The new Minister of Education

Who is Jean Beauvois Dorsonne?
Haiti Libre
30/03/2016

Tuesday, Camille Junior Edouard the new Minister of Justice, in the presence among others of parliamentarians, technical and departmental directors, socio-professional associations, executives and employees of the Ministry, presided the Investiture Ceremony of Jean Beauvois Dorsonne as new Minister of National Education, succeeding to the outgoing Minister Nesmy Manigat.

Renold Telfort, General Director of the Ministry who apologized for the absence of the Minister Manigat in the ceremony, presented Mr. Dorsonne as a man of the sector and said to be reassured that the new Minister will continue to work to improve the Haitian education system.

In his words of circumstances, the new Minister of Education after the customary thanks welcomed the initiatives and actions of his predecessor. He said recognizing the many challenges ahead and admit that it will be ifficult to find immediate solutions, given the mandate and the limited duration of government, but hoped nevertheless create conditions for sustainable solutions for the future rulers with the help of all stakeholders. He undertakes to continue the social dialogue with trade unions to improve working conditions of teachers and learning of children.

More about Jean Beauvois Dorsonne :
Born December 7, 1966 in Verrettes (Artibonite), Jean Beauvois Dorsonne holds a Masters degree in social sciences, graduating from college Val de Marne, Paris, France. Normalien superior option Social Sciences (1991), he is also law graduate (2003), active lawyer, member of the Bar of St Marc. He also participated in the Integrated Management (PIM) program in 2001, provided by the National School of Public Administration.

He debuted as a teacher in 1989. Professor of History and Geography at several colleges in Port-au-Prince and Gonaives from October 1989 to February 1992. In 1992 he became director of Jacques Stephen Alexis High School of Verrettes hen from 1995 to 1999 he was director of the school Stenio Vincent of Saint Marc.

In 1999 he became inspector of secondary education in the department of Artibonite until January 2000. About two years later, in April 2002, he became Chief Inspector of secondary education in the same department until January 2003.

A little later, we will find him to the central office of the ministry sometimes as a member of the minister's office (May 2010-September 2011), sometimes as coordinator to the Directorate General of MENFP (2011 to date).

Note that from 2006 to 2010, he is also found in Parliament as a deputy of the people in the 48th Legislature, where he serves as President of the Education Commission from January 2007 to May 2010.

Meet Joane Charles!

Our new part-time Haiti coordinator. 

Late last year Just Haiti Coffee reached a major milestone in our development as an organization: we hired staff in Haiti!

 

Joane Charles is our new part-time Haiti coordinator. A licensed and very experienced agronomist, Joane will take responsibility for grower trainings,  technical assistance and monitor coffee quality. She will also assist new associations with the registration process and help to coordinate between associations. Finally, she will handle the logistics of organizing Just Haiti-sponsored visits to the growers we work with.

 

I had the pleasure of working with Joane directly during my visit to Haiti last month. Not only did she do a great job of organizing our visit, she also has a great rapport with the growers as a respected expert in coffee production. She knows coffee, and the coffee sector in Haiti, and she knows how to communicate that to the producers.

Joane is going to be a huge asset to our organization.

Like any small business, Just Haiti reached a growth point: we needed to expand our staff capacity in order to meet our goals for expanding our work. Working with more grower associations requires greater oversight and technical assistance, and that cannot be done by volunteers. The plan is that Joane's salary will be paid out of coffee sales, from the percentage that Just Haiti keeps to cover our own costs.

 

Unfortunately, our growers do not yet produce enough coffee to cover it. We find ourselves in this situation:  we need staff in order to grow, but we need to grow in order to pay staff. We took the risk and  hired Joane first, with a plan to find a way to make up the budget shortfall for a couple of years, until coffee production and sales go up.

 

We welcome your contributions to help make up the shortfall.

 

As always, we are grateful for your support!

Kim Lamberty and the Just Haiti Team

Please Contribute Today!

 

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The Voluntourist's Dilemma

The New York Times Magazine
By JACOB KUSHNER
MARCH 22, 2016

(Ben Stiller visiting Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in April 2010 as part of a school-rebuilding project in which he was
involved.Credit Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images for Artists For Peace And Justice.)

Several years ago, when I was working as a reporter based in Haiti, I came upon a group of older Christian missionaries in the mountains above Port-au-Prince, struggling with heavy shovels to stir a pile of cement and sand. They were there to build a school alongside a Methodist church. Muscular Haitian masons stood by watching, perplexed and a bit amused at the sight of men and women who had come all the way from the United States to do a mundane construction job.

