(continuing at the Georges Marcellus school)

Children are children…inquisitive, mischievous, energetic, playful, with naturally open hearts.  I had the best time shooting video of the kids, snapping pictures of them, then turning the viewer around and showing them what I’d captured.  Curious peeking turned into a massive huddle around me with necks craning to get a glance of themselves or their best friend.  Even more fun was handing the camera to some of the kids and showing them how to take pictures, too.  More gleeful jockeying for a chance to try this out.  

 And then the fun really began. It all started with Rainn playing some kind of “high five explosion” game with some of the boys…he’d do a high five with one and “Pshhh! Boom!” explosive sounds and peals of laughter ensued.  So I decided to try a few games of my own that involved a smattering of mutual attempts to catch fingers and gently slap hands in a cat and mouse style…soon I could not stop the wiggling spaghetti flurry of arms, hands and fingers wanting into the act – I could not stop laughing and the kids seemed perfectly happy to make me work hard to give them each a chance or more.  Finally I taught them to play the games with each other – it was pretty hilarious.

While I did not actually see the next round of entertainment, a bunch of us sitting in the shade on the sidelines of the school yard at one point heard a roar of hysterical laughing, clapping and shouting coming from one of the classrooms.  It was Rainn.  He emerged from the noisy space and said: “I think this is the first time any of these kids have seen an adult make a complete ass of himself – on purpose!”…he’d performed what amounted to a vaudevillian sight gag of purposely walking into a wall.  What on earth could be funnier?  Wish I’d have been there to capture it on video but the resulting squeals of laughter were precious.

As the morning contingent of younger children left mid-day to go home, our group gathered under a tree to meet with the school’s Haitian education council and administrators to review the progress that had been made, present the next stage of work that had been funded to begin soon (adding some classrooms), and to hear what the council felt were their highest priorities for the coming year.  The meeting started with a prayer lead by the headmaster of the school.  I believe it was delivered in Creole and without knowing the exact translation it was easy to pick up the basic message of mutual gratitude and unity of purpose.  We also took time to introduce ourselves all around so it was clear what each of our roles were and what drew us to this moment together.

This is the way the Mona Foundation supports its projects – listening to the priorities of those who know what the critical needs are best…those who are doing the hard work of making change happen. We consult and collaborate on how to organize and weave requests together, work side-by-side to understand what resources will be needed to meet these needs – money, capacity-building, infrastructure, specific external expertise and knowledge transfer.  And a grant request is born. Whether through an individual donor or family that “adopts” a project or specific resource request, or through fundraising activities large and small, the focus is on targeted giving where specific asks have been made. Historically this has been the winning formula for giving that has lasting impact – one that fully engages the receiving organization to own the results and carry out the plan that they themselves created.

The council and teachers told us that aside from the new classrooms in the offing, the next set of tangible, urgent needs included a generator to help the school through power outages (availability of electricity with any consistency in most of Haiti is rare), and a television to occupy the children for some time once classes ended and before they could return home.  But the ask that really told the story of the depth of need here was to provide technical training expertise and materials so that the older children could begin to learn a trade, a skill that would allow them to get a job and make some money to help support their families.  In this remote area there is no vocational training available. If the children are lucky enough to get schooling they will become literate (about 50% of Haiti is illiterate) – and this a vital step forward. But this will not give them the skills or tools they need to make a living.