June Newsletter: Celebrating Summer
Dear Friends,
After a year of working remotely, countless Zoom meetings, and several webinars, I was delighted to visit Haiti for HELP for the first time in June. The purpose of the trip was to thank our many corporate partners locally, meet HELP colleagues and students for the first time in person, and discuss strategies to continue to magnify the HELP story. Thanks to careful advance planning and appropriate security and health measures in place, this trip was a success.
One of the partners we met in person was Brana, the Heineken brewery in Haiti. We had an enlightening conversation with their CEO and head of community engagement. In this meeting, we learned that after Brana hired their first HELP graduate, Elice Oreste (industrial engineering '14), they have since hired another 7 alumni!
This is another powerful example of the positive experience employers have hiring HELP graduates and how HELP alumni pave the way for the success of all HELP students. Today, our alumni can be found at major banks, successful businesses throughout Port-au-Prince, and at internationally renowned Haitian brands like Barbancourt.
One of the most striking and rewarding elements of this trip was the realization that once business leaders in Haiti have a chance to experience a HELP graduate within their ranks, they can become predisposed to support HELP. We recently received a call out of the blue from a business leader who made a spontaneous $11,000 unsolicited contribution as a ‘thank you’ to HELP for shaping his most productive employee into the high performer he is today.
I feel certain that with more efforts to educate the local market about the HELP talent pool we will build deeper and closer ties for reciprocal support from the Haitian business community. I also hope this will continue to reinforce the power of the return on investment made by our many donors in the US and elsewhere.
Sam Connor
Development Director
Virtual Learning Expands Study Abroad Opportunities
This spring, HELP students Stael Toussaint (law '23) and Bessy Jeudilus (education '23) along with staff member Nancy Audain were selected to participate in the Civic Engagement course at Bard College, offered through the Open Society University Nework. Bessy, Stael, and Nancy logged into the class for two, two-hour sessions a week and participated in assignments and projects. “The most frequent assignments,” Bessy reports, “were reading responses which we had to hand in the day before class. We also had presentations, position papers, and other assignments like community mapping, interviews, action plans, etc. which helped guide our final project.”
“Each class and reading was more interesting than the last but I particularly enjoyed the classes on civil society and strategies for engaging in hostile environments. I also really liked Eric Liu’s work on the question of power.” In her semester-end feedback, Bessy’s engagement with the readings stood out. Her professor wrote that her reading responses were some of the best they’ve seen in the two years they’ve done the class!
But for Bessy that wasn’t the best part. “My favorite aspect of the class was the workshops with different speakers from all over the world. We had sessions with people deeply involved in their community. Government officials, activists, global civil society leaders even one official from Haiti. These were very enriching contacts and the diversity in the course allowed us to have different perspectives and learn from the reality of other countries.”
Nancy also enjoyed the variety of perspectives. “The course was unique to me, I had never thought of civic engagement from so many different socio-cultural angles. The course gave me new perspectives and a global view on the challenges that I thought were unique to Haiti but now see are present in other countries.”
For his final project, Stael developed the Youth Initiative for Professional Development. He writes “the project aims to create a network of qualified but unemployed young professionals in order to train them and link them to employment opportunities in the town of Mariani on Haiti’s southern peninsula. The project is an attempt to answer these questions: What explains the extreme poverty, especially among young people, in Mariani? How can we solve this problem? How can the youth who grew up in the community participate in its development? And, how do we bring governmental and NGO attention to the area?”
The program was so impressed with Stael’s project, they provided funding for it! “The sustainability of my Youth Initiative will be a constant reminder of everything I experienced through this course.” “In more abstract terms,” Bessy says, “the many lessons I have learned about citizenship, community organizing, power, diversity, inclusion, and civil society will forever change the way I view local and international situations and social movements.”
Student Profile: Raissa Jean Baptiste (architecture '22)
Raissa Jean Baptiste grew up in Cabaret, the second of three children. She is currently studying architecture at Quisqueya Uniersity.
