A Bermudian who runs an orphanage in Haiti has named his fellow countrymen as the reason the facility is still afloat.

Philip Rego said that Bermudians made up the bulk of benefactors for Feed My Lambs, which he set up 15 years ago.

His latest appeal is a call for residents to sponsor a child, which would cover the young person’s food and care daily.

Mr Rego said that donations worth more than $1 million were sent from Bermuda since he started the charity.

He added: “It comes from the small towns, it comes from the corporations, it comes from individuals.

“If it wasn’t for Bermuda, I don’t think I would be able to have what I have.”

Haiti, which shares the island of Hispaniola about 1,000 miles due south of Bermuda, has suffered from political and social problems for decades, has been racked by chaos in recent years.

A 7.2 magnitude earthquake devastated Haiti, on the eastern third of the island in 2021, which was followed by years of brutal clashes between gangs and the military.

Mr Rego, who started the orphanage in 2008, said his main concerns were raising cash for food, medicine and housing costs.

He said that he had an annual food budget of about $3,500 per child to feed them “a small meal” every day.

Mr Rego said the struggle came with inflation. The average bag of rice, he said, costs about 65 Haitian gourdes when the average person made about four gourdes a day.

He said that trade involved a lot of bartering, but ultimately he believed the best help came from charitable giving.

Mr Rego added that the charity’s clinic was often the safest place for people to receive medical treatment because travelling to the city was too dangerous.

He said that sponsoring a child would require about $252 a year to pay for food, clothes and medicine.

Mr Rego added: “If I could even get 100 kids sponsored, it would help with school supplies and putting them in school as well as feeding programmes.”

He said that much of the country had been targeted by looters, who stole everything from food to solar panels.

He added that one of his assistants earlier commented that conditions in Haiti had become the worst he had seen in his life.

Mr Rego said: “When he goes to school and when we go to the market to buy food, we get held up by gangsters with guns.

“They don’t know if they’re coming back, but we’re trying to keep the organisation going.”

He added that trying to convey the horror of life in Haiti to others outside the country had been difficult as it was hard to describe the full extent of the problems.

Mr Rego explained: “If you don’t take people to Haiti, you lose people. If people don’t come to see for themselves, you lose people.”

He added: “You see the condition of the world — all over is chaos and for people to take their eye off of what we’ve developed in Haiti it can be scary.

“I go nights sleepless because I’m trying to figure out how to keep this thing going.”

Despite being a prime target for desperate people, Mr Rego said the charity has managed to stay afloat and remain a safe haven.

He said: “Four schools in our community have closed down, so our enrolment has gone from 700 to now over 1,000 kids in our school.

“If we were to open up another school, we would be able to get another thousand.

“There are so many kids who are looking for opportunity and change.”

Mr Rego added: “They use the word ‘hopeless,’ but I don’t like that word because that means that there’s no opportunity for change.”

• For more information, contact phirego58@gmail.com