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Chers Parents, Ci-dessous une lettre de l'organisation Prodev, qui est en charge de la construction et de la gestion de l'Ecole Nouvelle Zoranje, et qui est ouverte depuis le 4 octobre 2010. Un diaporama sur la construction de l'école est disponible en cliquant sur l'image ci-dessous:
Lena Mc Lorin Salvant, directrice.
Port au Prince Oct 2010 To all ProDev’s friends and friends of Haiti a short update on our School Project: As many of you know Fondation ProDev (Haiti) has been involved in education in the many displaced camps in Port au Prince for nearly a year now. Last March, at a fund raising event in Tel Aviv, which sold my Haitian photography as donation to education in Haiti, we raised 90,000$. We pledged that this money will go directly to a school project in Haiti. Few weeks later we have located a community in the outskirts of Port au Prince and managed to secure land for the future permanent school. We broke ground with an amazing local contractor (Signa SA) last July and started building a six classrooms elementary school on an abandoned basketball court. Shortly after that we received an additional donation from an American donor for another 6 classroom building and we started building the second one too. Things are difficult and slow in Haiti and the odd were against us; building supply scarce and expensive, the port hardly functional, the roads are clogged and broken, the border crossing in total dysfunction and the rain season started early this year. The odds were against us but we committed to the Oct 4th opening although we all knew it was a “mission impossible”. Last month we started registering the kids to the new school – Named: Ecole Nouvelle Zoranje. (New School Zoranje, zoranje is the name of the village) We collected books and school supply. We were given chairs and tables, black boards and chalk. We designed uniforms and worked on a logo. As we moved along we realized that many things were not planned such as access to handicap kids for the classes and restrooms , so we added that to the construction. We bough over 600m (1800ft) of fence and fenced the whole compound. Voila, a local telecom provider provided us with connectivity and yes soon we’ll have internet in the school, as well as computers, cafeteria, a beautiful park, a basketball court, and early next year a bigger beautiful 15 classes middle school next door, a generous donation from the JDC. (Jewish Joint Distribution Committee) All of that happened in less than six months and we’re still moving forward, bringing water, electricity, teacher’s training, sports activity, planting trees and other ambitious programs. Oct 4th we’ve opened our gates, distributed books and back packs and a week after that we started in earnest the regular school year. Our efforts are bearing fruits; the 330 kids are happy and look forward each morning to go to “their” school. We have attracted other organizations that are showing interest in making this model work. World Vision (NGO) has promised us to help with the supply of the canteen (cafeteria) and that should be up and running soon. Partners in Health (PIH.org) will cover the health issues. We will refurbish the community center soon and manage it to the benefit of the community. In the weeks and months ahead we will continue to implement programs and project around the school and the community. Trying to bring jobs, getting the population involved in garbage collection and recycling and empower the local leadership especially the women to get involved in their community. We are blessed to have a dedicated dynamic team and partners both at Prodev’s office in Port au Prince and in Zoranje village, without those amazing human resources the story of our school would have remained another ‘project’ that never took off the ground. We are also lucky to have a very collaborating and open community that wants us to help them. The work is far from finished; in education it can never be finished! It has only started. We think we can introduce a new model for modern education in Haiti that can be replicated and adopted elsewhere in the country. We have many challenges ahead of us both in the near future and longer term. Some of them are financials, running good education cannot be done on the cheap! Some of them have to do with constant evaluation of our teaching methods and capacity. At ProDev we think we can overcome those challenges, of course not on our own, only with the help of others, that is why we created around this school Partner in Education, we want to bring ‘on board’ whoever can contribute to making this pilot project a success so it will one day contribute to the development and progress of Haiti. A sincere Thank You for all those generous individuals and organization, Haitian and international who helped us in the past 10 months, we are counting on your continued support, come and visit us Ecole Nouvelle Zoranje, you’ll be encouraged! Maryse and Daniel Kedar and ProDev Team
Haiti earthquake relief effort
Dear
Parents,
My
colleagues join me in thanking you for your generous
contributions to our fundraising efforts for Haiti. To
date, we have contributed, parents, friends and
colleagues, a sum of $9,319.70
deposited in the "EFAM for Haiti account. We received
individual checks of $ 1,000, $ 500 and $ 400 and we
salute these individual contributors who wish to remain
anonymous.
Last
evening, Philippe Jacquet, with the help of Stephane
Mureau, organized a "French Songs for Haiti" concert at
the Café Pastis.
The
concert raised $1,026!!! and we would like to thank all
the participants.
The “wear
red for Haiti day” raised more than $800!!!
These new
students will give all of us, parents, teachers and
students, the opportunity to express in a more concrete
way the solidarity demonstrated since the announcement
of the earthquake. Be assured that our priority remains
providing an education in the best possible conditions
for our students and our teachers.
Léna McLorin-Salvant, Director
If you wish to make a donation for the Haitian relief fund,
you can do this using the following payment methods:
These funds will be donated to a not for profit organization
working in Haiti in direct contact with the population
and with minimum overhead.
We will keep you posted with the specificities and actions of
this NGO.
Contributions are at the present sent to major organizations
for emergency relief. In the coming weeks, your help
will be necessary to rebuild
the country. |
