine Rus­sell, she states that, quote, chil­dren in Haiti are expe­ri­enc­ing vio­lence and dis­place­ment at a ter­ri­fy­ing scale. Each time they are forced to flee, they not only lose their homes, but also their chance to go to school and sim­ply be chil­dren. But amidst all this strife, Haiti has endured.

This coun­try’s sto­ry is also about those who lay foun­da­tions. Today, I have the hon­or of inter­view­ing Ang­ie Mal­don­a­do, the founder of Esp­wa Means Hope. Esp­wa Means Hope is a 501c3 non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion based in the USA, work­ing in the beau­ti­ful coun­try of Haiti, in a rur­al moun­tain­ous region with extreme­ly high poverty.

Their mis­sion is to empow­er and keep fam­i­lies togeth­er through edu­ca­tion, job cre­ation, and mater­nal health care. Found­ed in 2018, Esp­wa has grown from small mobile clin­ics with basic birth kits to facil­i­tat­ing school spon­sor­ships, pro­vid­ing jobs for 12 Hait­ian staff, and run­ning a prop­er­ty with an edu­ca­tion cen­ter and sewing machines. And no doubt, they still have so much more work to do.

In Fri­day’s episode this week, I give a his­tor­i­cal account about the life of Haiti’s first female physi­cian, Dr. Yvonne Syl­vain, who fought for mater­nal care, can­cer screen­ing, and mod­ern med­ical prac­tice in the 20th cen­tu­ry. Need­less to say, this week encom­pass­es two pow­er­ful sto­ries about two women across the span of time who tru­ly under­stand what hap­pens when health and edu­ca­tion hold steady, and what hap­pens when they do not. As you lis­ten and watch today’s inter­view, it is impor­tant to sit­u­ate it with­in this longer history.

The chal­lenges dis­cussed are not new. The strate­gies employed are not acci­den­tal. They are respons­es to struc­tur­al con­di­tions that have shaped Haiti for centuries.

This inter­view is not about char­i­ty as a res­cue. It is about repair. It is about restor­ing the bio­log­i­cal and cog­ni­tive foun­da­tions that allow soci­eties to function.

Health sta­bi­lizes bod­ies. Edu­ca­tion sta­bi­lizes minds. And togeth­er, they sta­bi­lize communities.

And with that in mind, I want now to turn to a con­ver­sa­tion about what rebuild­ing looks like today on the ground in Haiti, and why it mat­ters not only for Haiti, but for all of us. So with­out being said, let’s talk with Ang­ie Mal­don­a­do, the founder of Esp­wa means hope. So I have with me here, Ang­ie Mal­don­a­do with the orga­ni­za­tion Esp­wa means hope.

And it’s locat­ed in Haiti. And Ang­ie, tell me a lit­tle bit about your­self. And Esp­wa means hope.

Per­fect.

[Ang­ie Maldonado]

Hel­lo. Esp­wa means hope. I always start with that because I just my pas­sion for that.

Esp­wa in Hait­ian Cre­ole lit­er­al­ly means hope. My name is Ang­ie. My staff call me Ang­ie in Haiti.

Let’s see. I was born and raised in the mil­i­tary. So mil­i­tary kid, moved around, lived in Ger­many, and then was in Col­orado for a peri­od of time.

And then I dis­cov­ered Haiti. And the first time I stepped foot on the soil, I knew this is Haiti. And there was some­thing in me that just came alive.

And that’s real­ly how it all began. I have five grown chil­dren, five grown adult chil­dren. And man, I feel like I’m all over the place.

But real­ly, my home feels like Haiti. So yeah, Esp­wa lit­er­al­ly means hope in Cre­ole, in Hait­ian Cre­ole, their lan­guage is called Hait­ian Cre­ole. And so that’s real­ly how it came about, was I loved the word I was work­ing in Haiti.

And that word just did some­thing in my soul. Because hope, as you know, I mean, this word means a lot, because there’s a lot going on in this world. And that’s real­ly what shook me that just see­ing what was hap­pen­ing in Haiti.

And then that word, I put those two pieces togeth­er and thought, Okay, here we go. I don’t know what it’s gonna look like. But let’s go.

[Gabrielle Bir­chak]

And so Esp­wa has been in exis­tence since 2018. Yes. And from your first vis­it to the incep­tion of Esp­wa means hope.

What what did that look like?

[Ang­ie Maldonado]

So I stepped foot on Hait­ian soil. And I was with a group of peo­ple and we were going to dif­fer­ent parts of Haiti. And as much as I loved that, because I began work­ing with teams, I start­ed on one trip.

And then all of a sud­den, I’ve been lead­ing teams, I was work­ing with interns and train­ing interns work­ing in Haiti. But dur­ing that time, I’m very rela­tion­ship. Every­thing about me is relationship.

