Vassar Haiti Project

Livia Dinu '10 on the VHP Haiti trip, March 2010

With VHP members gearing up for their trip to Haiti in just one week, VHP alumna Livia Dinu ’10 looks back on her own experience of the Haiti trip and supports current members before their depart.
In March, 2010 I visited Haiti with VHP. The trip had a tremendous impact on students and the project. It gave the sort of traction to the Vassar Haiti Project that I had not experienced up to that point. The trip made the connection stronger between the people here and our partners in Haiti, helped us understand their needs, and it has developed in the students the ability to lead with the kind of passion and strength I have rarely, if ever, encountered before.

Now, the VHP has applied for NGO status and its partnerships are vast and growing, and the student body is more motivated than ever. And what I can tell you, given my experience with it and the way I have seen it growing, is that every added effort here, in the U.S., translates into so much more in Haiti. See for yourselves, yet do not expect to find a big, average, non-transparent and likely inefficient non-profit of the sort we’re so used to seeing nowadays.
I donated to support the trip and its students, and I encourage you to click here and do the same.

For me, it is a way of giving back to the project, helping it create for others the same kind of extraordinary educational experience in Haiti that it has created for myself – at a time when it was hard to afford the trip on my own.