In Port-au-Prince, hidden within a guarded enclave, the orphanage Have Faith Haiti stands as a refuge from the gang violence that has nearly consumed the country’s capital. “Most of these kids have not left this orphanage for four years because of the security situation in Haiti,” correspondent Anderson Cooper told *60 Minutes Overtime*.
Founded by bestselling author Mitch Albom, Have Faith Haiti provides Haitian children from the most desperate circumstances with food, shelter, and an education. The mission has transformed lives: 16 kids graduated from the orphanage school and received scholarships to American colleges and universities.
“We’re trying to prepare them to be the next generation in Haiti that can hopefully change things,” Albom told Cooper in an interview.
During the two days that *60 Minutes* reported from the orphanage, gunshots were heard from outside the walls. Students shared with Cooper that they had felt bullets fly over their heads as they walked through the orphanage’s courtyard.
“The security situation in Haiti is completely out of control. And it is as dangerous as I have ever seen in the decades that I’ve been traveling to Haiti,” Cooper told *Overtime*.
### Anderson Cooper’s Connection to Haiti
Cooper spoke with *60 Minutes Overtime* about his long history reporting from Haiti, dating back to the fall of the military regime led by Joseph Raoul Cédras, and about his personal connection to the country through a high school teacher.
When Cooper was a student at The Dalton School in New York City in the mid-1980s, he took an algebra class taught by Yves Volel, a Haitian man passionate about returning home to change the country for the better.
“Yves Volel was working with groups of people who had left Haiti, who were here living in New York, trying to mobilize support for Haiti,” Cooper said.
### Early Reporting Career in Haiti
Cooper’s reporting career began unconventionally. “Back then in New York, a lot of cab drivers were Haitian,” he explained. He ended up convincing a friend to make a fake press pass for him, borrowed a camera, and started shooting stories in war zones.
In September 1994, Cooper reported from Haiti for Channel One during Operation Uphold Democracy — a U.S.-backed effort to overthrow the government led by Joseph Raoul Cédras and restore the exiled, democratically-elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power.
Cooper rode in the back of a Jeep with U.S. Army Special Forces tasked with disarming Cédras loyalists in a remote mountain town called Bainet. Crowds gathered and cheered as automatic weapons were confiscated by American soldiers. The soldiers explained that they couldn’t arrest the loyalists due to the risk of losing order.
“What are they scared of that the civilians will do?” Cooper asked a soldier.
“That they’re going to kill them. A date with a Firestone tire,” one U.S. soldier said. “That’s when they put a tire around their neck, soak it with gasoline and light it on fire.”
### Reporting After the 2010 Earthquake
In 2010, Cooper reported for CNN from Port-au-Prince the morning after a devastating 7.2 magnitude earthquake struck the country.
“I remember getting there and leaving the airport, people searching through the rubble with bare, bloodied hands and, you know, shovels if they were lucky, to try to find their children or their fathers, or their grandparents, or their neighbors,” Cooper recalled.
He continued reporting for six weeks, documenting harrowing stories of life and death. Cooper witnessed neighbors dig out a 13-year-old girl named Bea, who had been trapped under the rubble of a collapsed building for 18 hours. Miraculously, she survived.
“I ended up staying there for six weeks. It was one of the most remarkable and terrible experiences of my life,” Cooper said. “The actual death toll will never really be known, the estimates are about 200,000 to 220,000 people. They were picking up the dead like cordwood and tossing them in the back of trucks. We followed the trucks one morning because nobody knew where they were taking the bodies — and they were just dumping them in these mass pits.”
### The Aftermath and Current Crisis
Following the earthquake, humanitarian aid organizations from around the world established a presence to help Haiti rebuild.
“There was a huge outpouring around the world for raising money for Haiti. It was an extraordinary thing to see,” Cooper explained. “And yet, there’s not much sign of it today in Port-au-Prince.”
Today, as much as 90% of the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area is controlled by gangs. Reports of rapes, robberies, and murders are common. The United Nations estimates that more than a million people have been displaced from their homes by the ongoing violence.
“Gangs committing sexual assaults, and robberies, and killings — this is happening, you know, a two-hour flight from Florida,” Cooper said.
### Reporting Under Threat
Because U.S. commercial flights cannot fly directly to Port-au-Prince, Cooper and the *60 Minutes* team flew to Cap-Haitien in the north and then took a helicopter to the capital. They took every safety precaution.
“We drove in a convoy of armored vehicles with bullet-proof vests and heavily armed Haitian security personnel,” Cooper explained.
The team also ventured outside the orphanage’s walls to shoot a “stand-up” segment with Cooper on a busy street in Port-au-Prince, accompanied by about a dozen armed guards.
“In a very active war zone or very dangerous area, you will have security in perimeters. They get a sense of what’s happening a block or two away if a roadblock is being set up or anything to stop you because word has filtered out that you’re there,” Cooper explained.
The team spent just five minutes on the street filming Cooper’s segment and then left immediately.
“In a very dangerous place, it’s important that you get in, get out as quickly as possible. That was all I saw outside the walls of that orphanage.”
### Hope for the Future
Cooper met 16 children from Have Faith Haiti on scholarship in the United States who were staying at Mitch Albom’s house outside Detroit, Michigan, during winter break. All expressed hope to return to Haiti and contribute to the country’s future.
“The end goal is to be a senator in my country one day. Haiti isn’t just my country. It’s like my home where I was raised, and I have a deep, deep connection to Haiti, so yeah, my future is with Haiti,” a student named J.U. told Cooper.
“I have never been to a place that has more resilience than Haiti,” Cooper told *Overtime*.
He recalled a scene during his most recent trip where, despite the chaos of Port-au-Prince, there was a church service underway.
“In the chaos of Port-au-Prince, there was a church service. All these people in their Sunday best, hanging outside the church, talking to each other, you know, kissing hello to each other,” Cooper said.
“In the midst of gang violence in Haiti, life goes on. And life thrives. And it is a vibrant, extraordinary place full of extraordinary people.”
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*The video above was produced by Will Croxton, edited by Nelson Ryland, and Jane Greeley was the broadcast associate. Video and photos of Anderson Cooper in Haiti in 2010 are courtesy of CNN.*
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/anderson-cooper-on-assassination-of-his-haitian-math-teacher-yves-volel-60-minutes/