I believe it’s real­ly impor­tant that we con­nect with peo­ple before we even try to speak into peo­ple’s lives. That’s real­ly impor­tant to me. And so while in Haiti, we would go to this province and that vil­lage and this village.

And I just felt like I want­ed to shift the focus on how long or short term mis­sions worked, because we need to con­nect to the peo­ple, you can’t go into some­body’s coun­try and tell them what to do, when you don’t even know any­thing about their coun­try, and you’re not con­nect­ed with these peo­ple. And so I found anoth­er vil­lage, and I start­ed shift­ing my focus, start­ed chang­ing how things func­tioned with bring­ing teams in, and how I would train the peo­ple when they come in. Okay, let me give you an example.

In Amer­i­ca, if some­one came and saw your chil­dren play­ing in the front yard when they were small, how would you feel if some­body start­ed tak­ing pic­tures of your chil­dren, and then post­ed it on social media?

[Gabrielle Bir­chak]

Not good.

[Ang­ie Maldonado]

Well, that was my whole point is that we are all human beings. And that shook me watch­ing that play out. And I had to learn myself.

Yes, I have pic­tures, but we always ask per­mis­sion. And that’s a whole oth­er ball­game right there. But my point is, that was real­ly impor­tant to me that we see peo­ple for who they are as human beings.

It’s real­ly impor­tant. And so I start­ed notic­ing that the health­care was near non exis­tent. And if it was, it was­n’t easy to get it.

And then I was in a vil­lage and my father had actu­al­ly been there as a medic in the war. And he had lots of expe­ri­ence. I’m a doula by trade.

And so between my father and I, we were notic­ing things and I had a young man come to me in the mid­dle of the night and say, Andre, please help us. My wife is not well. And I said, What’s going on?

And she’s preg­nant. Okay. We went to their lit­er­al­ly, I think it was this one was a mud and stick hut.

We went inside, she was non respon­sive. My father start­ed doing vinyl vitals, and we were able to get her to wake up a lit­tle bit, but she still was­n’t super respon­sive. And so I said, and this is real­ly what start­ed a swap.

Hey, we need to take her to the hos­pi­tal. Some­thing’s wrong. I don’t know.

She’s four months preg­nant. And he was so calm and said, No, I’m Jay. And I said, Wait, what?

And it was just a nor­mal response. And I said, What do you mean? And he said, We don’t have mon­ey for that.

And I so what I’ve real­ized, and I’ll get back to that is that that’s just com­mon. If you don’t have mon­ey, peo­ple just die. They did­n’t have their own mon­ey to take her to the hospital.

So his his deci­sion would have been, if my wife dies, she dies. They don’t even real­ly they live in sur­vival mode, so they don’t think about it. He just said no.

And I thought that’s crazy to me. And so we knew we need­ed to take care of this. We took her, she had what’s called peri­toni­tis, just a sim­ple abdom­i­nal infec­tion, two antibi­ot­ic shots, and 30 US dol­lars lat­er that we paid for, we took her and she got to see her baby on sonogram.

It was a very old sono­gram, but she could still see she got to hear heart­beats. She’d nev­er even had expo­sure to any of this, because her babies were born at their home in the dirt. I mean, that’s just the stark reality.

So we got her back. And five months lat­er, she had a baby girl and named her which means lit­tle Ang­ie. And she’s now six years old.

And I am her, I spon­sor her to go to school, so I pay for her to get an edu­ca­tion and get nutri­tion. Because with­out that, there’s no future.

[Gabrielle Bir­chak]

Wow, what a sto­ry. And what an hon­or to have this lit­tle one named after you. That had to be quite an experience.

So at that point, obvi­ous­ly, the prob­lem was help­ing women, preg­nant women and women hav­ing chil­dren. But what oth­er prob­lems did Esp­wa means help start out try­ing to solve specifically?

[Ang­ie Maldonado]

Basi­cal­ly, it was mater­nal mor­tal­i­ty and infant mor­bid­i­ty rates, because they’re so high. And I’ll be frank with you, I did­n’t want to do it. I did­n’t want to start a nonprofit.

I want­ed just to be what I call in the dirt with the peo­ple be in the vil­lage, go through the vil­lage, sit on peo­ple’s porch­es, go to their lit­tle mud and stick homes, and they give a bring a buck­et that they use to draw water and they sit you on that buck­et and they hon­or you and you they love you and you love them equal­ly. And you build these rela­tion­ships. And that’s what I want­ed to con­tin­ue to do.

I did­n’t want to deal with the logis­tics. I did­n’t want to deal with all of any of that. But my best friend kept say­ing to me, if I write your 501 and I write a short form, it comes back in a short amount of time.

