Hugues Bastien, born in Haiti, came to New York City in 1976 to join his family and to be educated up through college. While in the United States, Hugues kept close ties with his impoverished native area of northeast Haiti. As a church youth leader in a Brooklyn church, Hugues promoted missions activities, and then received a strong nudge from God to serve as a missionary. Hugues later  discerned that he was to return to his hometown of Ouanaminthe, Haiti to start a private Christian school.

With the help of friends, Hugues founded Coalition of Children in Need Association (COCINA) in 1990 as a U.S.-based 501 (c) (3) charitable organization to support educational and spiritual needs of children in Ouanaminthe---a community of 100,000 people in northeast Haiti. Hugues moved back to his hometown and led a team to establish Institution Univers (i.e. school of the world), in 1994, to provide a program for children that would be much better than is available in local public schools. The school was started with 84 kindergarten students and three teachers. Each year a grade level was added, and school facilities were constructed to keep up with the additions of students and grade levels. All class levels have a daily Bible perio The entire school had 2050 students in the spring of 2011, with 200 of them being “earthquake refugees” who had moved from Port-au-Prince to Ouanaminthe in 2010 after the January 12 earthquake. The school is on the French system, having 13 grades. June 2009 was the first high school graduation, with 15 thirteenth graders graduating. The June 2010 13th grade had 43 graduates. The June 2011 graduating class had 34 thirteenth graders, with 17 of them originating from Port-au-Prince. The school employs 140 full-time and part-time local people. In 2009, Institution Univers was named “one of the top ten schools in the nation” by the Haiti Ministry of Education.

Healthcare is also a critical community need in Ouanaminthe. In the 2001-04 time period, Hugues Bastien collaborated with the Board of Directors of COCINA and an architectural designer to obtain funding and a design for a three-story medical clinic. Univers Centre Medical was built in 2005-06. This clinic was designed to provide various medical, surgical, dental and eye-care services to all people in the Ouanaminthe area. The building includes rooms for pharmacy, medical examination and treatment, laboratory tests, dental services and eye services, plus a surgery center, emergency/recovery room with beds and birthing area. The Univers Centre Medical began meeting medical needs soon after its construction was completed in 2006. Mission teams came from the U.S. for several weeks per year to perform services in the clinic. In 2008, COCINA obtained funding to hire a Haitian staff of 24 professional and support personal. This staff now has 35 Haitians that include three primary-care  physicians, one gynecologist, an optometrist, dentist, pharmacist, lab technicians, nurses and essential support personnel. In the fall of 2010, the demands for the clinics services were so great that the clinic switched from being open 45 hours per week to being open 24 hours per day and 7 days per week. UMC serves over 1350 patients per month

COCINA was initially established to provide financial and management support and mission teams to help Institution Univers school be successful in its mission. COCINA subsequently expanded its involvement in Ouanaminthe to include adult vocational education and construction and staffing of the medical clinic. The COCINA Board of Directors has 22 members from across the United States and Haiti.

The vocational education program of Univers is called Univers Technique et Commercial In 2010-11, COCINA is supporting Director Hugues Bastien in the expansion of vocational education from what has been just classroom-based courses (e.g. computer operations, business accounting, English) to laboratory courses in commercial/industrial sewing and auto/vehicle mechanics. The building for these two new hands-on vo-ed programs was completed in May 2011 at a cost of $250,000. Funding  has been provided from three foundations to build the new building for these two new programs, purchase all the startup equipment/supplies and to support two instructor salaries when classes start early in 2012.

In 2010, COCINA added “economic development” to its mission statement, knowing how critical it is to provide jobs and job training for Haitians in order to rebuild the country. COCINA has received half of the needed money to jump-start a chicken-egg farm outside Ouanaminthe that will have several thousand laying hens initially.