Business Owner Lends Hand to Haiti's Orphans

Eureka resident John Keane believes in creating a work environment that encourages giving back.

Keane, the founder of , gives his employees five extra personal days each year to spend doing charitable work. He created the Keane Charitable Group and has helped organize charity events.

“I was raised that way. I raised my kids that way,” he said. “I thought it was important to build that into the culture of my company. But I wanted to do more, something more substantial.”

Last year, something happened that helped him figure it out – a catastrophic earthquake struck southern Haiti, killing hundreds of thousands and leaving many more homeless – including great numbers of children.

So Keane, 49, created the Haiti Orphan Project to help house, feed and educate the countless number of orphaned children in that impoverished nation.

Keane, a Webster Groves native who now lives in Eureka, is the president of The Keane Insurance Group, which specializes in medical liability insurance. The company was based in Sunset Hills for many years until moving to a new office building in Kirkwood last fall.

After the earthquake in January 2010, Keane connected with the Global Orphan Project in Kansas City, MO, and within a month took his first trip to Haiti to see the destruction firsthand.

“It was just incredibly compelling,” Keane said. “It was the kind of experience where, for me, I just couldn’t come back and not do anything.”

Since then, Keane has been on half a dozen trips to Haiti with family members, friends and employees. He left on Thursday for yet another trip, his group carrying almost 1,000 pounds of peanut butter and other donations to distribute to the children they were to visit.

The mission of the Haiti Orphan Project is to raise money and work through the Global Orphan Project and Haitian church leaders to get the money where it’s needed. The hope is to build or rebuild orphanages and schools that along with churches could become the centerpieces of self-sustaining villages.

Keane's employee Les Prouty, an ordained minister, has moved from sales into the full-time job of directing the Haiti Orphan Project. He said that before the earthquake there were an estimated 350,000 orphaned or abandoned children in Haiti.

Since the earthquake, that number has doubled, he said. And many of the people who were displaced by the earthquake are still living in makeshift housing and tents.

Keane encourages his employees to join the trips to Haiti to deliver supplies, meet and play with the children, and help spread hope. About half of the roughly 40 employees have done so. Many have gotten involved in fundraising here at home.

“They all are profoundly moved,” Prouty said. “They come back with a greater appreciation for what they have here.”

Keane agreed.

“It’s life changing,” he said. “You think you understand what poverty is, but this just redefines it.”

Keane, who has eight children and one grandchild, said his family had been deeply affected by the project. Three of his children and his wife have joined him on visits to Haiti.

“We go thinking we’re going to give something, and we get so much more than we give,” he said.