 

Such people were a familiar sight: They were voluntourists. They would come for a week or two for a “project” — a temporary medical clinic, an orphanage visit or a school construction. A 2008 study surveyed 300 organizations that market to would-be voluntourists and estimated that 1.6 million people volunteer on vacation, spending around $2 billion annually. A few are celebrities supporting their cause du jour, who drop in to meet locals and witness a project that often bears their name. Many more come to teach English during high school, college vacations or during a gap year. Others are sun-seeking vacationers who stay at beachside resorts but who also want to see “the real (name your country).” So they go into a community for an afternoon to help local women make beads, jewelry or clothes.

Volunteering seems like an admirable way to spend a vacation. Many of us donate money to foreign charities with the hope of making the world a better place. Why not use our skills as well as our wallets? And yet, watching those missionaries make concrete blocks that day in Port-au-Prince, I couldn’t help wondering if their good intentions were misplaced. These people knew nothing about how to construct a building. 


Collectively they had spent thousands of dollars to fly here to do a job that Haitian bricklayers could have done far more quickly. Imagine how many classrooms might have been built if they had donated that money rather than spending it to fly down themselves. Perhaps those Haitian masons could have found weeks of employment with a decent wage. Instead, at least for several days, they were out of a job.

Besides, constructing a school is relatively easy. Improving education, especially in a place like Haiti, is not. Did the missionaries have a long-term plan to train and recruit qualified teachers to staff the school? Did they have a budget to pay those teachers indefinitely? Other school-builders I met in Haiti admitted they weren’t involved in any long-term planning, and I once visited a school built by an NGO that had no money left to pay the teachers. If these brick-laying voluntourists overlooked such things in their eagerness to get their hands dirty, they wouldn’t be the first.

Easing global poverty is an enormously complex task. To make so much as a dent requires hard, sustained work, and expertise. Even the experts sometimes get it wrong. Critics of the Red Cross’s post-earthquake work in Haiti argue that the half a billion dollars the organization raised for disaster relief was largely misspent. Multimillion-dollar projects undertaken by the U.S. government ultimately failed to help Haiti export its mangos or complete a new building for Haiti’s Parliament on time. If smart, dedicated professionals can fail to achieve lasting progress over a period of years, how then is an untrained vacationer supposed to do so in a matter of days?

Sometimes, volunteering even causes real harm. Research in South Africa and elsewhere has found that “orphan tourism” — in which visitors volunteer as caregivers for children whose parents died or otherwise can’t support them — has become so popular that some orphanages operate more like opportunistic businesses than charities, intentionally subjecting children to poor conditions in order to entice unsuspecting volunteers to donate more money. Many “orphans,” it turns out, have living parents who, with a little support, could probably do a better job of raising their children than some volunteer can. And the constant arrivals and departures of volunteers have been linked to attachment disorders in children.

There are some volunteers who possess specialized, sought-after skills, of course. In Port-au-Prince I lived across from a Catholic guesthouse where groups of mostly American volunteers would spend their first nights in Haiti. Often I’d join them for dinner to hear about their experiences. I remember meeting an ophthalmologist from Milwaukee, who had just spent a week in a remote town in Haiti performing laser eye surgery. He recounted the joy he felt at helping people who were going blind from cataracts to see.

But not all volunteers come with an expertise like ophthalmology. When I asked one of the women who ran that guesthouse why she moved to Haiti, she told me that “a long time ago I felt called to be here, and I came based on that, not knowing what I was going to do.” In many ways, this woman is typical of the sort of voluntourists I’ve encountered. Many are religious — the sort of people who cite passages from the Bible, the Torah or the Quran that encourage followers to help those in need. Surely, they say, “love thy neighbor” takes on a different meaning in a globalized world. To many of these people, simply experiencing a foreign culture is not enough. They must change that place for the better.

Perhaps we are fooling ourselves. Unsatisfying as it may be, we ought to acknowledge the truth that we, as amateurs, often don’t have much to offer. Perhaps we ought to abandon the assumption that we, simply by being privileged enough to travel the world, are somehow qualified to help ease the world’s ills. Because the mantra of “good intentions” becomes unworthy when its eventuality can give a South African AIDS orphan an attachment disorder or put a Haitian mason out of work.

I’ve come to believe that the first step toward making the world a better place is to simply experience that place. Unless you’re willing to devote your career to studying international affairs and public policy, researching the mistakes that foreign charities have made while acting upon good intentions, and identifying approaches to development that have data and hard evidence behind them — perhaps volunteering abroad is not for you.