In “normal times” Raissa brought her passion for education to her involvement in the SAKALA service project. “I tutored 9th-grade physics for the state exams; some of the students didn’t even have textbooks. I showed them new techniques to help them understand and showed them how they could learn from each other and make progress by working in groups."
Raissa's passion for giving back extends beyond her HELP activities and she has been able to keep up even with the closures of the last two years. "I conducted online activities for a women’s group that I founded called “Sauvons Lumane”. After participating in HELP’s Women’s Empowerment group, I was greatly inspired and my mentor, Chef Melissa Francois, gave me lots of ideas, so I started Sauvons Lumane as a mentorship network for young girls."
"Lumane Casimir was a Haitian musician at the beginning of the 20th century. She came to Port-au-Prince from the provinces to perform and support herself but in spite of her talent and popularity (performing at the Bicentennial, for example) she did not achieve financial success until the end of her life when it was too late to improve her circumstances; she suffered from tuberculosis and died in poverty. Although her songs are still popular and she is considered a cultural icon, we don’t reflect on her courage and her inability to live her dreams. Girls like Lumane, with talent and dreams, are born every day; are we going to let them perish like her as well?”
“I began at my old high school where I knew the students excelled in academics and the arts but there were few trainings to help them build on their talents and enhance their value. I set up program ambassadors in each grade who encourage their classmates to sign up and we have 60 girls enrolled. During the shutdown, we conducted activities over WhatsApp beginning with self-knowledge activities and personality assessments and showed them the different ways to apply leadership based on their skills and interests. We also had virtual workshops with guest speakers on entrepreneurship, personal development, fashion, and more. Going forward we are hoping to match each of the 60 students with a mentor, many of whom will be university students; so far 40 mentors have signed up.”
"HELP’s support allows me to hope for a better future. Here we are positive and motivated, and I benefited from this breeze of optimism. Whenever I start to doubt the future, a message from the HELP staff has influenced me to change my mind, and my advisor is always there to ask for news and give advice. Throughout this time, HELP has been forward-thinking and working to protect us all, organizing information sessions and giving us protective equipment. I am sure that many people are aware of COVID-19 and how to fight it through the efforts that HELP began. Its leadership and quick decision prompted many people to be more alert. Overall, I have grown to realize the value of acting in the present moment. The future is uncertain and only the actions you take now can define you. Working hard now is the only real opportunity I have.”
Alumni Profile: Fabiola Rosier (education ’16)
Today, Fabiola works at the Haitian organization Anseye Pou Ayiti where she provides teacher training. But her own education was never assured. When Fabiola’s mother fell ill, the family could no longer afford Fabiola’s secondary school fees and she had to stay home. After two or three months, the school principal heard about this student who was brilliant but was missing school for financial issues. “They reached out to my father and said I should come back because I student like me should never miss school. So, the school gave me a scholarship to complete high school.”
That opportunity and Fabiola’s top grades led her to HELP where she enrolled in a degree in education administration and she quickly took advantage of all HELP has to offer. “As an education major, the HELP leadership and English classes inspired me to prepare a leadership class in English for my fellow students at the university. This particular initiative really boosted my confidence as an educator.”
Fabiola feels that the training and experiences, especially in HELP’s leadership curriculum are key to a better future. “People in the program are brilliant,” she says, “but the country does not only need people who have brains, the country needs people who are willing to work, to help others, and to see an issue and try to seek solutions. Only complaining that things are not as we wish does not solve any problems. If we want change, we must be part of it.”
And now, all of Fabiola’s passion, skills, and experiences at HELP are coming together at Anseye Pou Ayiti. “I work with teachers in the countryside. I train the teachers, follow them in their journeys, and I have them identify the issues in their communities, in their classrooms and I help them think about the potential solutions. We have a real lack of leadership and Anseye Pou Ayiti is really focused on how we can help teachers transform students into tomorrow’s leaders.”