Vassar Haiti Project

Robyn, Mai, Tamsin, Priscilla, Carrie, Annie, Manny, Lorraine, Ning and Sida

Twelve hours until we board the plane to Port-au-Prince, Haiti!

We are, as always, tired but excited! After all the fundraising and planning, we are finally here. We’re ready to put midterms, life stress and little concerns behind us, and jump right into the opportunity and honor of representing our fellow VHP-ers on this trip to Haiti.

(We’re also extremely eager to put our Creole to work and to finally meet the wonderful George Desarmes, whose artwork has been featured at many a VHP sale.)

Manny: *Sneeze*! (I’m allergic to the cat hair at Andrew and Lila’s place.)
Tamsin: SO PUMPED. N ap boule!
Annie: I’m failing at live-tweeting pack day, but I’m succeeding at actually packing! I’m looking forward to seeing a real Haitian market in action after so many years of admiring Haitian market scene paintings, and especially to playing with the kids!
Robyn: M rele Robyn. Blanc sa a ka pale Kreyol! Translation: My name is Robyn. This foreigner can speak Creole!
Sida: READY TO GO!
Priscilla: I can’t wait to meet more people like Haitian grandpa!!
Mai: DINNER’S READY! LET’S EAT!
Carrie: Can’t wait to see the kids and Chermaitre itself!
Lila: How did I get roped into this?!
Lorraine: I cannot wait to be immersed in Haiti’s culture and to see the children of Chermaitre!
Ning: We will get soooo tanned~^^ Can’t wait for Haiti!
Andrew: Bring it on!

This past Thursday we held a film screening in collaboration with a Vassar alum ’11, Joseph Redwood-Martinez. Here are some details about what happened!

One day, everything will be free is a feature-length documentary about permaculture, international aid, and Sadhana Forest Haiti––an unlikely reforestation community organized around an alternative economy in an area of Haiti devastated by erosion and environmental degradation.

This video explores the challenges, motivations, and broader implications of an ecological restoration project run by a utopian community located in one of the most contested and politically complicated terrains in the world––in an area referred to locally as “the wasteland.”

About the filmmaker:

Joseph Redwood-Martinez is an artist, writer, and filmmaker from the United States. His writing has appeared in Frieze, Modern Painters, andContemporary Art + Visual Culture Broadsheet, and he is a contributing editor to Ment. A book of his recent writing, event statements, was published in April 2011 by Publication Studio. A forthcoming book titled neo-provincialism will be released in 2014.

He has shown work and curated programs in Sweden, Germany, Turkey, the UK, and the United States. In 2011, he was a curatorial fellow at SALT in Istanbul. With the support of the Graham Foundation, he is currently developing a research project into perpetual building and deliberate articulations of incompleteness in the built landscape. One day, everything will be free is his first film. Promises of Urban Agriculture, his second feature-length documentary, forthcoming in 2014, looks critically at the implications of urban agriculture in various cities around the world.

Last weekend, the Avon Sale in Avon, Connecticut (the hometown of our very own Co-VP of Programming, Sarah Oliver ’15) was a dazzling success. People flowed in and out, as word of our project spread throughout the town.

Here’s a first hand account from the hometown girl herself:

“My first weekend back at Vassar was actually spent at home in Avon, CT, the site of VHP’s most recent art sale. Ever since I joined VHP at the beginning of my freshmen year, I have wanted to share the spirit of the Project with my hometown and this January it finally happened.Like any event, the planning was stressful, exacerbated by the fact that most of it happened over Winter Break when the majority of VHP is scattered around the world, but the hard work only made me want it to succeed more. As we approached the fateful event day and the threats of an enormous snow storm subsided, I realized that my dream was suddenly becoming a reality. Would it be as successful as I’d hoped? Would Avon be touched by VHP as I was? The answer was waiting for me, at St. Ann’s Church, just a two hour drive along the scenic Route 44.