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Jacob Kushner reports on foreign aid and immigration in East and Central Africa and the Caribbean.

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Hinche Tanker Explosion!

Haiti Libre
Thursday, March 18th



In a note the Ministry of the Interior and Territorial Communities informs the public that a major fire broke out Thursday around 2:00 in the afternoon at a gas station near the bridge Vincent on the National #1, in Hinche in the Central Department.

The provisional toll is 31 people burned to varying degrees including 6 seriously and 7 people lost their lives in the flames.

Significant material damage is also be deplored, initial assessments indicate at least a half dozen homes damaged near the gas station, several vehicles burned including a tank truck and more than twenty motorcycles.

Local structures of the Civil Protection Directorate were immediately dispatched on site to rescue the victims and assist law enforcement agencies, the Red Cross and health facilities. The Delegate of the Centre Georges Garnier, went to the scene to make a first assessment of the situation.

Hospital St. Therese of Hinche assured a first support for victims and the most serious cases were transferred to hospital centers in the periphery, especially in Mirebalais and to the capital.

A contingent of the Minustah also helped to master the main source of the fire with tanker trucks and prevented the fire take greater proportions.

The causes of the incident are not yet known precisely.

Ariel Henry, the outgoing Minister of Interior and Territorial Communities, "presents its sympathies to the relatives and friends of the victims, sharing the pain of hinchois and all those affected by this sad event and ensure that the efforts will not be spared to provide assistance to the population in shock after the terrible fire."



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Maison Fortune Orphanage Newsletter

Published quarterly by the Maison Fortuné Orphanage Foundation, Inc., a registered 501(c)(3) organzation, to update donors on the orphanage in Hinche, Haiti.

MFO Foundation
PO Box 3092
Chesapeake, VA 23327-3092
www.mfofoundation.org

Editors: Mary Kwasniewski & Julie Thomas
Graphics: Lauren Lepper
 

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A Return Trip Long Overdue
Hinche, Hati
by Bro Harry Eccles


When I left Haiti in November 2013, I expected to return “soon”, but “soon” stretched to two years! Making the return trip this past November 2015, with Jonathan Dohanich and his seven-year-old son, Jarren, was a big plus. (Jonathan was a volunteer in Haiti for a year, returning often, once with Jarren when he was two!)

At Maison Fortune in Hinche, I caught up with Mary Kwasniewski, Executive Director of the MFOF in Virginia. I just missed another segment of the amorphous US group which had been planning a visit for a long time. Julie Thomas, Susan Schrack, her daughter Margaret Schrack, Emily Burke, and first time visitors David Esposito and Laurie Salerno.

The Haitian welcoming committee was headed by Jean-Louis Lefort, Founder and Director of MFO, and a friend from 1989 when I found my home in Haiti.

A new staff member was Jonel Derosier, an alum of Sant Zaveryen. Bethanie, the guest house cook, was on hand, and so was Noose, the veteran watch-cat.


The icing on the welcome-home cake was the swarm of boys who gathered on the porch with noisy greetings. They surprised me with a chorus of “Share. Share! Don’t be a pig!” That was my theme song when we had goodies to share.

Gatherings on the porch were continuous. The boys had classes, both off and on-campus. Just a short hike to the girls’s campus and more warm welcomes. Veronique Joseph is the director there and walks a beautiful line between discipline and love for our girl’s  who numbers continue to grow.

When I lived a MFO, one of my roles was English teacher for informal groups which formed and reformed all the time. I was happy to be invited by the present members, now dignified with the name “Helping Boys Understand.” I was glad that I had brought some fresh copies of the New Testament, our basic text.

Returning to the States with Mary, Jonathan, and Jarren, I had two portraits of Noose, one on paper by Oday and another on stone by Junior Michel.

Time to start planning the next trip. This trip was a blessing!

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The Haiti Tree at St. Therese


Last autumn a newly formed Haiti committee at The Church of St. Therese, Chesapeake, VA decided to try a different approach to our annual Advent fundraiser for Maison Fortune’ Orphanage. Parishioners were offered several different ways to contribute. Since a steady income is needed by the orphanage, monthly sponsorships were encouraged. Students from Portsmouth Catholic Regional School created lovely ceramic star and heart ornaments that were used at as a “thank you” for anyone signing up for a sponsorship. The ceramic ornaments were also given to anyone making a donation of $25 or more. Sponsors and larger donors also received a handmade paper ornament with a picture of one of the children of Maison Fortuné.

Parishioners were encouraged to help decorate the “Haiti Tree” by placing colorful Haitian straw angels on the tree to reflect their donations.

