Jamie and Ali's dedication to the orphaned children of Haiti and their heroism following the January 2010 earthquake captured the interest of media from all over the world.
Their story has been told via media ranging from local Pittsburgh newspapers, magazines, television and radio stations to CNN, the Ellen DeGeneres Show and many others.
It’s Christmas, the time of year when we celebrate the birth of Jesus and for giving to others. Maroa-Forsyth boys basketball head coach Chad Cluver and his wife Sherry are sponsoring “Hoops for Haiti” to increase awareness of what remains to be done as we near the second anniversary (Jan. 12, 2012) of the Haiti earthquake.
The Cluvers are sponsoring a basketball fund-raiser Jan. 10 in the Trojans gym to help the women in Haiti who literally saved the lives of their Haitian son and daughter, who the Cluvers brought home from Pittsburgh in mid- January 2011.
In a note to everyone who supported them and their two children when they were in the late stages of adopting two Haitian children. Then the earthquake struck, devastating the Cluvers at the time, but they were resilient and they now have two Haitian children.
Cluver wrote, “We are amazed. . .” Read More
The baby’s name was Herbert and he was sure to die, just like his mother, who took her last breaths bringing him into the world.
The boy’s father, poor and alone, brought the infant to the BRESMA orphanage in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, hoping someone would take pity on Herbert, who was small and sick after surviving his first five weeks on nothing but sugar water.
After telling Herbert’s father, on several occasions, that there was no room at the orphanage, 30-year-old Ben Avon native Jamie McMutrie caved in.
“We told the dad we would take [Herbert] and love him until he dies,” Jamie said in a telephone interview from Haiti. “I stayed up for what seemed like 24 hours a day for weeks feeding him through a dropper.”
After receiving his share of cuddling and proper nutrition, Herbert survived. He is now a happy 2 1/2-year-old living the in the United States with his adopted family…
Read more at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Jamie, left, and Ali McMutrie wait in the chill of an open Corporate Air hangar at Allegheny County Airport as the plane that will take them to Haiti is loaded with supplies for their BRESMA orphanage.
Two Ben Avon sisters left for Haiti Monday — their mission, to bring home 12 stranded children from a Port-au-Prince orphanage or stay behind to watch them as their country continues to dig out from a deadly earthquake.
The orphanage, known as BRESMA, was the center of a dramatic mission led by Gov. Ed Rendell last month in the aftermath of the quake that has already created countless new orphans in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation. Fifty-four children from the damaged orphanage who had been living in precarious conditions were flown to the United States Jan. 18
Jamie and Ali McMutrie, along with Leslie McCombs and her son, Herbie, boarded a private jet Monday at 10:30 a.m. at Allegheny County Airport, bound for Port-au-Prince, Haiti, after a stopover in Opa-locka, Fla. At 4:20, Ms. McCombs, a senior consultant for government affairs at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, reported back: “Just wanted to let you know we arrived safely.”…
Two local sisters returned to Haiti to help more orphans recovering from a devastating earthquake.Jamie and Ali McMutrie brought 54 orphans in January after the earthquake. On Monday, the sisters flew back to Haiti on a small donated plane.They are taking food and supplies to the 28 children remaining at the BRESMA orphanage. 16 of those kids are supposed to be adopted by French families. Another 12 do not currently have a country that will take them in…
Read Story
The McMutrie Sisters are saying “thank you” to the City of Pittsburgh.
Jamie and Ali McMutrie first gained attention when they flew 53 orphans into Pittsburgh after a January earthquake destroyed the city of Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
The sisters, who have volunteered in Haiti since 2002, returned to Haiti after finding homes for the orphans in their care. They are visiting Pittsburgh this week to raise money for their non-profit, Haitian Orphan Rescue, with the goal of building a new orphanage, school, clinic, and farm in Port-au-Prince.
The sisters have a $4 million fundraising goal, but that is not all tomorrow’s event is about.
”We’re kind of calling it a big party — a thank you from us to this whole city because even though it’s 10 months later, we never really got a chance to express how seriously appreciative we were of the people that just poured out help to us, so it’s affordable, and hopefully a way that everyone can come out and have a good time and help support our efforts,” Ali said…
Read More at KDKA-TV
PORT-AU-PRINC
E, Haiti — The orphanage that was the focus of a dramatic rescue of Haitian children after the Jan. 12 earthquake remains in crisis, with ailing youngsters — one of whom died — and a director who plans to leave soon for Florida.
Approximately 34 children were still at BRESMA — short for Les Brebis de Saint Michel de l’Attalaye — as of last week. Most of them are destined for adoptions in France, while 12 are stranded with no pending adoptions.
Jamie and Ali McMutrie, the sisters from Ben Avon who cared for the orphans at two of three homes BRESMA keeps in Haiti, have been struggling for weeks to bring the stranded children to the United States.
The McMutrie sisters last flew to Port-au-Prince on Jan. 30 to deliver supplies to the orphanage and to make a brief, unsuccessful bid to bring the stranded children with them on the flight back to Western Pennsylvania…
We must help Haiti’s children find their families or find safe, new homes.
Protecting and caring for children with no family is a great burden and a high calling. Tending to orphans in a place like Port-au-Prince, Haiti, which was dangerous before the Jan. 12 earthquake, poses even graver challenges.
The earthquake that crippled Haiti and decimated its capital also tragically collapsed much of the meager support these children had, and there now are more Haitian children without families than ever. This disaster has pushed the suffering of these children beyond the breaking point, and they cry out to the world for help…
What can be done?
They intend to return to Haiti, and stay there for life.
But first, Jamie and Ali McMutrie will go back to the Caribbean nation as early as Wednesday to continue their push to bring to the United States 11 orphans who remain at BRESMA orphanage in Port-au-Prince. In time, the sisters say they want to buy property with a Haitian partner and build an orphanage to replace the one the Jan. 12 earthquake destroyed.
‘We definitely want to be there forever,’ Jamie McMutrie, 30, said in an interview Monday with the Tribune-Review.
People constantly ask why she’s drawn to Haiti, said her sister Ali, 22.
‘It’s the people, the culture,’ she said. ‘As soon as you get there, you get the Haiti bug. It’s something strange that I’ll never be able to explain…
Read more at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
“A Pittsburgh-based group landed yet another plane here Saturday night to drop off medical supplies and pick up orphans, amid revelations that 11 children remained stranded at the BRESMA orphanage two weeks after the rescue of 54 others.
Onboard were the two Ben Avon sisters whose plight and dramatic air rescue, carried out by a delegation headed by Gov. Ed Rendell, catapulted them to national prominence.
Jamie and Ali McMutrie, who refused to leave more than 100 children in their care at the BRESMA orphanage amid the chaos that followed the Jan. 12 earthquake, suddenly found themselves in a new spotlight: fending off questions about how money has been spent by the Hazelwood church that husbands the funds raised for the orphans.”
Read more at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Diane McMutrie figures she must have knocked on the doors of 100 businesses three months ago when she was trying to raise money for the Haitian orphanage where her two daughters had been volunteering for nearly four years.
“All I heard was, ‘I’ll tell my manager you were here,’ and they wouldn’t call back,” Mrs. McMutrie said.
Now that Jamie and Ali McMutrie’s desperate and successful battle to get the orphans in their care out of Haiti after the Jan. 12 earthquake has grabbed national and international headlines, people can’t seem to do enough.
“That’s great,” said Diane McMutrie. “But I have to wonder, where were they then?”
Despite calls from CNN, “Good Morning America,” Katie Couric and Ellen DeGeneres, the McMutrie sisters and their family say they are still the same young women who chose to dedicate their lives to Haiti’s children.
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