MARK STUART
Co-Founder of HAFÂ & Ikondo
Mark, a founding member of the Hands and Feet project, has been passionately connected to Haiti for over 25 years. He visited Haiti for the first time during high school with his father, Drex, and fell deeply in love with the nation and its people.
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In 1991, Mark founded Audio Adrenaline with band mates Bob Herdman and Will McGinniss and went on to win two Grammys over a 17 year career as the lead singer.
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In 2004, after Audio Adrenaline released their song "Hands and Feet" they discovered that the song inspired their fans to get involved with missions in order to better serve God. With this idea in mind, and their love of Haiti already in place, they started the Hands & Feet Project (HAFP) in order to help with the orphan crisis in Haiti.
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They created their first Children's Village in Jacmel, Haiti which featured a main dining hall called "The Big House," titled for another of their hit songs.
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After working for several years in Haiti, they realized they wanted to dig further to the root of the orphan crisis. Realizing that many of the orphans in Haiti were not true orphans, but rather victims of a broken system, whose parents didn't have the money or jobs to support them, HAFP decided it needed to try something different.
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They originally created Ikondo to be a place for children who had aged out of the orphan program, but changed their minds when they saw that it was more beneficial for young adults to get their own apartment and take on the responsibility and reality of living life in Haiti, rather than remaining sheltered.
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Since they had already built the Ikondo building, they chose to re-imagine it as a Missions Guest Village.
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Mark has long been wrestling with how the church handles mission trips, and how society as a whole views Haiti. By creating Ikondo, he felt they were better able to open people's eyes to build relationships with Haitian people, and help build their economy rather than contributing to a destructive dependency-based culture.
Thus, Ikondo was born.
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Mark proudly embraces Haitian culture and invites you to do the same, as you explore the magnitude and depth of life of these people, so we can build relationships and love them better. By visiting Ikondo and experiencing Haiti, we are able to be the true hands and feet of God.
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Mark currently resides with his wife Aegis and two children, Journey and Christela, in Franklin TN, but he visits Haiti whenever he can often be found enjoying time with the Haitian people, and snorkeling along the beautiful Caribbean beaches.
"We don't need you to build houses. You don't know how to build houses. Haitians can build them better, and they want to build them. We need you to come and love on these people, to support their economy, and create jobs for them."