Meeting with School Directors
Chris and Henry visited all the classes at Gros Marin with
Father Dutel, talking with student and teachers while we were in this
meeting. Father Kensy is the director of
Boileau as Father Dutel is the director of Gros Marin.
In Cavaillon, Fathers Lampy and Kensy, Charlemagne, and the
following directors met with us:
1. Estinvil
Pierre - Mission Tel 2270
1637
2. Laureine
Porfil - Bercy 3931
8099
3. Ronald
Jinius - Flamand 3643 4036
4. Rezio
Alexis - Roche Delmas 3735 9563
5. Ketia
Augustin - Berette 3720 8605
6. Father
Kinsey - Boileau
The Texans, Mike, Alix and Marie, were also with us (Pat, Bob,
and Richard). Marie played an active
part in our discussion through her Creole translation. She lived in
Port-au-Prince, and went to high school there before coming to the States for
college and her career in health care.
We opened the meeting with the observation that funds for the
Haiti program were stagnant or declining at St. Charles, St. Anthony and St.
Thomas a Becket. Charlemagne and the
priests explained that they faced increased pressure to fund the schools
because the parents were less and less able to pay the fees. Last year was a poor crop year and more
students were in need of assistance.
From the Texan group we learned that the number of students at Boileau
had increased considerably.
We insisted that we understood the problems, but that today we
wanted to hear what they were going to do with increasing demands in the face
of declining revenues.
There was never any real response to this question from any of
the directors, Charlemagne, or the priests.
We asked each director about the school nutrition program, and
to our surprise and disappointment, we
heard that none of the schools had a nutrition program this school year. Father Lampy and Charlemagne said that after
the teachers were paid there was no money left for feeding the children. We asked if the children came to school
hungry and the answer was yes. The
directors said they had children who arrived hungry and who had their heads on
their desks by 10 am.
Charlemagne explained that they had used commodity foods
supplied by CRS during the previous school year(2010-2011), and through
September 2011, before it was discontinued.
The lunch programs stopped at that time.
We are not sure if they even started in some schools. Later Chris and Henry confirmed that there
was a limited nutrition program at Gros Marin.
Boileau also had a limited program, but it was funded by both St.
Charles and St. Philip (Texas) and so had more money. We stated that the St. Charles Haiti
Committee would be very disappointed to hear this news and would communicate
its reaction once a meeting has been held in Arlington.
Next we discussed the possibility of improving the communication
between our US parishes and the Cavaillon schools. We told the directors that we thought that
there should be direct communication with each school, that in the future
reports should come from the school director, and that even the sending of
pictures and letters of the children could easily be done by the internet.
Each director was asked if he/she used the internet, had an
email address, and knew how to use a computer.
About half of the directors volunteered that they had email
addresses. We asked if training for all
directors could be furnished by Charlemagne.
There was quick agreement to proceed with training and training dates
were agreed upon on Sundays after mass. We asked the directors to send us a
first email by May 1, 2012.
When we visited the secondary school on top of the hill behind
the rectory we found that the computer room had about twenty computers. There is an IT teacher who comes to the
school to conduct classes for advanced students. The Texas group has funded
computers in Boileau that would also be available. In any event, in each rectory (Cavaillon,
Boileau, and Gros Marin) there is internet access and the priests have computers
that capture the internet.
On our last night in Haiti at the Hotel Oloffson, we met an
American IT specialist who is helping establish the broadband system in
Haiti. He insisted that the 4G network
in Haiti is better and more widespread than in the US. We saw that Father Dutel had a laptop in Gros Marin, using a Haitian
internet provider called NATCOM. The
American at Hotel Oloffson told us that
NATCOM was a company belonging to the Vietnamese army (!) that had bypassed
Viola and Digicel which were already established in Haiti, providing first cell
phone and then internet service.
We also asked the directors to tell us what equipment and
provider costs they would need to have an internet connection in each
school. In the interim Father Lampy assured
them that they could use his equipment.
When we again asked for solutions to meet the increasing cost of
schooling, we got no answers. At that
time we suggested that the best course was to increase the income of the
parents, and that through economic development such as the projects of KAMAK,
we were trying to do just that. Everyone
agreed that raising the standard of living was the best long-term solution.
Kim Lamberty of CRS
In the evening all of us, including the Texans invited Kim
Lamberty to dinner in Les Cayes. Kim is
the CRS person responsible for the matching grants program that matched our
$10,000 for a tractor, equipment, pump, and miscellaneous expenses for
KAMAK. She told us that their money
would be released as soon as Peguy got a couple of remaining documents to
them. The latest word from Peguy upon
our return to the States is that he had gathered those documents having to do
with their incorporation and accountability and had scheduled a meeting with
the Les Cayes CRS office.
Kim is very knowledgeable about Haiti and the Twinning Program
because she was the social ministry employee of a parish in Silver Spring for
six to eight years. During that time
they developed a coffee cooperative that is a model in that the members get
additional benefits such as cash payments at the death of members and
assistance with health expenses. Due to
her extensive experience in Haiti, she was hired by CRS when they beefed up
their staffs in response to the earthquake.
She has a major role in the upcoming meeting in Washington in early
June, at which time the Haitian bishops are coming to participate, express
their objectives and requests from the US Catholic church and Twinning
Program. Every Catholic bishop working
with Haiti and a layman representative will also be invited.
Next we talked about the fact that our nutrition monies had been
spent for education, and that there never seemed to be enough funding from our
parishes for their schools. She said
that we needed to sit down with each school and develop a plan for the school
to become self-supporting. There is
always some subsidy for private schools in the US that use a combination of
parish support, endowments and fund drives.
We need to expect the same of the Haitian schools.
We also discussed the fact that we had very little success in
attracting and keeping Haitian-Americans in our group. She replied that her parish in Maryland had
worked for a long period to bring her parish together with one of the Haitian
parishes in DC. Kim lives on Capital
Hill and she said she would be happy to meet with our committee in the future.
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