Vassar Haiti Project

We’ve heard back from Lila, Lanbo Yang ’15 and Emily Strasser ’10 who are in the middle of a short trip to Haiti!

“Lila and co. are back down the mountain, and they are alive and well!  She says it feels like they have been gone a month :) They have met Pere Jonas Beauvoir, the new priest for the village, and he will indeed be a great partner for VHP.
They hope to send in a full blog post tomorrow, but at least wanted to get word in that they made it okay and have a good feeling about working with Pere Jonas. The clinic is nearly complete and they are meeting with Dr. Racine tonight….”

You can really get to know someone when they invite you into their home.  Donna Trimboli, DDS has been a supporter of VHP from the early years.  From VHP’s trips to Haiti in the early years, her practice has donated tooth care products for the children of Chermaitre. Donna decided to open her heart and home,  inviting VHP students and friends into her beautiful home in Rhinebeck to help Haiti once again.  A hope to visit the school in the near future helped spark her decision to do something concrete to help those in the mountain village of Chermaitre.

From our first meeting, I am marked by how generous and loyal Friends of the Vassar Haiti Project have been over the years. Donna welcomed our students into her home and we bridged the gap of strangers to friends in record time.  In line with Dr. Trimboli’s penchant for making everything ‘perfect’, The Garden Party chez elle looked like something out of a Martha Stewart’s magazine.  Colorful tablecloths surrounded the garden accented by the vibrant and colorful art of Haiti.  The food looked as beautiful as the art and the students learned how to entertain, American style….and how to make ‘gift baskets!’.

Donna understates her efforts for the event….by saying that it was her privilege to be involved with the event.  “I’m proud and privileged to work with the students and administrators of the VHP” adding that her garden and the outdoor venue really helped to bring life to the already vibrant artwork.

Freshmen from around the world helped set up the event: Tim from Swaziland, Ning from China, Huong from Vietnam brightened the mood from the start of the day. Donna’s family joined in to make things easier for us by lightening the burdens of setup by manning the kitchen. A great big thank you to Keith, Dennis and Catie for making the load seem lighter.  And, at one point, Andrew said to me, ‘do you realize that 11 of the 13 people setting up have been to Haiti with us?’  It felt like home to see recent Vassar graduates, Fiona Koch ’12 and David Bridgman-Packer ’12. They made the trek from NYC to join us and remind us that we are a family – thankfully their new lives in NYC, post-Vassar allows us to stay in close touch.

I really loved this event.  It embodied all that we at VHP hold as important to us…work closely, efficiently, relentlessly with the hope of helping Haiti. I can’t help but feel so proud of our collaborative work. There is little doubt in my mind that with the team of like-minded VHP’ers, all things are possible in this world.

Thank you Donna Trimboli!

-Lila Meade, Co-Chair

There have been a few campus social events on VHP’s calendar to kick off the semester, and it’s been really nice meeting new and familiar faces alike! Seeing everyone bringing fresh energy and interest in Chermaitre to the table was certainly heartwarming :-)

Last week we had a successful ice cream social:

And tonight’s “speed dating-themed” GB meeting was such a blast!

Solange Boucher, a rising 7th grader at Vermont Catholic School in Barre, Vermont, shows us the power of perseverance and good will  as she set up a fundraiser at her middle school to help raise money for children in Chermaitre. Age does not matter when you’re trying to make a difference! 

My name is Solange, and I am 12 years old.  I am going into the 7^th grade at Central Vermont Catholic School, in Barre, Vermont.   My class and I raised money for the Vassar Haiti Project and I wanted to share how we did it with you!

My mom and I had just gotback from the 11^th Annual Vassar Haiti Project Art Auction and Sale held at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie.   I told my class all I knew about the VHP.  My teacher, Mrs. McKinstry, asked my whole class, if they would like to hold a fundraiser for the children of Chermaitre.  Everyone in my class was enthusiastic.   At my school, community service is very important.

My class then discussed what would be a good fundraiser.  Somebody suggested a dunk booth.  Everybody loved the idea.  We researched the dunk booth, and found it was $100 to rent.  We first held a bottle drive to raise money for the booth.  It was a miserable rainy day, and because it was rainy- we only raised $50 in cans and bottles.  Then, we held a dance for the 4^th thru 8^th grade classes.  We raised enough to rent the dunk booth.

We decided to get the dunk booth for our school’s Field Day- to be held June 1^st.

In the mean time, I made a donation jar, for random donations, which we kept in our class room.  We asked people to bring in their spare change.   In May, we held our annual Spring Concert at school.  We set out the donation jar and made a display board describing what VHP was all about.  That night, we received a LOT of money through donations.  Somebody even donated a $50 dollar bill!  We all thought that was pretty cool!

