Bears Tight End Kyle Adams Building Orphanage in Haiti

After off-season workouts and minicamps are over, Bears players and coaches usually take time off before starting the grind of training camp and the season. For tight end Kyle Adams, it means a chance to get back to Haiti and continue work on an orphanage.

Adams visited Haiti for the first time when he was a student at Purdue University. He visited the country three times with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes before the devastating earthquake made a poor country even more poverty-stricken. Adams returned in February with the Ephraim Orphan Project, a not-for-profit that aims to give orphaned children both a home and life skills to help break the cycle of poverty.

He was moved by the people he met there and said he feels the need to continue his work with them.

“That’s a tough country. There’s a lot of poverty down there," Adams told the Chicago Bears official website. "You see everything we’ve been given here as Americans and there really is a lot of inequity. God put Haitian people in my heart and I’ve always wanted to help out Haiti.”

During his next trip, Adams will work on a security fence, run sports camps, share the gospel, and bring food and clothing to other orphanages. While the orphanage currently serves 18 children, Adams hopes to see it grow to accept more children.

“The long term goal is to have 60 children,” Adams said, “and to take them until they’re 18 and give them life skills, not just turn them out at 18 but educate them and give them a trade in Haiti like working on diesel engines or learning how to grow crops, and if possible sending them off to college.”

Adams is not the only Bears player to be moved to help people in impoverished countries. Israel Idonije has made several trips to his native Nigeria to set up medical clinics and distribute food and clothing. Jay Cutler and his fiancee Kristin Cavalleri visited schools in Kenya last April.

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