Help Bring Haifa Baptiste Home & Honor Her Legacy

On Saturday, September 12, 2026, our family experienced an unimaginable tragedy.

Our beloved Haifa Baptiste was vacationing in Costa Rica with family when she was swept away at a waterfall. Despite efforts to find her, Haifa did not survive. Her body was recovered the following day.

Our family is heartbroken, and we are now faced with something we never imagined having to do: bringing Haifa home from another country and laying her to rest.

But before we tell you what we need, we want you to know who Haifa was.

Haifa built her life around helping others.

Years ago, shortly after college, she volunteered with a community health organization in Miami. That opportunity became an internship, and while there, Haifa helped the organization secure an $80,000 grant to provide health services to the community.

She later described that experience as the moment she discovered her purpose. Knowing that something she had done would put resources into the hands of people who needed them gave her a profound sense of fulfillment.

From that moment forward, helping organizations find the resources to help people became Haifa's life's work.

She spent years in nonprofit development and fundraising, helping organizations secure millions of dollars to serve their communities. Most recently, Haifa served as Director of Development for the Organization of Black Aerospace Professionals (OBAP).

Haifa was also an entrepreneur. She founded Sunshine Impact Solutions LLC, a nonprofit management and fundraising consulting firm created to help small and midsize nonprofit organizations build their capacity, secure funding, and expand their impact.

Her heart was especially drawn to organizations serving youth, women, and people too often pushed to the margins.

In an interview about her life and work, Haifa identified three qualities that had carried her through her own journey:

Persistence. Hope. Hard work.

Those words mean something very different to us today.

Haifa spent her professional life helping organizations raise the money they needed to care for other people.

Now, in a heartbreaking turn we never could have imagined, we are asking others to help us care for Haifa.

Because Haifa died unexpectedly outside of the United States, bringing her home and making her final arrangements involves substantial expenses that our family was not prepared to face.

We have established a goal of $40,000 to help our family with the significant expenses associated with bringing Haifa home from Costa Rica and laying her to rest, including international preparation and handling of her remains, required documentation and administrative expenses, funeral home services, funeral and burial expenses, family logistics, and other unexpected costs associated with this tragedy. We are deeply grateful to American Airlines for generously providing the flight transportation to bring Haifa’s remains back to the United States.

We are asking the community Haifa served, the organizations and professionals whose lives she touched, our family and friends, and even those who never had the privilege of knowing her personally to stand with us.

Help us bring Haifa home.

Every contribution matters. If you cannot contribute financially, sharing this fundraiser is another meaningful way to help our family.

And please keep Haifa's mother, family, friends, colleagues, and everyone who loved her in your prayers.

There is something profoundly bittersweet about asking for help on behalf of a woman who spent so much of her life helping others find resources.

Haifa once said that she knew she had found her purpose when she realized that the resources she helped secure would make a difference in people's lives.

She lived that purpose.

Now it is our turn to show Haifa that the seeds she planted through a lifetime of service, persistence, hope, and hard work have not been forgotten.

Please help us bring our Haifa home and give her the beautiful homegoing she deserves.

With love and profound gratitude,

The Family of Haifa Baptiste

About the fundraiser: This fundraiser is being organized by Haifa’s cousin, Dr. Sandra Garcon Degerville, on behalf of Haifa’s family. Haifa’s mother, Judith Baptiste, has been designated as the beneficiary of this fundraiser, and the funds raised will be transferred directly to her to assist with Haifa’s funeral, burial, international repatriation-related expenses not otherwise covered, and other necessary expenses associated with her unexpected passing.