Will you try? I still took anoth­er I think it was a year. And then one day some­thing in me said, you just need to do that.

And I did. And it came back so, so fast that I stood there and stared at my let­ter of accep­tance from the state of Col­orado going, Oh, no. But I also knew it was the right thing to do.

That’s what we need­ed to do. Because with­out that, you can’t work with the peo­ple cor­rect­ly. And you still have to work with their Min­istry of Pub­lic Health.

There’s so many oth­er like legal things you need to do. I pre­fer to be in the dirt with the peo­ple. But that allowed us to be able to we got a grant at right as soon as we got our notification.

Some­body came to me and said, Hey, we want to help you start up. We were able to rent a house for three years and rental there for that house was $2,500 for one whole year. Wow, bare bones block home, no run­ning water, no electricity.

And so that’s the house I live in when I’m there. And that’s where we run all of our pro­grams out of. And we have solar pow­er, we were able to get solar pan­els and bat­ter­ies, and a cis­tern for water and just the things we need­ed to get started.

So that I could be there hands on with the peo­ple because that’s real­ly important.

[Gabrielle Bir­chak]

From your first vis­it, and then set­ting up Esp­wa and mak­ing it acces­si­ble to the peo­ple in Haiti. How does access to basic health care change day to day deci­sion mak­ing for these families?

[Ang­ie Maldonado]

It’s com­pli­cat­ed. And I’ll explain why. Because they live in sur­vival mode.

And so day to day access, the whole idea was to stop moth­ers and babies from dying. And how were we going to do that? So we imple­ment­ed our pro­grams just from basic care.

And we brought women in and we start­ed doing edu­ca­tion, basic preg­nan­cy class­es. But pri­or to that, we start­ed with mobile clin­ics, because we were so brand new in the vil­lage. And so we would take on our equip­ment with us.

And we would go to, let’s say some­body’s home. And then we would give them just a lit­tle bit of mon­ey and go into their home. And that helped them to be able to buy food for their fam­i­ly or what­ev­er they needed.

And then we would set up and we would have women come in, and we would have class­es with them. And we would talk to them about their bod­ies, how you get preg­nant, because some­thing I should explain is edu­ca­tion is not free in Haiti. And so most of the peo­ple in our area have not been to school.

A high, high per­cent­age have not been to school. So when we start­ed, I’m draw­ing pic­tures, we’re teach­ing them how to write their names, so that they can see what their name looks like. Just basic things.

And so giv­ing them access to health care, gives them life. So when women die, and then their baby sur­vives, who takes care of that child? In the States, it’s going to look different.

But in Haiti, when they say it takes a vil­lage, it does take a vil­lage, lit­er­al­ly takes a vil­lage. And so you have these peo­ple who are mak­ing it one day at a time to just even live, how are we going to feed our child? We real­ly want our child to go to school, because edu­ca­tion is opportunity.

And oppor­tu­ni­ty means I can get a job, and then I can make a life for myself. And we get out of this cycle of pover­ty, right? And so a moth­er dies.

I’ll give you one exam­ple. Lov­na. We call her the baby in the blue blanket.

Her moth­er died. She was found on the side of the road. She may have hemorrhaged.

The baby was alive, suck­ling at breast. Moth­er was dead. She was prob­a­bly try­ing to get some­where to get care.

She could­n’t. And she died. Lov­na was tak­en in by a woman who claims to be her aunt.

And that’s not always the case. But she took her in. She could­n’t feed her own children.

Bare­ly could feed her own chil­dren. Her hus­band was work­ing. They have a garden.

They were doing gar­dens, every­thing they could. But they took this baby in. And so basic health care for these fam­i­lies means sav­ing lives of moth­ers and babies.

That’s our focus. Mater­nal health care, edu­ca­tion, and job cre­ation. Those are our pri­ma­ry focuses.

[Gabrielle Bir­chak]

Wow. What a sto­ry. That had to be heart-wrench­ing to see that and to expe­ri­ence that.

Once they real­ized that you were pro­vid­ing access to health care, did you see any changes in the community?

[Ang­ie Maldonado]

The changes that we’re see­ing is that it opens up space, I guess men­tal space, because they live in sur­vival mode, okay? They’re con­stant­ly just look­ing to find anoth­er way to make mon­ey. So if you don’t go to school and you don’t get an edu­ca­tion, you don’t have a trade, you don’t have a job.

So then some of our mamas break rocks. They go climb up moun­tains. They break rocks.

The rocks go down. They get them loaded into trucks. Then they get them over to mar­ket and they sell them at rock mar­ket because peo­ple can use them for cement.

