Haiti Trip (School Update) July 4, 2010
It has been way too long since I've been back to see SOPUDEP and Haiti, but Darren Ell (the photojournalist who has provided such wonderful images of the school and contributed to the content on this site) and I are getting back there on July 9. My thoughts about this trip are very polarized right now. On the one hand I am excited to see Rea, her staff and students again, but I am trying in vain to prepare myself mentally and emotionally to see the devastation and the ever deteriorating living conditions millions of people are now forced to deal with.
Malaria and other insect carried viruses have taken hold in camps as the rainy season is now upon them. It is not uncommon to see people with their hair turning blonde from malnutrition and scabies are running rampant. The tents and strung up bed sheets are now tattered and torn and chronic dehydration is now critical . This is no way for a population just hours away from top notch resorts in the Dominican to be living. Where the is the help?
It is turning out to be the start up charities with meager funds that are trying to do whatever little they can to turn things around while respecting and preserving Haiti's independence. SOPUDEP has been getting a bit of attention from these smaller organizations.
Rea has been approached by a group out of New Mexico called World Hands Alliance. They are a group of architects that have been using a mix of modern and indigenous design and materials to build for communities all over the world that do not have the means to do it for themselves. They have generously offered to design and build the permanent school for SOPUDEP. They have also talked to Rea about helping the community to start up a co-op type business. This business would be building a special type of sturdy lightweight block so they might be better able to assist their community in the rebuilding efforts.
Rea has said time and again to me during this time that we need to try and stabilize the school environment again. Rea and her staff have been doing the best they can to run a cobbled together school since May. This is a school of a tarp and four poles. They removed some of the desks from the old school so the children would have a place to work. When I am down there I will be helping to teach them to build the temporary shelters that I have talked about before click here. By the time I leave there should be eight classrooms that will hold 200 students at a time and ten decent size shelters. By no means is this a solution to their ever mounting problems, but it should give them a more comfortable learning and living environment until the reconstruction starts.
To this end, I was contacted by a Meaghan Balzer from New Brunswick Canada a few months ago. Meaghan and the organization she works for, Books to Build, had raised close to 14,000 French language books and wanted SOPUDEP to have them. This also includes around 2000 textbooks of all subjects and grades that the school has been desperately needing since they opened in 2002.
We decided to buy a 20 foot shipping container to send these books over (it can be used as secure storage over there), but the books didn't even take up half the container. So within a couple of weeks Meaghan has collected four pallets of wheelchairs, crutches and walkers, tons of clothes, shoes and blankets, five overhead projectors, a number of folding tables and lots of school supplies and I'm pretty sure she's still going. We are also receiving other material donations from other organizations- like Learning Tools for Global Schools- to be put in the same shipment. This I think will go along way to ensuring a more stabilized and normal school experience that Rea has been trying to provide for her students.
Darren Ell (the guy who's coming with me) will be doing a battery of interviews, video and photography while we are visiting. We hope we will be able to well document the new SOPUDEP school and the vital roll they are playing in the community. The website and the promo material will change when we get back. I have wanted to retool it for a while now, but I needed the material and shots to do it. This is a new phase in SOPUDEP's history and the site needs to better reflect that.
The teachers pay and the food program are certainly more important than ever. We have received help in these areas, but we cannot rest until yearly budgets are met (the new site will provide all this current budget info). Simply getting the staff a paycheck isn't good enough when it is so hard to live off of it. We would very much like to further the work in the now growing partnerships developing between SOPUDEP's staff and North American Teachers Union's (thank-you Surrey Teachers Association and the Federation of Post Secondary Educators of B.C for your participation). I can't stress how far this will go to ensuring a stable and decent pay for the staff.
Anyway, there is tons of stuff in the works and there will be lots to talk about upon our return and most likely during our visit, but we need your help more than ever. The media attention and celebrity hype have all but dried up, but the conditions are worsening and we need to stay vigilant in keeping them not only in our thoughts, but putting our compassion into action.
Talk to you soon!
Ryan Sawatzky