Before we knew it, it was June 1^st.  And the dunking booth came.  The whole school was pretty excited!  The school goes from preschool to grade 8.  Everybody was allowed a free throw to try to dunk one of the 4 teachers who volunteered; the principal, and the school cook.  Students could buy lots more “throws” for $1.  It was a very fun day!!!

The younger kids had their turn in the morning and the older kids in the afternoon. There was fierce competition to dunk the 4^th grade teacher, and the principal!  At the end of the day, my best friend Anna and I counted the money with Mrs. O’Mahoney, our principal.  Before the dunking booth, we had raised around $200 dollars. Post dunking booth: over $760.00!  We made almost triple what we had been going for and we only have about 100 kids at our school!

This experience taught me that even a 7 person class can make a difference.  That just one person telling other people about a worthy cause can make something happen.  In the beginning, we didn’t even expect to make the $325.  It’s really amazing!

Solange Boucher,

7^th Grader

Central Valley CS

Barre, Vermont

Li Zhang ’13, one of our newest additions to the Vassar Haiti Project family, reflects on her experience at the Sag Harbor sale last weekend.  Photos are forthcoming!

My name is Li. I’m a rising senior at Vassar and I joined VHP only a week ago! Last weekend, I attended my first event—the art sale in Christ Episcopal Church, Sag Harbor, Long Island.

Before the art sale started, we set up all the paintings and handcrafts based on genre, color, size and quality. Arranging art works to make them look both neat and aesthetically pleasing was much harder than I thought.  I was assigned to the jewelry and scarf sections, where I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the best way to present them.

From the experience, I realize that it is not only the funds we raise for the Vassar Haiti Project that matters, but also the efforts and thought we put in the entire process that makes this enterprise so meaningful. In this three-day sale, I was able to get to know everyone around, including students, other volunteers and even alumni! The atmosphere was so family-like that I almost forgot I had only joined this group less than a week before!

There are still many things I need to learn but I am really excited and grateful about how VHP as a big family provides a viable means for me to help Haitian self-sustainability (even though my own contribution is slim). I know that our collective experiences create countless possibilities that tap our potential in many different fields (marketing, merchandising, communication, etc.), all of which construct an organic whole that pushes this project further and further.

Alex Ciucu ’12 writes about VHP’s summer sales and the preparations for next year’s projects.

Although it is the middle of July, the Vassar Haiti Project volunteers still have their hands and minds full with work for the benefit of Haiti! We kicked off the summer on a high note, by organizing the annual Vassar College Reunion sale. This is a great chance to replicate some of the VHPs successful sales right on the Vassar campus, and the three days were a wonderful opportunity to speak about our project to alums ranging from the Class of 1942 all the way to the Class of 2007! It was amazing to understand that Haiti holds a special place in many people’s hearts, and we had many conversations with alums who had either visited Haiti as tourists, or had been involved in the country in some other ways. Even for those alums who were not familiar with Haitian art, our display of paintings and handcrafts offered a great introduction. Overall, it was a very rewarding experience for everyone involved, because the volunteers had the chance to speak about a project that is very dear to them to people who were wanted to get a feel of what makes a Vassar student tick, while the alums were happy to find out that Vassar continues to provide an excellent education with a focus on student initiatives.

The summer continued with a trip to Sag Harbor, the picturesque location of our next sale. Andrew, Lila and I went on a preliminary visit, to speak to the congregation of the Christ Episcopal Church, our long-term partners and the hosts of our sale on July 20 – July 22. The Church has already hosted two sales for us, both with tremendous success, and we wanted to re-emphasize the importance of our partnership by giving a presentation on the VHP’s goals during their Sunday service. I particularly enjoyed talking to Carol Spencer who has spearheaded this sale at her church ….with this, our third collaboration! Although we may be separated by geography and even a few generations, I noticed how our goals are so similar! The atmosphere was absolutely amazing, and it makes me very excited for the upcoming sale. When this many people with such great energy get together, great things are bound to happen!

And speaking of great energy, it is worth mentioning that all of our volunteers, whether they are still around the Poughkeepsie area or not, have been working very hard planning for the next school year. Initiative leaders have been busy keeping in touch, coordinating their activities, contacting outside organizations for support, and figuring out the best course of action for next year. Lila and Andrew have been kept very busy by the emails sent from all across the world, all filled with incredible ideas that are meant to help the VHP move forward in its mission. The student volunteers who remained around campus welcomed a new delivery of handcrafts and paintings, reorganized the inventory, and even revamped the website, to make it more user friendly!

