Business As Missions
Volition and Action Haiti is a nonprofit organization that serves as a bridge to connect generous people to thousands of children in need in Haiti. The word “Volition” means a deep and overwhelming desire. A passion that can’t be denied to take action to solve heart-breaking problems.
VAH seeks out partners (both individuals and organizations) to help us send children in need to school, to help us feed them, help us mentor them while helping their families become sustainable by giving them business training and micro-financing loans to finance their small businesses.
The intention is to help build a better life for a few thousand children in desperate need and their families. We believe that we are planting seeds in the lives of children and their families. These seeds will help them grow to better their communities, resulting in harvesting a brighter future for all. We are promoting education, gospel center teaching to children, putting a stop to hunger and improper nutrition, and reducing unemployment by promoting business startups and expansions (through training centered on biblical teachings, known business principles, and funding) in areas that are either economically challenged, impoverished, or in areas of great potential for gospel impact through business development of economic activities.
Plant Seeds. Grow Community. Harvest Good.
Volition and Action Haiti is a nonprofit organization that serves as a bridge to connect generous people to thousands of children in need in Haiti. The word “Volition” means a deep and overwhelming desire. A passion that can’t be denied to take action to solve heart-breaking problems.
VAH seeks out partners (both individuals and organizations) to help us send children in need to school, to help us feed them, help us mentor them while helping their families become sustainable by giving them business training and micro-financing loans to finance their small businesses.
The intention is to help build a better life for a few thousand children in desperate need and their families. We believe that we are planting seeds in the lives of children and their families. These seeds will help them grow to better their communities, resulting in harvesting a brighter future for all. We are promoting education, gospel center teaching to children, putting a stop to hunger and improper nutrition, and reducing unemployment by promoting business startups and expansions (through training centered on biblical teachings, known business principles, and funding) in areas that are either economically challenged, impoverished, or in areas of great potential for gospel impact through business development of economic activities.
Our Vision
Volition and Action Haiti Plants seeds to build a better future with and for children in need, and young adults by teaching spiritual growth, encouraging educational experience, and promoting social, economic, and cultural development.
Volition and Action Haiti functions as an organization that embraces multiple mission efforts centered around expanding God’s Kingdom through business as missions and need fulfillment.
Our Mission
1) Empowering children with education and the love of Christ
2) Using business as a mission to help alleviate poverty through business training and micro-finance while sharing the gospel of Christ with low-income families and business owners.
Core Values
- 1 Glorify and Honor God in all we do.
- 2 Speak truth in love and gentleness and always esteem truth.
- 3 Value mission over margin, while understanding margin is critical to mission.
- 4 The gospel is the essential foundation of what we do.
- 5 The golden rule rules.
- 6 Always promote and esteem good stewardship principles.
- 7 Seek to develop long lasting relationships.
- 8 We recognize that business as missions is a valuable approach, a vessel for advancing the gospel of Jesus Christ.
- 9 Accountability before God and man is vital for success.
Matthew 13:31-32
He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds come and perch in its branches.”
Psalm 86:12
“I give thanks to you, O Lord my God, with my whole heart, and I will glorify your name forever”
Phil 2:4
“Let each of you look not only to his interests but also the interests of others.”
Our Team
Founder, CEO
My name is Ricardo Etienne, and I was born to a teenage mother in an abandoned bathroom, during a political insurrection in Cap-Haitian, Haiti.
Raised by a single mother, sleeping in a broken two-bedroom apartment, begging for food on the street, I am not ashamed to tell you that I came from a very poor beginning. I came from the very bottom of the pyramid of life.
Not only was I deprived of having my basic needs as a child, but even the right to education was also taken away from me. Not being able to pay for school tuition would result in me skipping countless days in elementary and middle school. Moreover, I was forced to abandon school in 2010 after a terrible earthquake in Haiti that killed hundreds of thousands of people and demolished many homes and buildings.
Throughout my existence, I have seen and lived a tortured early life in a tortured country that offers no safety nets. Hunger, physical abuse, homelessness, being bullied in middle school and high school, surviving natural disasters, a deadly cholera epidemic outbreak, gang violence, abuse of children and women, child trafficking- you name it, and I will tell you that I have lived through it.
While the beginning of my story seems to be sad, if I had to go back, I wouldn’t trade any of it. Because all these experiences make me stronger and help me understand my purpose in life. God says in Jeremiah 29:11: For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
Today, I have overcome and continue to overcome all these challenges. I am now the first and only MBA graduate in my family.
From all my experiences as a Haitian native, I felt compelled to bring transformational changes to children who are going through the same experiences I have been through, and other people in our community so they would be granted opportunities for a better life. Therefore, I dedicated the past 8 years of my life to looking for opportunities for children that are experiencing misery, pain, and suffering in Haiti. As a result, we created VAH (Volition and Action for Haiti). Through VAH, we give voice to vulnerable kids and young adults in Haiti. We are giving them a sense of belonging in their own country.
Country Coordinator, Studied Business Administration, Gospel artist, Worship and Choir Director.
Nattacha, born and raised in one of the most impoverished areas of Haiti, believes that the restoration of our families, villages, communities, cities, states, countries, and the world cannot be possible without education, the gospel of Christ, and self-employment.
Nattacha’s undeniable desire to empower women and children motivated her to join Volition and Action Haiti as country coordinator.
Nattacha is an entrepreneur and a gospel artist. With a God given voice that truly conveys the message of Jesus Christ, Nattacha continues to show her talent and her anointing continues to flourish and intensify with time. She uses her God given talent to not only bless people through her recorded songs but to train children to sing through Volition and Action for Haiti choir.
VAH representative in Miami, FL.
My name is Emmanuel Saint-Surin. Originally from Cap-Haitien, I have been living in Miami since 2012. My parents and my four siblings lived in Haiti. I did my high school in Haiti. In 2008, I moved to the United States, with a scholarship to study Lean Manufacturing at Hillsborough Community College in Tampa Florida. Right now, I am majoring in Industrial engineering at Miami Dade College. I worked for CHF international in Haiti 2010. I have been working and serving at Trinity Church Miami since 2013.
I started working with Volition and Action for Haiti (VAH) since 2021. I represent the organization in South Florida. My responsibilities are to look for potential partners for VAH and organize fundraising. It has been my goal to help children in Haiti by providing financial support for education, food and clothing. Every good gift that we have is to serve in the kingdom of God by helping others. I am always excited to use my gift to help others. I find inspiration by studying the Bible and my motto is ” L’éffort fait les forts!”(Effort makes you stronger).