Vassar Haiti Project

On Oct 15, Vassar’s community day “A Day at Vassar” event, Vassar Haiti Project held a small art sale in the college center. The college allowed us to use this important space of the College for this special day. We’re a very prominent representative of Vassar student’s extracurricular activities, and the community day exhibition sale that we held in College Center was a wonderful opportunity to show the community what the project and how we are doing.

We had many customers and they showed various degrees of interest in the project. We also met people who may form future partnerships with us on events in the local area.

Many thanks to our volunteers, who got up as early as 6am to come over and set up for the wonderful sale, especially considering everyone just finished off an exhausting midterm week. It broke our records and set up was finished within two hours with all our efforts put together.

One of our volunteer, Lanbo Yang ’15 reflected on the sale:

“As I was at the splendid Community Day Sale the other day, I couldn’t help but think about what we were doing and how we were doing it. By selling art, we are able to empower the artistis of Haiti, strengthening a portion of the general populace of the impoverished country. But we should not forget one fundamental aspect of this philanthropic gesture: we are not building schools for them, but in fact they are constructing the infrastructure for themselves. We are purely catalysts to bring about such change. In critically keeping in check with what humanitarian aid means, I would like to share this New York Times article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/07/opinion/07iht-eddupuy07.html?_r=1&ref=haiti

We are not tourists, looking down upon Haiti even though they require our help. We should instead perceive ourselves as agents of empowerment: giving Haitians access to financial resources to bring about their life-changing ideas. As each Haitian speaks up, the ideas will form a ripple effect, cultivating a culture of cooperative economic development. This is how the new Haiti will present itself onto the world stage.”

Another volunteer, Sahara Pradhan ’15 also talked about what she experienced at the sale:

“Early on a bright, cold Saturday morning in October, I made my way through Vassar campus to set up for the Vassar Haiti Project event at the College Center. When I arrived, members of VHP including Andrew and Lila were already there, along with several bare tables and empty fold-out painting panels. We started setting up; by the end of two hours, the space had been completely transformed.

Now, the College Center was filled with the brightest colors of colors: cherry reds, turquoise blues, lime greens, sunshine yellows. The atmosphere was vibrant and full of energy and the air was resounding with Haitian music as people came by.  The tables displayed an assortment of handicrafts: little parrots painted on wooden boxes, exquisite goat-horn earrings and beaded jewelry, brightly colored hand-painted scarves, paper mache frogs and turtles and all kinds of bugs, twisted metal forming trees with birds on them, to list a few. The painting panels held paintings of all different shapes and sizes. They depicted a variety of scenes: busy market places, some had serene landscapes, others with bright bold animals, there were those with everyday instances in Haitian life. There were some paintings portraying the death and damage from the 2010 earthquake while others symbolized hopes for a better future.  Some had animals with bold eyes staring back at you, others with women bargaining for fruit.  Each painting was unique in the artist’s style and evoked a sense of the Haitian spirit. On the South wall hung a massive painting, fondly known as ‘mega-painting’, and I must admit I’ve never quite seen anything like it before: a dog on two legs selling fruit from an open refrigerator. It was called ‘Got Fruit?’

The day was spent engaging with the community about Haiti and the progress of Chermaitre and I felt like the fact we were able to share a part of the Haiti Project with Vassar, our local community and people with ties to Vassar was a remarkable thing. It was part of the process of helping the people in the village of Chermaitre. By the time we were ready to take everything down, I was tired, but glad to have been part of this particular Day At Vassar. I felt like in that room, we all shared an unspoken wish to make a difference and to be a part of something, as Lila and Andrew always say, much bigger than us. It’s the reason we all keep coming back.”

Here are some photos from the lovely event!