Dad Builds Orphanage in Haiti To Honor Daughter

All it takes is one person to make a difference. We have heard this statement throughout history and it is true, but in this case it took two people to make a difference. Britney Gengel was a sophomore at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida when she took a trip that would change her family's life forever.

Britney went to Haiti with a Florida- based religious charity to hand out food to the children and families in the area. According to the Huffington Post within a few hours of arriving the 19-year-old texted her parents saying, "I want to move here and start an orphanage." Little did her parents realize this would be the last time they heard from their daughter.

On January 12, 2010 a massive earthquake hit the region of Haiti with a magnitude of 7.0 leveling everything in its path. The Haitian government estimates that 300,000 people were killed during the earthquake, one of them being Britney Gengel. The Gengel's took this news hard, as any parent would but they saw a tiny light of hope in the tragedy.

Almost five years after the earthquake, the Gengel's have opened that orphanage that their daughter Britney dreamed of. The building is shaped in the form of a "B" and will house 33 boys and 33 girls; this is the exact number of days that Britney's body lay missing in the ruins. Britney's family now manages the orphanage as a full time job in hopes that Britney's memory will carry on.

Huffington Post