For those who are connected with Haiti, it’s been four years of bad news, getting worse all the time. Political infighting, the assassination of the president, the takeover of most of the capital city, Port-au-Prince, by gangs largely funded by South American drug cartels who use Haiti as a transshipment point to the U.S. drug market, an earthquake in the south of the country, a worldwide pandemic—just when it seems that the news cannot get any worse, it does. The Episcopal Diocese of Haiti itself has not been immune to the turmoil, politics, and lawlessness. Travel to Haiti has become an impossibility, in a country that desperately needs every tourist dollar, every visit with gifts from a relative living abroad, every tip to a luggage handler at the airport, in order to stay afloat.
Yet buried in the avalanche of bad news, there is good news as well. One of the bright lights that continues to shine in Haiti is the network of Episcopal Schools. There are more than 250 Episcopal Schools in Haiti, primarily elementary schools and primarily rural, serving the children of subsistence farmers. Somehow, despite what happens to the nation, almost all of the Episcopal Schools have continued to operate, providing a safe haven, an education, and often a meal to the tens of thousands of children they serve. Over 60 partnerships with those schools link Episcopal schools and people in the U.S. with their counterparts in Haiti. Despite not being able to travel (and ask anyone with a partnership—we are all longing to be there) the partnerships and friendships have held fast and emergency support has been forthcoming, both financial support, as schools and individuals faithfully work to assist the schools during a time when the country’s economy is in tatters, and moral support, as friends reach out to friends with prayer, news, and messages of hope and solidarity.
Episcopal School partnerships with Haiti extend back almost 50 years, but Episcopal Schools in Haiti go back much farther, to the founding of the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti beginning in the early 1860s. Its founder and first bishop, the Rt. Rev. James Theodore Holly, the first Black bishop in the Episcopal Church, envisioned a church serving Haiti’s most needy citizens, the rural poor, for whom virtually no government services were provided, including schools. The plan for the diocese was that each church, mission, or preaching station would also serve as a school on weekdays, an operational blueprint that continues to the present. Early in the history of NAES, founded in 1965, the leadership realized that the Diocese of Haiti included far more Episcopal Schools than any other diocese in the church, struggling to survive with extremely limited resources. The suggestion of Episcopal Schools in the U.S. partnering with Episcopal Schools in Haiti captured the imagination of a few schools and their leaders at first and then continued to grow slowly and steadily over the years. The earthquake in 2010 resulted in a faster uptick in the number of partnerships, some short-lived but most continuing to be vital ministries. Long-term partners talk about their relationship with Haiti being in the DNA of the school, an expression of an essential core value about the way we teach our students to see the rest of the world. Students reflecting upon their trips to Haiti years later call their visits a pivotal experience in their lives. Adult Haitians recall partnerships that enhanced their educational opportunities as children and opened doors for them.
Many of our partnerships have been established for long enough that significant visible change can be observed. Working with the local leadership to determine priorities, projects small and large have been completed. In some places, a church building has taken the place of four posts and a roof of palm fronds. In others, a classroom building has been built, or a cooking area, or a latrine with handwashing stations. Solar panels power computers. A water system improves student health and may also produce enough potable water to sell to the local community. Agronomy programs have enhanced the productivity of farmers, increasing their income and enabling them to pay school fees to support teacher salaries. A health clinic, a micro-loan program, local students going on to secondary school, and special summer music classes—partners dreaming, planning, and working creatively together have accomplished much that can be readily seen.
What cannot be seen are the friendships and the relationships developed over meals, prayer, church celebrations, soccer games, the sharing of community sorrows and joys, visiting, holding hands with several preschoolers at once, and hearing parents’ hopes and fears for their children. “I always receive far more than I give,” is a universal observation about maintaining the balance in a partnership. Navigating cultural differences, occasional misunderstandings, a language barrier, and the challenges of Haitian life in general, become insignificant in the face of the opportunity to be a small part of an inspiring community with a single-minded desire for a better life for their children and a deep faith that God will eventually bless their efforts.
But with 250+ Episcopal Schools in Haiti and 60 partnerships, how do the remainder survive? They survive as they have over the last century and a half, on determination, hope, and faith. Parents who know that education is the only way their children can have choices as they grow older will do whatever is in their power to make that happen. In one place we visited, next to the small palm-frond-roof church and school, there was a very large pile of good-sized rocks. We asked about the rocks, and the lay leader told us that every time people came up the hill to the church, they carried a large rock. Their hope was that someday they would be able to buy some cement and some rebar and make a rock foundation and a floor for a church building. A friend, moved by their patience and their efforts, went home and told another friend, who, equally moved, funded the building materials. Now a well-constructed church houses a much larger school—all nine elementary classes together in the sanctuary, each facing a different direction to lessen the distraction. And now the hope and prayer is for a school building, and maybe a partner to help them get there, but meanwhile, they are making it work as best they can on their own, paying the teachers with whatever funds they can scrape together, or with vegetables from their gardens when times are tough.
So, mesi anpil anpil (thank you very very much) to all of our partner schools and to the people who keep those partnerships thriving. For those considering a partnership, let’s talk. For those for whom a partnership isn’t a possibility, please keep our Haitian Episcopal School brothers and sisters in your prayers.
Piti piti zwazo fe’ niche la. Little by little, the bird builds a nest.
Haitian proverbs.
Lespwa fe’ viv. Hope makes life.
More Photos from Haiti
Photos provided by David Marcellus (2023), Wendel Dorsainvil (2023), and Serena Beeks (various years).
