Eliza Yoon ’19 watched with disbelief as a young boy dragged a toy car made out of a plastic bottle across a dirt field in Haiti.
She was inspired to combat Haiti’s cholera epidemic after learning about it from a family friend who works in Haiti’s medical clinics.
She used the money she raised through her company, The Cupcake Communities, to build latrines in Haiti.
In January, she visited a village in Haiti where all of the houses were made of twigs.
There was no electricity, no water and trash covered the ground.
“It was heartbreaking,” Yoon said. “These people have absolutely nothing.”
In villages like these, people are forced to go to the bathroom on the ground, Yoon said.
This contributes to the spread of cholera, which has caused 8,183 deaths in Haiti since the cholera outbreak in 2010, according to the Center for Disease Control.
She used her love of baking as a way to help the community. After teaching herself how to make cupcakes by watching YouTube videos, she made her cupcakes for a local soup kitchen.
This summer, she decided to sell the cupcakes and use the proceeds to help people in Haiti.
Yoon created a website as a platform to sell the cupcakes, trademarked the name and is working on making it a 501(c)3 certified nonprofit organization.
She collected $6,000, which was enough to build a couple of latrines as well as make hygiene packages with toothbrushes and aquatabs to purify water.
“I specifically wanted to build latrines because you have to realize that they don’t have basic necessities,” Yoon said. “I’m hopeful that it will help the community.”
Seeing the affects of her work had a powerful impact on Yoon and her sister, Samantha Yoon ’18, who helps make the cupcake orders for The Cupcake Communities and also traveled with her to Haiti in January.
Eliza Yoon said that she and her sister started crying when they started to interact with the people in the village and saw the latrines that they had raised the money to build through their organization.
“It’s very emotional just to see that baking a few cupcakes and working just a little bit can help a lot of people,” Eliza Yoon said.