You can see the trick­le effect of what hap­pens when they’re not edu­cat­ed. When they live in sur­vival mode, real­ly they’re just liv­ing to feed their chil­dren. And if they can feed their chil­dren, then the next thing would be, can we get our child in school?

Because edu­ca­tion is hope.

[Gabrielle Bir­chak]

With that being said, I’m sure you have seen the progress on the ground, being there and pro­vid­ing these ser­vices. Over the course of the years, what does real progress look like on the ground in Haiti, even when it feels slow?

[Ang­ie Maldonado]

Hon­est to God, women aren’t dying and babies aren’t dying. I mean, that’s the truth, Gab­by. That’s the truth.

That’s every­thing. That is every­thing because then you don’t have these orphans who have nowhere to go. That’s the stark real­i­ty of it.

I could go on and on about that, but that is why we’re there, so that women will not die.

[Gabrielle Bir­chak]

Were there ever moments when you would come back and you saw the progress and it just floored you? Were there ever moments like that?

[Ang­ie Maldonado]

Oh, all the time because I was in and out. I know ear­li­er you had asked me a ques­tion. I’m so sorry.

Some­times this is just raw and it is my life, but it does­n’t mean that it’s not impact­ing and does­n’t mean that it’s not hard. It’s heart­break­ing to watch this play out They were born there, but I was born here. Because I have the skill set and I have some resources, I’m going to share those with them.

I’m real­ly sor­ry. I did­n’t know it was going to hit me, the progress. I would go in and out.

I would be there for a while, months at a time, and then I would come back to the States, be with my kids, and then COVID hit, and then the gangs start­ed com­ing in. We saw so much progress at first. We came in and moms weren’t dying and babies weren’t dying and fam­i­lies were stay­ing togeth­er and we were find­ing ways for chil­dren to get edu­cat­ed and we were com­ing up with spon­sor­ship pro­grams so that peo­ple who did have the means could send chil­dren to school and then the gangs hit.

I real­ized that’s what hap­pened when you asked me that ques­tion, the gangs hit. I feel like you go in, COVID hits, you take the break, you do what you need to do, you get back into the coun­try, and then the gangs hit. There’s gas shortages.

What do you do? You keep fight­ing and you keep stand­ing with them and for them.

[Gabrielle Bir­chak]

That’s what you do. That’s what you do. You are prob­a­bly one of the most altru­is­tic humans I’ve ever met in my entire life.

That’s what you do. You stand and you fight with your heart and soul. If any­body’s watch­ing this right now, this is prob­a­bly just anoth­er form of Moth­er Teresa.

She’s self­less and altru­is­tic and gen­uine­ly cares about these fam­i­lies in Haiti. This has got to be hard with gangs just com­ing in and tak­ing over.

[Ang­ie Maldonado]

They do. They come in and that’s where my frus­tra­tion is. We made progress.

You see these things hap­pen­ing. Chil­dren are thriv­ing. They’re learning.

They’re com­ing to our preschool pro­grams. They’re able to play, be chil­dren, and not just live in sur­vival mode. That may seem real­ly small, but it is.

Every­thing in a coun­try that is still devel­op­ing, that is where they are right now, they’re lit­er­al­ly, when I say that, I can’t say it enough, they’re sur­viv­ing every stink­ing day. And so we give them hope. We love on them.

We spend time with them. We edu­cate these women about their bod­ies. They go back and they share that with oth­er women because we have so many peo­ple bang­ing on our gates.

So many women that want to come in and they want to have the same edu­ca­tion. But we can only house so many women at a time. We can do 20 and it’s a real­ly, real­ly small space.

But it’s hot. Haiti’s hot. Haiti’s humid.

You’ve all these women that are preg­nant in that heat and humid­i­ty and it’s drain­ing for them. And so we have to take 20 women at a time because we just don’t have the space nor the staff because it takes more staff. It exhausts our one staff mem­ber or our two staff mem­bers who do what they do to teach our chil­dren and our mothers.

And so it’s a lot. And so we’re just doing as much as we can with what we have.

[Gabrielle Bir­chak]

I’m sure you’ve seen a mul­ti­tude, a vari­ety of com­mu­ni­ties. How do the Hait­ian com­mu­ni­ties shape the way your pro­grams work and give back to Haiti? And to add to that, have you seen any com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers come in and be so inspired by it that they took it the next step and expand­ed Esp­wa means hope in services?

[Ang­ie Maldonado]

So real­ly our pro­grams are shaped for our com­mu­ni­ty. That was the whole point. We came in and we saw, Eric was our first exam­ple with his wife, and we saw what was happening.