Church members making a smaller donation wrote their name on a small heart which was then attached to the front of a small ($5) or large ($10) angel. The tree was displayed throughout the Advent and Christmas seasons.

Our Haiti tree donations quadrupled from the previous Advent. Much of that increase is attributed to the wonderful verbal support given from our church’s pastor, Fr. Kevin O’Brien. At each of the three Masses, over two weekends, he discussed the foundation’s efforts to improve the nutrition, education and medical care of the children resulting in increasing costs at the orphanage.

There was a wonderful flyer and video created by graphic art students from Regent University. The flyers were placed in the church bulletin in the weeks before the fundraiser and the video ran on the screen in the Commons. There were also many volunteers manning the tables before and after each Mass. We are hopeful we can repeat our success next year.

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McKenna BioScience Program Opens at the
University of Notre Dame Hinche


The fall of 2015 was an exciting time for our longtime partner the McKenna Technical Institute as they opened up the first Bio Science program in Haiti. They did so in partnership with the University of Notre Dame Hinche. Maison Fortune is pleased to have 8 MFO alumni enrolled in this first time 2 year-program.

The students will receive hands-on laboratory training and develop the skills necessary to work in the bioscience industry. The school is outfitted with a fully equipped Bioscience Lab where students apply critical thinking in data analysis including the interpretation of experimental results.

We are extremely grateful for the partnership with McKenna Technical and their commitment to help assist with the cost of tuition for our MFO alumni. Together with our MFOF supporters we believe that the power of education can transform Haiti and its future.

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Our boys grow up!

If you are anything like me, on January 1st you asked yourself what happened to 2015?! The time has flown by and the same rings true for our boys in Haiti. This year we are helping transition several of our older boys into the community. Many of them have been at MFO for the greater part of our 15 years of operating and wow how they have grown!

Over the past year Jean Louis has been working with the “young adults” and preparing them for this new transition. He has held meetings with the boys over the past several months and we have laid out the plans and expectations as they start this new chapter in their lives. To aid them in their success we will continue to pay their school tuition and school expenses. Additionally they will be allowed to visit the campus between the hours of “dawn to dusk” and take their meals at MFO. We will also provide them a small stipend for lodging and transport that they arrange for themselves. The stipend is dependent upon their school attendance as well as grades and good leadership behavior. We hope that by assisting in the transition the boys will have the best chance of success. The list of boys who are participating in the “18-and-over” program are:

 

Name	Age
Alcidonis Shelton	20
Bastia Hary	19
Cambron Walno	22
Charles Delince	30
Charles Johnny	24
Denis Louis Jean	19
Dorcius Frido	24
Edouard Jeanty	19
Etienne Waldo	26
Innocent Robenson	22
Jacques Kesly	19
Jean Exilien	24
Jean Louis Claudinel	21
Joseph Jimmy	20

Name	Age
Joseph Missam	23
Louis Adler	33
Louis Robert	21
Matial Salens	19
Noel Djocena	22
Noel Elibert	19
Philogene Kedner	20
Regulus Emane	25
Saintil Exxone	26
Simeon Sufrance	22
Sylvanor Fedner	25
Sylvanor Ulrick	23
Sylverin Wosnel	24
Therame Wilson	27

As these young men reach out to our MFOF supporters and visitors we hope you can encourage them to keep a positive outlook. They have had numerous opportunities most Haitians would never have dreamed.

Our hope continues to be that as they mature they realize that the power of giving back is far more rewarding than the power of receiving. We know that these young men are the future of Haiti and they will work to make Haiti a better country for all.

If you have any questions about the program please contact us directly at helpthechildren@mfofoundation.org.

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Maison Fortuné Orphanage Foundation Financial Update
Rick Martin, Treasurer

As I write this, we are halfway through the financial year and I think it is important to give our donors a financial update. During this past summer and fall the Maison Fortuné Orphanage Foundation went through our annual audit by an independent auditor. We are thankful to Mrs. Randi Clifford of Clifford Accounting Services, LLC who performed the audit. We are proud to announce we received a clean bill of financial health! In fact we have received clean annual audits for the past ten years. Auditing allows us to check our work and to show you, the donors, that we are using your generous donations in the best way possible to support the children of Maison Fortuné. I especially want to thank Mary Kwasniewski, our Executive Director, and Edna Nweke, our bookkeeper for their help in keeping the daily books and preparing the needed information to complete the audit. Both Mary and Edna do a great job keeping me straight with our payroll, taxes and monthly reports. The audit reports can be downloaded from our website, www.mfofoundation.org.

