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Situated on the western third of the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea, the former French colony Haiti is today by most accounts the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. About 80 percent of the people there live in abject poverty On average, Haitian adults have attended 2.8 years of schooling and just 45 percent of people are literate. Ninety percent don't have access to clean drinking water. Twenty percent of the children there the before their fifth birthday from malnutrition. In 2000, following legislative elections fraught with irregularities,
international donors suspended almost all aid to Haiti, which lies only 90 miles off the coast of Florida.
For Carl Kuehner, founder, president and chief executive officer of Norwalkbased Building and Land Technology, this is where the front lines are.
"When it comes to charity, I would rather participate on the front lines than write a check," says Kuehner, whose family runs the nonprofit organization Hope for Haiti that brings him to the country for participation in different projects as often as four times a year.
Under the direction of his mother, JoAnne, who now runs Hope for Haiti from...