Alliance for Catholic Education
The second part in ACE's look back at its work in Haiti in remembrance of the 2010 earthquake the struck the nation. Check out Part 1 here.
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After the initial chaos in the days after the earthquake, Haiti quickly had to identify what steps needed to be taken to move forward.
Fr. Tim Scully: We decided to be pretty aggressive about helping. I remember getting a list of my forty best friends in terms of benefactors. People were extraordinarily generous. Between that and a few other sources, we were able to put together a fund with five or six million dollars.
Fr. Michel Eugene, CSC: The Province of Haiti has strengthened relations with the US Province, primarily through the Holy Cross Mission Center and Notre Dame. During the first few weeks after the earthquake, Fr. Timothy Scully and ACE became our main contact person and our main contact institution at Notre Dame. Since then, we have realized many hopes and new projects. Through ACE, we were able to benefit from Notre Dame's expertise in education.
Gena Robinson: The outpouring was amazing. People walked in with their paychecks. A little girl walked in with her piggy bank. Classes and schools raised money for Haiti. I went to a lot of local schools to tell them about Haiti, and they'd do every dress down day that they could to give to kids who needed it, to give to these people who were right in our backyard who had suffered so unimaginably.
Kate Schuenke-Lucien: You need to feed people. You need to have medical care. But if you want those systems to last for the long-term, you have to be thoughtful and reflective about it and really be sure you're putting your resources in appropriate areas that are going to last for the long-term.
Fr. Tim Scully: The big thing about getting involved in all this construction stuff in Haiti is you just don't know people. Frankly, there's an awful lot of corruption. We were dealing with several million dollars. [Fellow University Trustee] Ken Stinson, who was in the construction business, told me, "You have to meet Michael Gay." He owns the largest cement plant in Haiti, and he also is one of the largest builders in Haiti. He responded favorably to our request, and he became our builder.
T.J. D'Agostino: It took a little while to get going. The rebuilding was complicated, and finding the right partners to build a new high-quality infrastructure that was built according to seismic standards took some time.
Fr. Tim Scully: I had one thing to say to T.J. every time I saw him. I just said, "Rubble." Our school properties were just full of rubble. T.J. wanted to talk about teacher training and principal training, and I'm like, "Rubble."
T.J. D'Agostino: Basile Moreau is now rebuilt. It's twice the size as before the earthquake, serving nearly twice as many students. It has a beautified campus that's in the final stages of being complete. It was already a beautiful place in contrast to the slum neighborhood where it is located. Now it is an amazing haven for the children and the community.
Gena Robinson: I saw Basile Moreau a couple years ago when it was just about done, and I'd seen pictures right after the fall. It's an amazing school. It is beautiful and safe.
T.J. D'Agostino: One third of the students at Basile Moreau go to school completely free because their parents can't afford tuition. All students get two meals a day, and extensive services, and every single one of them passes the national exam needed to have access to college and beyond. The school performs, and has since before the earthquake, at the level of the elite schools in Port-au-Prince. And for a few years after the earthquake while the school was being rebuilt, they continued to provide a fantastic education to their students while teaching and learning in tents. Now they have a beautiful space in which to learn and grow.
Outside of rebuilding, T.J. and the ACE leadership still believed that ACE could help Haiti with teacher training, since this was a Holy Cross priority and seventy percent of teachers in Haiti lacked teaching credentials.
T.J. D'Agostino: In terms of finding our way with [teacher training], this part was complicated at first. After the earthquake, Haiti was a little like the Wild West. So many people had come in, but it was too many people and it was complicated for Haitian leaders to coordinate. Articulating the right projects with solid plans and the right partners was key to our success. Eventually we articulated a strong plan with our partners in Holy Cross and helped them found a training institute in the North of Haiti.
Fr. Michel Eugene, CSC: The development of the Marcel Bedard Institute. The institute must train teachers according to a modern approach which is more scientific and adapted to the needs of Haiti and is on track. We are in the third year of piloting this program.
T.J. D'Agostino: After starting the teacher-training project, we became aware of the challenges facing Catholic schools in Haiti more broadly. We ended up having a conversation with the President of the Haitian Bishops Conference, and we were concerned when we realized that the Church didn't know the scope of the damage to Catholic schools or have a plan for rebuilding.
Fr. Tim Scully: We completed the rebuilding of Basile Moreau School, which led to a broader involvement in teacher training. With the grant we got from the Jones-Day Foundation, we started a teacher training effort with our Haitian Holy Cross community, and other foundations got involved. Then we ended up doing a large study and strategic plan for Haiti's 2,400 Catholic schools, which got the Kellogg Foundation involved.
T.J. D'Agostino: We suggested to the Archbishop, "If you have a really good plan with good data, Catholic education can lead the way for rebuilding and improving quality system-wide." He just looked at us and said: "I think you're totally right. I hope you will help us with that." This led to ACE, Catholic Relief Services and the Haitian Church completing a large-scale study and national planning effort, and has become an inflection point for our work in Haiti.
Gena Robinson: This is working now. We've worked with the Congregation of Holy Cross to rebuild a school. We've been able to leverage what ACE has done in the U.S. and use it in Haiti for teacher training. We've been able to use our relationship with Catholic Relief Services to improve education across the country. We've got Read to Learn, which is going to teach thousands of kids, give them better literacy skills, and give their teachers better skills.
T.J. D'Agostino: We've been blessed to add some deeply committed and talented colleagues to the ACE Haiti team. Kate is doing amazing work leading a large-scale literacy project that we think could be a game-changer and a focus for our future work. Gena is leading an effort to design a new health clinic at Basile Moreau. Along with our partners at CRS and in the Haitian Church, we are now leading the largest and most impactful projects in Haitian education focused on improving educational quality.
Fr. Michel Eugene, CSC: We are trying to make clear that improved education is a necessary path to changing Haiti.
Fr. Tim Scully: It's just been a beautiful project to watch unfold.
Gena Robinson: Haiti gets better. It's why you keep working there. It's not going to be overnight. It's going to be a lot of work, and it's going to be piecemeal.
Kate Schuenke-Lucien: People take roads for granted so much, but roads are so important. If you look at Haiti right now, it's not perfect, but the roads are so much better. For me, that's almost a symbol. There are potholes, they need to be repaired in some places, but they're passable. To me, that's a symbol of where we are. It's not perfect, but I really believe significant gains have been made.
T.J. D'Agostino: Fr. Scully once encouraged us to have a fifty-year view. And this long-term commitment separates us from many others working in Haiti. Five years in, I think we and our partners and the country as a whole have made some significant progress. But every child in Haiti deserves access to a quality education in accordance with his or her dignity. This is the goal, and we're still a long way to achieving this.
Gena Robinson: While Haiti has suffered through centuries of natural, man-made, political, and economic disasters, a deep-rooted faith that things will get better keeps us motivated. Haiti gets better, in large part because of the students that we are working with and the educational system that we are working to strengthen, and because of the hope for a better life that motivates all of us.
Kate Schuenke-Lucien: Everyone with experience in Haiti can now say, "Yes, significant and lasting changes have been accomplished, though there is still much to be done."