Thursday, January 3, 2013

Haitian American Caucus-Haiti Trip!

With spring break only a few months away I am extremely happy to announce that I will be returning to Haiti in March, this time with a friend!  

Unfortunately, Mercy Village's clinic dates did not match up with our spring break this year so I am unable to return to them, but I am excited to get involved with a new organization and think it will offer us a much broader experience!  We will be volunteering with the Haitian American Caucus- Haiti located out of Port-Au-Prince in Croix des Bouquets in a primary school.  They strive to advance and improve opportunities and the quality of life for the Haitian people.  From their website they sum up their goals: "We strengthen the capacity of communities through education and comprehensive community development.  HAC-Haiti seeks to provide the tools, skills, and venue for individuals to take control of their destiny. We believe that by educationally, economically, and socially, empowering women, children, and families we can create strength that will build a better Haiti."  What really captured my interest was how this organization is focused on bringing long term change to the country by directly educating the people, instead of many organizations which just offer a "quick fix" without developing the resources necessary for that change to continue without the help of foreigners.

HAC-Haiti has volunteers from all different backgrounds work on many different projects that include; community English courses, literacy courses, construction, women empowerment, and micro-loans.  The wide variety of opportunities will allow Kelsey and I to design our own project while we are there.  Since we are both EMT's we plan on teaching first aid, and public health topics to teachers and students of local schools in the community.  We will also travel to a few Haitian and Cuban run clinics and assist with triaging tasks and observeTo do this we need your help!  We will have to bring our own course materials over with us due to the lack of EMT and first aid training materials available in Haiti.  I am asking for donations as I did before, that will help us purchase first aid brochures, books and other course materials.  We will also be creating first aid kits for the teachers and schools and need to buy the supplies to go in them.  Your donations would only be used towards buying these materials.  I know it is a hard economic time but any amount of support would be so greatly appreciated!  It is so important for Kelsey and I to be able to provide this life saving education to the people of Haiti!

Here is the organizations webpage, and if you have any questions please feel free to contact me!
 
http://hac-haiti.org/node/1

Thank you so much for your support!
Shannon
 

 

No comments:

Post a Comment