When we we arrived at the church, a group of HS volunteers warmly welcomed us and immediately got to work unloading the millions of boxes in the Uhaul. There was no complaining, just smiles and cheerful conversations. The positive energy fueled our work and we set up the hall in under 5 hours! As Lila said, the brightly colored room felt like home.

Over the next two days, the sale progressed on like a well-oiled machine. The VHP team of volunteers was joined by Confirmation students, HS students, and other Avon community members who helped to package notecards, wrap paintings, restock handcraft tables, and provide food for our hard-working team. Customers came in excited to learn about our work in Haiti and share their own experiences in the rich country. Father McHugh, the priest at St. Ann’s, rallied the parishioners after the Sunday masses encouraging them to experience the “internal joy” of the people, expressed through the beautiful artwork.

While I worried about all the little details of putting on the sale, I reminded myself to step back and simply be. The sale was flourishing. We were happy, the customers were happy, and that meant that the people of Chermaitre would be happy.

When we arrived at Vassar on Sunday night, I was more exhausted than I had ever been- even during the intense 10 days of the Haiti trip! But every ounce of energy was completely worth it. Although our profits reached an impressive $10,000, there were more successes than could not have been measured in little green pieces of paper.

Vassar Haiti Project had touched Avon like it touched me, and like me, the community was changed for the better.“

We are kicking off this semester with our very first event!

Sustaining Water and Land is a combination documentary and speaker event examining the two items that give life to people around the world: water and land. The Vassar Haiti Project and Environmental Studies Department will be first screening One Water, a documentary about global access to clean water that brings us to American streets, Ecuadorian mountains, and Indian rivers. We will then hear from Terry Leroy, co-founder of the Haitian People’s Support Project, a non-profit dedicated to improving the lives of Haitian people through supporting community-based projects. Terry will speak to us about the sustainable living projects that HPSP runs. Examples of these projects include pottery cooperatives, farming cooperatives, and seed banks. We encourage anyone with an interest in sustainable development, agriculture, and water access to attend. Food will be provided.

See you all there!

By Samantha Basch ’16:

Last week, I wrote a blog post about the joys of working on VHP’s StartSomeGood campaign. This week, some shocking news reminded me of why I have put so much effort into the project. My work has not been for the sole purpose of self-gratification; I work to ensure that VHP’s smallest partners, the kindergarteners of Chermaitre, have access to high-quality education.

Recently, these kindergarteners’ right to be educated in a safe, sheltered classroom has been taken from them. Last Monday, strong winds completely demolished their already fragile classroom.

This structure, which will cost between $20,000 and $25,000 to rebuild, is the center of the Chermaitre community. Now more than ever, we need your support. Please go to this link to help us rebuild this important educational space:

http://startsomegood.com/Venture/vassar_haiti_project/Campaigns/Show/help_build_a_kindergarten_in_chermaitre_haiti

Tipa Tipa, little by little, we can rebuild this special community structure. But we cannot do it without you!

In 2008, the Vassar Haiti Project successfully built a school for 250 elementary school students in the rural village of Chermaitre, Haiti. However, kindergarten classes still had to be held in the neighboring church. The church is a basic stone and wood structure that has fallen into major dilapidation over the years. In March 2012, the school was hit by a severe storm that caused one of the church walls and parts of the roof to cave in, leaving the kindergarten students without a safe classroom. Insufficient shelter means putting a halt to their education; thus, the need for reconstruction is urgent.

The Education Initiative is doing everything we can to raise the necessary funds. For this particular project, we are using a crowd-funding website, StartSomeGood. Crowd-funding websites are hubs of information on projects that need support. If a website visitor is drawn to a particular project, they can donate to it online instantaneously. Through Liking, re-posting, emailing, and other means of virtual sharing, this has the potential for a big “snowball effect,” reaching people from all over the world who don’t yet know about the Vassar Haiti Project.

