HAMMOND | Michael Fedele sees himself as "a regular Joe."
"I have a job. I'm accountant," he said.
But on Thursday, this regular Joe will get on a plane for another visit to the orphanage he founded in possibly the poorest place in the world, Cite Soleil in Port au Prince, Haiti.
Fedele, married and the father of two, said he understands the risk.
In the last week, the U.S. State Department banned government officials from traveling to Haiti, where deadly protests over rising food prices led to the ouster of Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis.
"If you don't need to stay, you might consider departing," U.S. Embassy spokesman James Ellickson-Brown told the Associated Press.
About 19,000 U.S. citizens live in Haiti. More than 140 Americans have been kidnapped there since 2005, according to the embassy.
"It's very serious," Fedele acknowledged this week.
But Fedele, of Hammond, said he has learned the people who have tried to do things in this world have had to take risks.
"I don't have the fears that some people have," he said. "I know God is with me."
There's no other explanation for his being spared during his numerous encounters with the violence that plagues Haiti, he said.
Fedele's first visit to Haiti came six years ago at a time when he was in the midst of his own personal odyssey.
Fedele, now 46, said he had arrived at that stage in life where he questioned the worth of how he was spending his time.
During that period, Fedele, an avid reader, picked up a book at the Munster library.
Written by Joseph Bentivegna, then a young physician serving in Haiti, the book was titled "The Neglected and Abused: A Physician's Year in Haiti."
Bentivegna's story left Fedele, not a world traveler, driven to see Haiti's plight for himself.
"I got on a plane in September of 2002 and ended up staying 40 days, and that completely changed my life ... forever," he said. "I saw with my own eyes this unimaginable situation. Words can't describe the hunger, the disease, tuberculosis and AIDS. There's no food. Half the country is in abject starvation."
Fedele said he found children wandering the streets like animals, naked, selling sticks to earn a bite to eat.
By the time he left Haiti that fall, Fedele, with the help of impoverished but eager Haitians, had the start of an orphanage in place to care for more than a dozen abandoned children who had attached themselves to him, pleading with him to be their "papa."
Today, Fedele donates at least 40 percent of his income to the continuation and growth of the Maranatha Orphanage and School in the Cabaret Village of La Plaine. He makes several trips a year to Haiti to work with the growing community.
From a one-room schoolhouse with 35 children, the orphanage has grown into a home for 130 children. About $20,000 has been raised for a second orphanage. Another $35,000 is needed to complete the project. About $10,000 of a required $100,000 has been raised to establish a goat farm to help the orphanage become self-sufficient in two years. The orphanage operates on a budget of about $75,000 a year.
The work is accomplished through Life for the World Inc., a nonprofit Fedele created with a few supporters by December 2002.
Fedele said his story is basically about what ordinary people can accomplish.
"Ordinary people can change the world," Fedele said. "You don't have to be rich, you just have to have a heart to want to make a difference in people's lives."
"Obviously, it's incredible," said Christopher McIntire, a family doctor with practices in Griffith and Hammond. "(Michael and his family) are actually sacrificing so others may have a chance in life. They're giving more than I've ever seen anyone else do out of their personal income."
McIntire recently donated 30,000 vitamins to Fedele's orphanage and is working to create a box garden to help the orphanage grow its own food.