In other news, the Vassar Haiti Project has worked tirelessly to create a Medical Advisory Board, formed of doctors and community members that can best guide us in our attempt to provide medical assistance in Chermaître. We are proud to say that our efforts have paid off with Dr. Danny Aronzon’s decision to chair the Advisory Board. Our first meeting is in early August!  Summer has been a productive time for us, and we will follow up with more information, so make sure to follow our blog for our updates

All the best from miles away, but always a VHP volunteer,

Alex Ciucu, Class of 2012

• Claudia Sanchez, 2011 Alumna (Co-President 2010-11) 

It seems like changes are happening all at the same time for VHP. After a year away from the project, and following a very involved career in it, it is a very odd feeling to go back and see the project in action without you. I always expected VHP to do great things after my class graduated, because -let’s face it- the project was already doing great things despite us! Yet, as you leave a position of leadership you always wonder who will take care of what; and you worry, much like a parent, about whether the new members will remember to do this or that.

We all left VHP with a heavy heart. Having the chance to come back for the April sale this year was a privilege as exciting as it was trying: I was eager to see my friends again, but I was also intrigued at what the project would look like after a year without us. With a project like ours, there’s always room for improvement and there is always a new thing to learn. There always seems to be a detail that escapes us yet we somehow learn the trick one or two years later; and all of this comes naturally.

So, imagine coming back to a project that had learned a hefty amount of new tricks and you never got to see how they did it? It was magical! I walked in expecting to find old friends and a similar dynamic. But thank goodness I didn’t! As I left VHP last year, I knew that it was missing the beautiful friendly dynamic I had enjoyed my first couple of years. Dynamics and interactions are not something you can manufacture, but there was some missing element there. I will not say what this element is because it is a mystery to me as well – but I will say that the new team found it and infused the project with the life I remembered. The VHP has been blessed with an engaged, dedicated, and incredibly talented group of freshmen. Not only that, but the current leadership is so involved and so loving, I felt like they were miles away from what I had accomplished there. This is an honor to admit. Walking in and meeting all of these committed people, seeing the great family energy, and meeting with the love of old friends – it was a very pleasant experience.

I say that all changes are happening at once because just a few weeks after I witnessed the rebirth of this VHP dynamic, the project got its 501(c)3 status. It’s almost like they knew just what was missing and rewarded us for it.

Congratulations, VHP!  I expect to be there next April again, ready to be amazed at the next great thing you (and I also mean “we”) accomplish.

• Raluca Besliu, 2011 Alumna (VP for Outreach 2010-11)

In 2011, the VHP started more amply pursuing one of its U.S.-oriented goals, raising awareness about Haitian art and artists as well as promoting a different image of Haiti, one that does not exclusively cover the negative aspects the country is currently undergoing, but highlighting the positive ones, which are often overlooked by the media and NGOs. The VHP achieved this goal, by organizing more art sales and other events outside Vassar and Poughkeepsie and reaching communities that it had never been to before. It continued this goal in 2012 as well. Obtaining the not-for-profit organization status opens new opportunities for the VHP to enhance this previously mentioned awareness raising goal, by partnering with organizations, which might had previously been less inclined to do so, but also to develop new goals, all in the effort to help the people of Chermaitre and Haiti lead a better life!

• Emily Strasser, 2010 Alumna

It was their heart that got me. I still remember—it was during
orientation week my freshman year. My registration for the “begin
school adventure” (or whatever they called it that year) had been lost
and instead of going hiking, I was assigned to the Vassar Haiti
Project. I was pretty disappointed that instead of spending the day
with the trees in the sunshine, I would be inside stretching
paintings. But I left that room at the end of the day completely
smitten with the project, drawn to the incredible passion, love, and
generosity of Lila and Andrew and the amazing students and community
members they had gathered around them. VHP became my Vassar family,
and what I experience when I visited Haiti in 2008 only solidified my
belief in our work.

Six years later, I love that I still receive enthusiastic emails from
Lila (complete with colored fonts and lots of exclamation points)
announcing the success of sales and our newly minted 501c3 status. To
me, the status doesn’t change a thing about what I encountered in that
room six years ago, about what I encounter every time I enter a sale
or reunite with project members. But not everyone in the world is
lucky enough to see how all this happens from the inside, so I am
thrilled that our official status will legitimize our work in the eyes
of the world—it will make all that heart reach just a bit farther.

It is official! The Vassar Haiti Project is a 501 (c) (3) Not-For-Profit organization as sanctioned by the US Government!!!! We got the letter May 25, several months after we sent everything in, and about a years after we started this entire process…. but they accepted our application in it’s entirety, without any questions/reservations/or need for followup!