Beyond Bricks and Mortar: Completing the Mission

By Christina Crow and HP News Staff

Thanks to the generosity and support of many individuals and organizations and the hard work of staff, students and volunteers and a lot of masons, The Haitian Project completed an aggressive building campaign over the past eight years to double the capacity of Louverture Cleary School. Now, LCS is able to house, educate and feed approximately 350 future leaders! Since THP’s mission is to create leaders among Haitian youth to rebuild their country—more is definitely better. The challenge now is to make sure LCS grads have ample opportunity to continue their education at the university level and to find meaningful employment. With twice the graduates, the challenge has doubled. To meet this challenge THP has embarked on number of partnerships and funding drives to create several in-house scholarship programs. The first official university scholarship program began in 1998 with the Shelburne Falls Work Study Grant. Fr. John Roach and the parishioners of St. Joseph Parish in Shelburne Falls, Mass. have raised funds annually for a decade to provide scholarship and work-study positions on the LCS staff for graduates. The program produces a double benefit: dedicated and enthusiastic employees for LCS and scholarship opportunities for three to four grads at time.

$100,000 from the Founders’ Challenge capital campaign was designated to support post-graduate education of LCS graduates. In 2003, the first two Post-Graduate University Support scholarships were awarded. Each year two graduating students (one male, one female) are selected as recipients. At the Annual Meeting in 2008, the Board of Directors voted to increase the annual funding for these scholarships to $25,000. Today there are 13 graduates receiving funds through this initiative.

In 2004, Steve Keppel, volunteer and staff member from 2003 to 2005 and founder of EGI for Haiti, asked his family to make graduates of LCS benefactors of the trust foundation established in his brother’s name who passed away just one year after graduating from Yale. In 2004, the first James F. Keppel Scholarship was awarded to an LCS graduate studying to be a doctor. The Foundation now supports three graduates.

The following year the Professional Development budget category was opened to support full-time LCS staff pursuing professional development and educational opportunities. The Emergency Scholarship Fund and the Medical School Emergency Relief Fund, funded by THP’s longest in-country volunteer Anne Wilkinson and the Ilkley Haiti Fund through her church in England, were solidified soon after—literally saving a number of graduates’ university hopes. In 2007, THP received a gift from long-term Rockford supporters to establish the Isaiah Scholarship. In 2008, a graduate was nominated by Claudine Auguste, a well known Haitian entrepreneur, to receive the first formal in-country scholarship given by a Haitian National to an LCS graduate.

There are currently 43 scholarship holders in the THP scholarship programs. Thanks to these in-house programs and further assistance provided by organizations such as FOKAL and HELP (founded by Conor Bohan, THP Volunteer 1996 to 1998) 166 graduates have had the opportunity to continue their education after leaving LCS’s gate. Alumni that have graduated from university have an employment rate of over 90%, opposed to the national employment rate of approximately 20%. LCS graduates with university degrees find meaningful employment with the United Nations & MINUSTAH, American Airlines, schools, banks, hospitals, and other private companies.

In the spring of 2009, fifty-six students are expected to graduate from LCS. Many of their dreams to become doctors, lawyers, teachers, and agronomists will depend on their possibilities of receiving a university education. In the past ten years there have been many advances to secure university scholarships. We now have a growing support network in Haiti among business leaders such as Patrick Brun (THP Board member) and Claudine Auguste. This spring, the Board undertook a campaign to raise $100,000 to endow a scholarship in memory of Ace Mullen. [For more on the Ace and Audrey Mullen scholarship see HPN June 2008, page 1 of the insert.] “We’ve come a long way since graduating our first class in 1995—I will never forget their initial frustration with having little opportunity to go to university. But, twice the grads means twice the networking and funding—so we have work to do,” exhorts THP President Emeritus, Deacon Patrick Moynihan. “Work to do together to finish the mission.”