And so I spent time in the vil­lage. Lit­er­al­ly when I first got there, I would go and sit on one porch at a time and talk to fam­i­lies and just lis­ten to them and then go to the next fam­i­ly. And my days were, lis­ten to the peo­ple, hear what they have to say, because this isn’t your country.

You’re com­ing into their coun­try. And so we shaped our pro­grams based on what was hap­pen­ing in their com­mu­ni­ty. And so exam­ple, the sewing pro­gram, what we did is because part of our mis­sion is empow­er­ing women.

We’re not there to just give hand­outs. We real­ly want to come along­side them and empow­er them so these women can take care of their fam­i­lies and take care of their chil­dren. We do what we can with sponsorships.

We have spon­sor­ship pro­grams, but the sewing school, it’s almost like it all goes hand in hand. It’s a holis­tic approach. That’s real­ly impor­tant to us is that we approach this so holis­ti­cal­ly and so they can start their own businesses.

And this last round of sewing, we brought them in, we taught them how to make uni­forms for the chil­dren in the school because they have to pay for the uni­forms. So then they have their own busi­ness. And so we have these women come in and they bring their own mate­ri­als, so their own thread, their own fab­ric, everything.

And that gives them own­er­ship, right? They have own­er­ship. They buy their own sup­plies and they come in, they make these uni­forms, they sell these uni­forms to oth­er fam­i­lies in the vil­lage, and you have small businesses.

[Gabrielle Bir­chak]

And so that… Oh, that’s inspiring.

[Ang­ie Maldonado]

It’s huge.

[Gabrielle Bir­chak]

It’s a huge deal. What was it like the first time you wit­nessed that? Just these women find­ing hope and auton­o­my in their lives instead of being sub­ject­ed to the dan­gers of the society.

[Ang­ie Maldonado]

I think it was exact­ly what you’re doing right now, feel­ing it. You’re feel­ing it, right? And that’s what it was for me is I could hear them because my house is set on the same prop­er­ty that we call them depots and they’re lit­tle block rooms.

And so I could look out my lit­tle block win­dows and see them in there. And you could hear them laugh­ing. Oh my goodness.

They are so fun­ny and they would come alive. And that’s, I think that I will nev­er for­get the moment that they decid­ed to sew their own like adult uni­forms, like these tops and dress­es and dif­fer­ent things, skirts and stuff. And they all lined up.

And I was in my room at the time because our direc­tor was run­ning the sewing pro­gram. And I hear laugh­ter, so much joy. And I ran out of my house and I see them all lined up and they’re lit­er­al­ly hang­ing over just the porch, just crack­ing up because they decid­ed that they had to do a fash­ion show.

And so they were walk­ing like this. Oh my good­ness. But they came alive.

These women had so much life in them. I mean, it was crazy to watch this because you saw these women get to be women, not just moth­ers, you know, not just the machante, which is the woman who goes to mar­ket and sells. They got to be women with oth­er women and come togeth­er and cel­e­brate life instead of just survive.

How touch­ing.

[Gabrielle Bir­chak]

You know, in the Unit­ed States, we have first world prob­lems. To hear this and to just get down to the base­line of what female com­mu­ni­ty is, it’s this. And it’s absolute­ly monumental.

And it makes me real­ize how much as women, we need to get back to that. We need to get back to that lev­el of con­nec­tion and com­mu­ni­ty because there are big­ger things going on in the world. You were telling me about a pro­gram that means hope has called the first thou­sand days.

Can you tell me a lit­tle bit more about it?

[Ang­ie Maldonado]

We have a pro­gram called the first thou­sand days because we don’t real­ize how much nutri­tion actu­al­ly affects our brains and our devel­op­ment. Right. And so the rea­son we one of the rea­sons we do the first thou­sand days is from con­cep­tion until age two, you’re pro­vid­ing a child an edu­ca­tion through help­ing their mother.

You’re edu­cat­ing their moth­er on her preg­nan­cy and tak­ing care of her­self every month. We check on the women. They come in and we do vitals and then we give them protein.

We feed them pro­tein meals when they come in for class. We do the same for the chil­dren in our preschool pro­grams. So we give them very nutri­ent dense meals to feed them so that they can have a good start.

A woman is preg­nant. We meet with her and then we fol­low her. And the idea is to bring on oth­er Hait­ian women who can come along­side as almost like a doula.

I’m in the Philip­pines. They use the term mer­cy kasama and it’s a woman sim­i­lar to a doula who will go month to month. Check on this woman.

Check on her progress. Make sure she is eat­ing cor­rect­ly. She’s check­ing her vitals.

We we do all of that. And then once the baby is born, we fol­low the moth­er and the baby. They go to their homes and they teach them.

They’ll bring books so that the women can actu­al­ly learn because they’ll learn with their chil­dren. And it’s crazy to watch this. I see this in my preschool pro­gram all the time.

