EfP Service in Haiti - EfP Newsbrief Vol 1

posted on March 09, 2011

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Education for Prosperity Launches E-Newsletter

The board of Education for Prosperity (EfP) is happy to share with you the first edition of our e-newsletter, EfP Newsbriefs. In our six years of service as a non-profit organization (2005-2010) EfP has had the good fortune to align with a wonderful network of supporters. This network has given us both moral and financial support for our development efforts in Haiti. It has also facilitated our sharing the lessons we have learned with a wide range of audiences, from middle school Social Studies classes to Faith Communities and service clubs.

The purpose of EfP Newsbriefs is to keep this growing network informed about news related to our unfolding work. Readers can also check www.educationforprosperity.org, our website, for more details. Here is a summary of 2010 news:

January 2010 marked the tenth anniversary of the founding of Lekol Pa Nou (Creole for “Our School”), an elementary school in Pichon, Haiti. It was initiated as the result of an August 1999 consultation among Pichon residents, FREM (a Haitian agency for rural development) and two EfP board members visiting from Michigan. The ongoing collaboration of these parties along with the grassroots support of friendslike you, has fueled a decade of success.
January 2010 also witnessed the catastrophic destruction wrought by the earthquake in Haiti. This was followed by a year of starvation, homelessness, disease, conflict, and violence in the country already ranked as the poorest in our hemisphere.
Pichon was far enough away from the fault line to avoid physical damage to the school. Lekol Pa Nou enrollment grew significantly as a result of families evacuating Port-au-Prince. From December 2009 to December 2010, enrollment rose from 282 to 379 students, an increase of 26%.
EfP board member, Cindy Goren, and her daughter, Anna, visited Pichon in December 2009 and Cindy returned there is March 2010. Photos of earthquake damage in Port-au-Prince and our collaborators at Lekol Pa Nou can be see on our website at www.educationforprosperity.org.
The EfP website has undergone a thorough redesign thanks to the support of a friend at AKEA Web Solutions. A Facebook Fan Page is also in the works.
Eleven students graduated from Lekol Pa Nou in 2010, all of whom passed Haiti's National Exam. This is the fourth graduating class and the largest one so far. Migration patterns have taken job-seeking families out of rural areas for years. We will watch with keen interest how the earthquake disaster impacts this pattern.
Lekol Pa Nou students helped plant a Jatropha crop in 2010. This tropical plant produces seeds that are 40% oil, launching a bio-fuel initiative intended to stimulate the local economy. The goal is to give students and their families a reason to stay in Pichon and help build for the future.
Students at Mother McAuley High School in Chicago constructed solar panels to provide electricity for Lekol Pa Nou and for bio-fuel processors, which they also built. This opens up exciting possibilities for Pichon! The challenging aspect of this news is that the container carrying the equipment has yet to be released from the Port-au-Prince warehouse where it arrived last June.
Seattle’s Phinney Neighborhood Chorus has performed an annual benefit concert for Lekol Pa Nou since 2004. Their June 2010 concert was their most successful yet raising $11,500 for Lekol Pa Nou!
Formal presentations on Haiti by EfP board members in 2010 include:
- World Cultures Day, Three Fires Middle School, Howell, MI
- Art Auction for Haiti, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI
- LATTICE (Linking All Types of Teachers to International Cross-culturalEducation), Haslett, MI
- One World Day, Haslett High School, Haslett, MI
- Jack Ebling Radio Show, Lansing, MI
- Rotary Club of East Lansing, East Lansing, MI

These are the 2010 highlights for EfP and our wonderful network of collaborators. It was a year of continuing progress and enormous challenges. In the aftermath of Haiti’s traumatic experiences, Pichon residents have asked us to help them start a secondary school. While they highly valued their children getting an education, they no longer want to risk sending them away for this important benefit.

This is definitely something Education for Prosperity wishes to pursue in 2011, even as we acknowledge the enormous complexities involved. Watch for updates in future issues of the EfP Newsbriefs e-newsletter.

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