Living With Contradictions: by Darren Ell

This weeks update was contributed by a good friend of mine and SOPUDEP's, Darren Ell. If you haven't heard how I came upon SOPUDEP in the first place, this is the man.

Darren is an independent photojournalist from Montreal who is not someone content to do his fact checking remotely. Instead, he puts himself in the thick of it by traveling to the places that we would deem to be certain death for any foreigner (of course, he knows this fear is all media hype anyways).

It is because of his dedication to seek out the truth and not a paycheck that his perspective is unique to the popular media. He is the guy I turn to for clarity when the stories and facts I hear start to get muddled.

Oh yes, he's also the guy who provided the majority of beautiful and inspiring photo's you see on this site

Ryan Sawatzky, President
The Sawatzky Family Foundation

Living With Contradictions

I live with certain contradictions.  As concerns Haiti, I don’t believe in charity, and yet I am a SOPUDEP supporter.  Allow me to explain.  The educator and journalist in me oblige me to raise certain facts:  there are currently more charities and NGOs per capita in Haiti than anywhere else in the world:  10,000 for 9 million people according to the World Bank.  They operate over 85% of all education and health services in the country.  This dire situation began in 1825 when France forced Haiti to close its schools in order to reimburse former slave owners. This situation continued for 122 years. Hard to believe, but true.

The legacy of France in Haiti is one of the prime reasons why Haiti is so poor and why the recent earthquake was so devastating.  But other countries have played a role.  For example, when Canada, the US along with France decided they wanted to overthrow the Haitian Government in 2004, they weakened it first by funneling funds away from the Government into NGOs and charities.  The goal was to create dissatisfaction and confusion in the population. SOPUDEP was not, of course, part of this sad story, but you can understand my reticence to support charities.  But allow me to continue.

Haitians know this story all too well.  It is why in the late 1980s, after two centuries of foreign-controlled governments and dictatorships they organized themselves and elected their chosen political party, called Lavalas.  One of the primary objectives of the party was education.  Despite being overthrown twice by Western powers, the party invested more in public education in 14 years than other governments did in the previous two centuries:  195 new primary schools and 104 public schools, a new university, thousands of scholarships, subsidized schoolbooks and uniforms, hot meal programs and literacy programs across the country.  SOPUDEP saw the light of day thanks to these initiatives.

In 2007, during my second meeting with SOPUDEP director Rea Dol (we first met in 2006), she was determined as ever to continue building SOPUDEP, but she was also tired and stressed, as was her staff.  Government funding for the school ended with the coup d’état and her international funding had dried up.  She had been unable to pay her teachers for 4 months.  And yet they showed up for work every single day.  A teacher myself, I do not know a single Canadian teacher who would work under such circumstances.  Rea asked me to do what I could to help the school.  Once again impressed by the dedication of her and her staff, and by the hundreds of earnest students in the school, I promised I would do so.

Rea and I talked about the problem of charity in Haiti and Rea explained her point of view.  She too longs for the day when the Haitian Government will be able to fund a fully-functioning public school system which provides tax-supported education for all.  But that is not the case today, and with half of the population under 18, we need to act now to ensure that when that day comes, there is an educated workforce ready to take the reigns.  Her goal is to grow an institution that serves as a model for this public system:  a school that offers a full-range of studies and has all the necessary facilities to do so.  More importantly, it must be a school accessible to all, even the poorest, like in any developed nation where youth are not denied education because of poverty.  This made sense to me.  During my work in Haiti from 2006 to 2008, I read and met with some of the most enlightened thinkers on Haitian reality.  They shared Rea’s view, that until the day when Haiti is able to run its own show, Haitians will need our support.

My time in Haiti showed me that although Haitians need help to build their institutions, the people themselves are as hard-working and ambitious as anywhere else in the world.  During my 2007 visit, I conducted interviews and made portraits of some of the students of SOPUDEP.  I did not encounter “poor” students at all.  I met lucid intelligent young people with the same dreams and ambitions as those I taught in Canada in the 1990s.  The only difference was that the future posed significantly greater challenges than it did in Canada.  See for yourself: Click Here!

When I returned to Canada after my visit in 2007, I promised Rea I would find new stable funding for the school.  That’s when I met Ryan and Garry Sawatzky.  Since our first discussions, we have not looked back and neither has Rea.  Teachers were paid and the feeding program was rekindled.  A new confidence was alive in the school, and enrolment steadily rose.  Ongoing and increased support is however needed more than ever.  The earthquake in Haiti was a major setback, but the people of Haiti and SOPUDEP are ready and able to move on.  As we have all witnessed, Rea has been a veritable force in her community, bringing aid and medical support to the victims of the quake, and she is determined as ever to see SOPUDEP return stronger than ever.  This is the type of leader that deserves our support!  The Sawatzky Family Foundation has been behind her all the way throughout this catastrophe.

I live with my contradictions, but I know that SOPUDEP is part of the solution.  One day, it will serve as a model of what public education in Haiti can be. This will come to pass, with your support.

Darren Ell,
Montreal, March 14, 2010.