The women, as we’re teach­ing the chil­dren Eng­lish and Cre­ole, the women are watch­ing and they’re read­ing. Our secu­ri­ty guards are look­ing on and they all work togeth­er to learn togeth­er. It’s beautiful.

And so if you, for the first thou­sand days, if you’re pro­vid­ing edu­ca­tion and nutri­tion, teach­ing them how to prop­er­ly feed them­selves and what foods are good for their bod­ies now and for their chil­dren, that makes an oh my gosh, that can change a nation. And that is real­ly why I’m pas­sion­ate about the first thou­sand days, because my big word right now is gangs. You have these and I see Spi­der-Man, you know, this kid with Spi­der-Man mask or an adult.

And I think, hmm, if we can get them when they’re in utero and we can help the moth­er and pro­vide nour­ish­ment and teach her how to care for her own body and empow­er her to have her own busi­ness and then fol­low her once the baby is born and teach her how to inter­act with her child, not just sur­vive, right? But also play with her child, let their child be a child because they’re also learn­ing in our preschool programs.

[Gabrielle Bir­chak]

Let me ask you this. Right now, there’s a lot going on in Haiti, and I know you polit­i­cal­ly, I’ve been watch­ing the news. I don’t want to get too political.

With what’s going on right now, what makes it hard­est to keep edu­ca­tion and health pro­grams con­tin­u­ous in Haiti?

[Ang­ie Maldonado]

Right now, one word, gangs. So, and I’ll give you a quick back­sto­ry on gangs and here is my expe­ri­ence. And no, do I know all the ins and outs?

Absolute­ly not, but I will tell you this. We’ve been out and about and been in our cage trucks and going out and about in Haiti. And then you get stopped by man­i­fes­ta­tion and they come around your truck and, you know, they’re beat­ing on your truck with sticks and machetes, but they don’t, they don’t hurt us.

They’ve nev­er hurt us. That’s what’s inter­est­ing. Yes, things have hap­pened and I know kid­nap­pings have happened.

I’m aware of that. And so they come in and they don’t have job oppor­tu­ni­ties, but then what hap­pens is you have these gang mem­bers that come in and they say, hey, I can help your child go to school and I can pro­vide meals for your child so your child gets food. And the moth­er says, okay, nev­er sees them again.

This kind of thing hap­pened. It’s real life. And so these gangs right now have tak­en about, is it about 90% of Port-au-Prince, the cap­i­tal of Haiti right now.

And where we are in Haiti, we’re on the coast­line and we are blocked on both sides and in the ports because the gangs have just tak­en over spots. Is your staff safe?

[Gabrielle Bir­chak]

Hes­i­ta­tion.

[Ang­ie Maldonado]

Well, okay. So that is such a loaded ques­tion in my mind.

[Gabrielle Bir­chak]

You don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to.

[Ang­ie Maldonado]

No, no, no, no. I actu­al­ly do because in our con­text where they are, where our vil­lage is at this moment, they are safe. Could the gangs all of a sud­den, could my phone start going off and say, this gang is at this cor­ner and this gang is here.

And so the chil­dren stop going to school, the fam­i­lies, they keep every­body in and they watch and they wait. And that’s a big thing. And so are they safe?

I mean, they’re as safe as they pos­si­bly can be, but it can hap­pen at any moment. And that’s hap­pened twice in our area where they came in, they tried to take over because that’s what they do. It’s like a sneak attack.

They come in, they try to take over, but they do have peo­ple and they go in droves and they work togeth­er. It takes a vil­lage and they pro­tect them­selves. They pro­tect their fam­i­lies and they will go and fight them off.

And then they retreat. Those with the weapons, those chil­dren and men’s bod­ies, they go and they retreat. And then I don’t remem­ber how much lat­er it was, they came back and they tried again.

So then we have peo­ple flee­ing. They’re flee­ing from their homes and they’re going down our street, up to the moun­tain because there’s nowhere else to go. Or peo­ple, when it’s safe enough, peo­ple will flee to a vil­lage and then you have sev­er­al vil­lages all in one village.

So safe­ty in the con­text of maybe what we would think is going to be dif­fer­ent than how they live day to day. Does that make sense? It does.

Okay.

[Gabrielle Bir­chak]

To me, it’s though their lives are being usurped, but they’re find­ing a semi-safe envi­ron­ment. Am I cor­rect in say­ing that?

[Ang­ie Maldonado]

A hun­dred per­cent. You know what? They’re going to do every­thing they pos­si­bly can.

That’s what they do. And it’s moment to moment, but they’re doing it.

[Gabrielle Bir­chak]

They should­n’t have to. Thank you. That’s the sad part.

