This primary school in Pernier, in the suburbs of Petionville, was founded in 1990 and is run by a dedicated educator, principle Dorce. There are currently 135 students and 5 teachers. The teachers are highly devoted to their jobs, despite the erratic pay. The students have been excelling on national exams. The school building was severely damaged by the earthquake in 2010 and it still has tarps for roofs, no functioning toilet, and no school lunch. The preschool, kindergarten, and grade 1 are taught in the church building of Dorce's father who is a pastor. The rest of the students study under the tarp. They have some land to build a school, but no money for construction. We are fundraising to support the teachers and the students and to build a new school building. 

Architects of Kuhn Riddle company in Amherst, MA volunteered to design the school building for us.

Each classroom can hold about 30 children and would cost about $5000 to build.

I co-organized an art exhibit with a Nepali friend.
Haitian art, by professional painters, and Haitian children's art by OFPADAH children and ONDPS orphans were framed and displayed at the Blanchard Campus Center student art gallery of Mount Holyoke College during the month of February 2011. It was a great way to both raise awareness about Hope of Haiti project and beautiful art and vibrant culture of Haiti. Many people commented that the exhibition was inspiring and beautiful. All the items were put up on silent auction and we raised about $700 through selling them. 100% of the proceedings will go to building the school in Meyotte.

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/news/stories/5682668

In January 2011, a team of four Mount Holyoke students visited Haiti for ten days.

We taught English, math, sexual health, cholera prevention, and arts and crafts to poor children and orphans in Petionville and Meyer. We also visited Cite Soleil, the poorest neighborhood in Port Au Prince. We learned a lot more about the huge challenges we face in improving the lives of the poorest children in Haiti. Interacting with the beautiful children of Haiti motivated us to do something to make their future better than the current situation. Distributing wealth of knowledge in Haiti to the poorest children to ensure their survival and success in reconstructing Haiti is our shared goal. We will start by building one small school with OFPADAH. Beyond that, we will not forget the roofed schools in Cite Soleil and orphanages in rented cinderblock structures that could really use more support.

John and his family are the leaders of OFPADAH, a grassroots community organization trying to improve their own community.

Before he passed away, John used to live with his mother and three sisters. John was the only bread winner in the family. He used to go to Dominican Republic to work as a computer technician.
The grandpa is blind due to cataracts.

The house is made of concrete blocks and has a dirt floor. No mosquito screen, no running water and sometimes electricity.

They get their water from a public tap or a well.
The kitchen is a coal hearth. About 7 people sleep in this house. Some on the dirt floor.

John is looking at the large piece land in Meyotte that is doing nothing productive as of now. He was in the process of negotiating with the landowner, who is a local tap tap driver, the price of this land. It is about the size of a soccer field, and lush with tropical trees including Avocado and Mango. We want to build our school here, on a land large enough where a thousand children can run free. We want to build a small farm, grow cacao, avocado, and other products to raise money for the school. We even thought about opening a zoo that we can use for educational purpose and to attract tourists. Oh the endless possibilities if we had this land!

The people of Meyotte, Petionville gathered for our first community meeting. We discussed what kind of school the community wanted, and how building this school must be a community effort, instead of depending on outside aid organizations to do everything for them.

Two little boys we met on the road next to the land. They currently do not attend school, because they cannot afford school fees.
We asked them, "If we built a school here, would you come to attend the school?"
Without hesitation, they answered, "Wi!"

I asked the children to draw the school that they wanted to go to. They did a great job drawing "le ecole" they envisioned.

I also asked the children what they wanted to be when they grew up.
About 80 % said doctor. Others said engineer, pastor, or professor.

When these these children were asked to share their dreams, I saw rare smiles on people's faces as an impossible sense of hope, despite all odds, seemed to spread within their parents and the community.
I want them to realize that their dreams are possible, that we are going to make them possible.

Meet the OFAPDAH teachers.
Ten showed up on our first teacher meeting.
It was a diverse group of dedicated educators.
From 7 years of teaching experience to young adults without any experience, from music teacher to athletic teacher to school nurse, we had a great enthusiastic group.
We discussed the logistics of the school. For example, we will prioritize admission of the poorest children who have no chance of going to other private schools because they cannot pay tuition. We will give full scholarship to each student. We will limit the class size to 25 students. We will teach them the basic curriculum taught in every Haitian school, plus English and other useful and marketable skills.
The teachers said they will volunteer at the tent school, but eventually they would need salaries.

I passed by a store/stall on the street selling all kinds of Haitian school books. From Creole children's books to textbooks required by the Ministry of Education in Haiti, they only cost around $2.50 per book. Buying the school books availiable in Haiti is cheaper than buying books in US and shipping them to Haiti.

Cathy is a volunteer with JAMA teaches a day-long English lesson in a classroom of the Digicel School in Cite Soleil. Haitians adults crowded the classroom eager to learn.
I think the ability to teach well is one of the best skill to have and one of the most difficult to attain. It takes so much passion, knowledge, confidence, and leadership. 

This is a tent school that the Haitian government set up on the middle of an asphalt road in Petionville.
It was right next to a garbage dump and the children didn't seem to be focusing to well on their studies, since traffic moved right by the school.
During the election violence in January 2011, this tent school was cleared out.

I visited a school built by another NGO. With wooden board walls and plastic roofing painted rainbow,
I thought it was quite a good job. There were about 30 children in this little structure.

They also built 4 toilets outside the school for the whole tent community.

The dining room of an orphanage in the town of Guadalupe, in the suburb of Port Au Prince.
It was pretty heartbreaking to see children living in such condition.
Nevertheless, this was actually one of the better orphanages, it at least had a concrete building.
There are many orphanages that looked like concentration camps inside tents.

Another orphanage in a town I can't remember the name...
It was run by a Haitian pastor and all the orphans lived in tents.

A head on top of a tent, one of many tents moved into a public park in Petionville after the earthquake.

Petionville is known as a wealthy area within Port Au Prince. But just like any city, there is a large gap between the rich and the poor.
The wealthy in Petionville live in mansions, the poor lives in tents made of tarps.

Just because Petionville is known as wealthy area, we cannot ignore the thousands of poor, who still lives in deplorable conditions. I feel that the poor who lives right next to the rich feel even more miserable than poor does not know what rich looks like, thus is not taunted by ridiculous wealth and poverty existing side by side.

I passed by this Haitian man makes a day's wage by breaking rubble into pebbles with a hammar. He asked me for money, and I really didn't know what to do... I did have gourdes in my pocket, but theoretically, giving it to him would make him dependent on begging rather than continuing to work. And what good would a few gourdes do in long term? But my heart felt torn because I saw how hard his life was, and was still trying to do something productive, yet I couldn't do much to help him. The change that was needed to improve the lives of people like him was huge in scale, economic development stalled by complex political problems. What could I, just one person who know not much about Haiti do to help?
Something told me, start small, start by making a small improvement in one person's life... and the small pebbles will add up to build a new structure.

All the photos in this website were taken by Haeinn Woo during her trips to Haiti. Please share my photos in order to respectfully raise awareness about Haiti!