Pittsburgh sisters Jamie and Ali McMutrie are devoting their lives to saving the lives of orphans at their BRESMA orphanage in Haiti.
When Lawrenceville photographer Laura Petrilla visited her friends Jamie and Ali McMutrie at the Brebis de Saint-Michel de L’Attalaye (BRESMA) orphanage in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, last May, the owner and director of the orphanage, Margarette Saint Fleur, asked her if she had ever been to her homeland before. “No, this is my first time,” Petrilla said. “Welcome to Hell” was Saint Fleur’s starkly casual response.
But in the midst of this “hell”-the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, an island battered by political upheavals, violence and a sequence of ferocious hurricanes-you will find a sanctuary for Haiti’s youngest, most vulnerable citizens: its orphaned children. To meet the two young women who devote their lives to these children, to hear from the parents who have adopted children from the orphanage, it is difficult to avoid the cliché of calling BRESMA a touch of heaven, and Jamie and Ali McMutrie angels for what they do…
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