They should­n’t have to. In this year around the world, no group of com­mu­ni­ties should have to live like this. And with that being said, you’ve been boots on the ground.

You’ve seen the worst of it and you’ve also seen the best in the poten­tial of what Haiti can be. What do you think Haiti reveals about what hap­pens when edu­ca­tion sys­tems col­lapse and health­care col­laps­es any­where else in the world? Haiti has gone through so much for cen­turies between the occu­pa­tion of France to the occu­pa­tion of the Unit­ed States, start­ing, I think it was 1915 and end­ing in 1934.

Haiti’s gone through just ups and downs, ups and downs. And there’s been a buildup of the com­mu­ni­ty, a buildup of the health com­mu­ni­ty, and then a col­lapse. And I’m sure you’ve wit­nessed this as well, espe­cial­ly with the gangs com­ing in.

So what could the world watch­ing and lis­ten­ing take away from what you’ve wit­nessed and what can hap­pen when edu­ca­tion and health­care col­lapse? And what can hap­pen when edu­ca­tion and health­care are allowed to thrive? Okay.

[Ang­ie Maldonado]

So when you don’t have edu­ca­tion, then you don’t have oppor­tu­ni­ty in life, okay? And if you don’t have oppor­tu­ni­ty in life, then you don’t have pur­pose. And that is a big, big deal.

That’s one thing that our mamas will say to us. Our child has hope now, because if they can go to school and go all the way to get to uni­ver­si­ty, they have hope because that will change our nation. By my child hav­ing an edu­ca­tion, because then they have, they have purpose.

And I think pur­pose is a, I mean, that’s a big deal, right? I mean, we all want to have a sense of pur­pose. We all do.

We’re human beings, right? And that is why we do first thou­sand days, because you have those first thou­sand days of life that can lit­er­al­ly change the tra­jec­to­ry of an entire nation just by one child at a time. And so with­out edu­ca­tion, then you don’t have opportunity.

And if you don’t have oppor­tu­ni­ty, then you don’t feel like you have pur­pose. And then you’re just sur­viv­ing every day. I’m going to try to make a busi­ness charg­ing phones for peo­ple who have phones, which sounds absolute­ly crazy, but it’s life.

I’m going to make a busi­ness and I’m going to break rocks and turn them into sand so I can sell them. And with­out that, where’s the hope? And that’s real­ly what I’ve wit­nessed is watch­ing women who could­n’t read or write, bare­ly feed­ing their chil­dren when they could, are now tak­ing care of their chil­dren, tak­ing care of their fam­i­lies, and they have their own busi­ness­es because we edu­cat­ed them.

It’s nev­er too late. That’s the thing. It’s nev­er too late.

Do we need to start now? Yes, we still need to start now with our chil­dren. That’s why we do what we do.

I know that I’m doing what I’m sup­posed to be doing, and I would­n’t have it any oth­er way.

[Gabrielle Bir­chak]

I know there’s going to be many peo­ple lis­ten­ing and watch­ing. What can peo­ple do from far away to help Esp­wa? What can make a dif­fer­ence for your organization?

[Ang­ie Maldonado]

I think, num­ber one, it’s going to start with aware­ness, and that’s what we’re doing right now. Rais­ing aware­ness, finan­cial part­ner­ships, donors, going onto our web­site, going onto our Insta­gram and our Face­book and look­ing at what we’re doing. We get sup­port­ed pri­mar­i­ly by month­ly donors, and then every once in a while we’ll have a fundrais­er, $150 a month for once a week to feed our mamas just a small meal.

Usu­al­ly we do eggs from, we always go local and sup­port the peo­ple around us. That’s the key is that part of us being there too is sup­port­ing the peo­ple in our com­mu­ni­ty and buy­ing all local. For our preschool­ers, we have 15 preschool­ers that come four days a week, and it’s $100 a month to feed 15 preschool­ers four days a week.

That’s clean water because we pro­vide clean water and a meal, and that’s some­thing just tan­gi­ble. To have peo­ple that are will­ing to do some­thing like that, that’s tan­gi­ble to say, I want to feed some preschool­ers, I want to feed some mamas, those types of things. Just month­ly sup­port is our biggest thing is that’s how we pay our staff.

[Gabrielle Bir­chak]

Peo­ple can donate to Esp­wa means Hope by vis­it­ing Espwameanshopehaiti.org, and you can donate. Your fund­ing goes towards feed­ing, edu­ca­tion, help­ing the secu­ri­ty guards, and doing all that is nec­es­sary to build up this com­mu­ni­ty. And it’s any pen­ny, any amount of mon­ey helps.