This year we are continuing our quest to reach out to new donors to establish an individual donor base of 1500 people donating at a minimum goal of $25 per month. Though we are making some progress moving toward that 1500 number, it is well below what we need to provide for the monthly operating requirements. So, if you can donate monthly, please do so.

You can help us by introducing MFO to your friends, community and workplace. Please contact Mary Kwasniewski at mkwas@mfofoundation.org for more information on how to spread the word.With your continuous support the Foundation impacts more than 200 children who are living in the poorest country in the western hemisphere. Together we can change the cycle of poverty one child at a time. Thanks to all of you for your generosity and continued prayers.

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Meet Valentin!



A sweet new girl. She is so new her school uniform has not been made yet. She enjoys her rice and beans with the other children for the mid-day meal at Jean Louis Primary School on the Boys’ Campus. Valentin loves school, jump rope and singing!

To sponsor a child contact Julie at sponsorship@mfofoundation.org

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Who's William?

William Kamkwamba.


“William from Malawi, is a born inventor. When he was 14, he built an electricity-producing windmill from spare parts and scrap, working from rough plans he found in a library book called Using Energy and modifying them to fit his needs. The windmill he built powers four lights and two radios in his family home.

After reading about Kamkwamba on Mike McKay's blog Hactivate (which picked up the story from a local Malawi newspaper), TEDGlobal Conference Director Emeka Okafor spent several weeks tracking him down at his home in Masitala Village, Wimbe, and invited him to attend TEDGlobal on a fellowship. Onstage, Kamkwamba talked about his invention and shared his dreams: to build a larger windmill to help with irrigation for his entire village, and to go back to school.



Following Kamkwamba's moving talk, there was an outpouring of support for him and his promising work. Members of the TED community got together to help him improve his power system (by incorporating solar energy), and further his education through school and mentorships. Subsequent projects have included clean water, malaria prevention, solar power and lighting for the six homes in his family compound; a deep-water well with a solar-powered pump for clean water; and a drip irrigation system. Kamkwamba himself returned to school, and is now attending the African Leadership Academy, a new pan-African prep school outside Johannesburg, South Africa.”  (TED Talk)



A library book.

That’s all it took.  In William’s story, it didn’t take millions of foreign dollars.  It didn’t take any foreign expertise.  All it took was a young man, an inquisitive mind, a library book, all driven by his desire to better his family’s life.



Can’t see the forest for the trees? 

As foreigners can we sometimes be so driven by our own solutions, desire to “help”; we miss one natural resource which may already exist in a developing country?

Its people.

William lives in Malawi.



Is there a William in Haiti?

If you have traveled to Haiti, have you ever met a William?
If you have traveled to Haiti, have you ever seen a “homemade” windmill?
If you have traveled to Haiti, what did you talk to the Haitians about?

Nourriture pour la pensée et de discussion?
Steve; Haiti.Today.Tomorrow.

(Kamkwamba's story is documented in his autobiography, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope. A  documentary about Kamkwamba, called William and the Windmill, won the Documentary Feature Grand Jury award at SXSW in 2013.)

The Digicel Foundation inaugurates 5 schools

Haiti Libre
 28/02/2016


Continuing its program to build schools throughout Haiti in order to contribute to the improvement of the quality of education, the Digicel Foundation has recently proceeded to the inauguration of 5 new construction projects.

Part of first 20 schools built by the Digicel Foundation during its first year of operation, the Community School of Bigue, in the commune of Gros Morne as been rehabilitated and 3 new classrooms have been added to meet the demand of the community. The École Mixte Emmanuel in Gérald Bataille / Port-au-Prince, one of modular schools, built in containers after the 2010 earthquake has also been modified and was able also to benefit of three new classrooms.

Three other schools have been inaugurated recently: the National School of Yayou in Saint Raphaël, the National School Charlemagne Péralte to Maïssade and the Community School ANC of Grande Savane in Fort Jacques. With these new openings, over 1,000 students were added to the children who attend the schools of the Foundation, they are now more than 52,000 students to benefit from.

Commenting on the series of inaugurations, Sophia Stransky, the Executive Director of the Digicel Foundation stated "Every school inauguration is a proud moment for the Foundation, we not only offer an adequate and safe environment for hundreds of children but we allow communities to strengthen [...] These new inauguration bring to 158 the number of schools projects already completed by the Digicel Foundation throughout the national territory, we are on the right track to reach our goal that is to reach 175 construction projects in Haiti by December 2016."