The link to our campaign is: http://www.startsomegood.com/venture/vassar_haiti_project/campaigns/show/help_build_a_kindergarten_in_chermaitre_haiti.

Samantha (center)

“Working on this campaign has opened my eyes to the importance of sustainable development, the value of teamwork, and the elation of feeling a sense of purpose. It has shown me how intelligent, dedicated, and passionate the members of Vassar Haiti Project are. Seeing the project come to fruition has been extremely rewarding because I am confident that, with your help, our work will pay off, and Chermaitre will soon have a new, safe kindergarten structure.”

Donate in someone’s name as a meaningful gift for their birthday, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, New Year’s Day, or Lunar New Year’s Day! The project only receive funds if we meet the Tipping Point of $2,500 in the next 58 days!

Antonia Massa, ’13 comments on the upcoming Art & Soul Reception:

In the past week there’s been a little flurry of media coverage of Hurricane Sandy’s impact in refugee camps in Haiti. The situation is grim: Sandy caused over 50 deaths, damaged hundreds of thousands of Haitian homes, and left many more without food. New reports suggest that cholera has been on the rise in Sandy’s aftermath too—since the hurricane ravaged roads and bridges, it’s been harder than ever for Haitians to access clean water and medical resources.

A bout of press coverage like this can help turn the public’s attention and hearts to Haiti, at least for a little while. But there are plenty of Haitian families, particularly in rural areas, who were living without access to medical care well before the new destruction and hardships Sandy brought on. The need for accessible healthcare in Haiti has always been an issue worthy of our attention; Sandy has only made this need more urgent and more visible.

Two years ago, VHP committed to building, staffing, and supplying a medical clinic in Fiervil, Haiti that will make regular healthcare access available to residents of Chermaître and surrounding villages for the first time. We’ve made some serious strides since this project began, not the least of which was raising $23,000 for the construction of the clinic building. When Emily, Lanbo, and Lila traveled down to Haiti in October, they got to see the nearly-complete structure, which has been built thanks to the efforts local engineers and workers.

Another triumph for the medical initiative has been coalescing a medical advisory board of Arlington doctors, chaired by Danny Aronzon, MD, to help oversee the running of the Chermaître-Fierviel clinic.

But we still have a long way to go if we’re going to make this medical clinic a reality. That’s why this month VHP is gearing up for our biggest medical initiative fundraising event to date: the Art and Soul Reception. We’re inviting medical professionals and friends of VHP from all over Arlington to Poughkeepsie’s Bull & Buddha restaurant to enjoy an evening of food, cocktails, live music from Vassar jazz and a cappella ensembles, and, of course, vibrant Haitian art for sale. Proceeds from the reception will support clinic operations for the next year.

Join us!

Art & Soul Reception

Thursday, November 15, 2012
5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

Bull and Buddha Restaurant
319 Main Street
Poughkeepsie, NY 12601

The Vassar Haiti Project participated in HarvestFest, an annual festival celebrating the coming of fall with refreshments and activities out on the Vassar Quadrangle. This year, VHP had a table where we had handcrafts for sale and face-painting.

Ilse Heine ’15 gives us her perspective on the experience:

“I had a lot of fun face painting during Harvest Fest. I used the bird from the VHP logo as my inspiration (confession: I really didn’t know how to paint anything else). It was very exciting to see so many people interested in the VHP merchandise. A number of people visited our table, and complemented the beautiful crafts and scarves that were on display. I volunteered for the event thinking I would stay for just an hour, but ended up staying for two, and I am so glad that I did. It was a nice, and much needed break from my stressful midterms week. Overall, Harvest Fest was just one more event to add to my list of past, and hopefully many future VHP experiences that always seem to brighten my days at Vassar.”

We have been so fortunate in working with the galleries this time.  We met two of my favorite artists, Pierre Maxo and Georges Desarmes.  For those of you who have a twinge of jealousy about this, don’t worry, we have anpil (lots) of video footage.