[Ang­ie Maldonado]

We have birth kits, and we have peo­ple who make birth kits so that women who, most of our women are still going to deliv­er at home because we don’t have the fund­ing to pay for them to go to the hos­pi­tal. And that might not be the wis­est when you’re talk­ing about help­ing with­out hurt­ing, you want to be real­ly care­ful with that. And so we pro­vide birth kits.

So edu­ca­tion, they learn about their bod­ies, they know what hap­pens when they deliv­er their babies, because they still will do it at home most­ly. In the dirt, we have a birth kit with a trex pad and a cord clamp and a scalpel. Every­thing you need to have a safe birth so women are not cut­ting cords with bro­ken glass, so that babies aren’t get­ting infec­tions and dying through the umbil­i­cal cord.

Sim­ple, basic things. So I’ll have peo­ple send birth kits. Right now, because the FAA has shut down all the flights to Haiti, we work with an orga­ni­za­tion called Mis­sion­ary Flights Inter­na­tion­al, and that’s where I get my things com­ing in.

But we pay almost five dol­lars a pound to get any­thing in. So it’s very expen­sive. And while we source from in-coun­try, if there aren’t things avail­able that we need, then we will have those things brought in.

You can’t get, some of that stuff you can­not get in-coun­try. To pay for the propane so that they can cook out­side. We have, they cook out­side, or to pay for the coal so they can cook to feed our kids and our mamas.

Because what it comes down to is we do every­thing there on the cam­pus. You know, they cook. And so in order to cook, you have to have coals.

You, we have to buy the goods. And some days they cost more than oth­er days. Our secu­ri­ty guards, pay­ing our secu­ri­ty guards to work 24–7 to keep us safe.

Our preschool teacher, our direc­tor, who also is our train­er for the moth­ers to teach the moth­ers their preg­nan­cy basic classes.

[Gabrielle Bir­chak]

So every dol­lar goes towards some­thing grand and huge for the orga­ni­za­tion. And with that said, if you’re lis­ten­ing to this pod­cast, if you’re watch­ing the video, if you could donate just to help Haiti, help the women, help the chil­dren get edu­ca­tion and food and the things that they need to sus­tain the com­mu­ni­ty, espe­cial­ly dur­ing these chal­leng­ing times, please vis­it Espwameanshopehaiti.org. And Ange, I want to thank you from the bot­tom of my heart for your time, for your knowl­edge, your exper­tise, your kind­ness, all of this.

It is enlight­en­ing. It’s eye-open­ing. It’s impor­tant to think about what’s going on around the world, includ­ing Haiti, espe­cial­ly Haiti.

Do you have any last words, any final state­ments before we wrap up the pod­cast that you would like to share with my lis­ten­ers and with pod­cast-thon around the world?

[Ang­ie Maldonado]

I mean, hon­est­ly, it goes back to just a reminder that we all are cre­at­ed for pur­pose. We’re all cre­at­ed on pur­pose for a pur­pose. And each of you, each of you have your own purpose.

And not one is big­ger than the oth­er because we’re cre­at­ed that way. It’s all impor­tant. And if we all took the time to real­ly look inside and see what dri­ves us.

I used to work with youth and I would tell them when they say, oh, I got to go to col­lege. My par­ents make me go to col­lege. I don’t know what I want to be.

And I would always ask them what fires you up inside? And that’s what I would say to all of you. What fires you up inside?

Find out what that is and then go do it. And just take, we say some­thing all the time. One of my favorite phras­es in Haiti is tipa tipa.

And it means step by step. And I want to leave you with just go one step at a time, what­ev­er it is, because this world is hard and there’s a lot going on. We all have our pur­pose and that’s what it’s about.

Liv­ing out who you were cre­at­ed to be. Tipa tipa, step by step.

[Gabrielle Bir­chak]

You are just such a won­der­ful human and it’s just been noth­ing but an hon­or to have you on Math Sci­ence His­to­ry for Pod­cast on Week. Thank you so much. Thank you too so much for allow­ing this opportunity.

Thank you so much for tun­ing in to Math Sci­ence His­to­ry today and for lis­ten­ing to the inter­view. If you would like to make a dona­tion, please vis­it Esp­wa means Hope Haiti dot org. That’s ESPWA means Hope Haiti dot org.

Donate to this incred­i­ble orga­ni­za­tion. Every sin­gle dol­lar you donate goes so far in help­ing this com­mu­ni­ty in Haiti, help­ing preg­nant women receive prop­er health care and help­ing chil­dren receive edu­ca­tion and help­ing the com­mu­ni­ty receive healthy meals. I gen­uine­ly appre­ci­ate any dol­lar that you can spare.

Thank you for lis­ten­ing and for watch­ing Math Sci­ence His­to­ry and until next time, carpe diem.