Summer at HAFF

It has been a busy summer so far at HAFF. The busy-ness and electricity and internet woes have kept everyone from doing any blogging. But here is an update. Thanks to Kevin, Jonathan, Colin and Carla and Greg and Barb for the input on this post!

Kevin Hartzell is HAFF's summer research intern from Covenant College. He is studying Community Development and HAFF invited him to come and do a survey of the community. By 30 June he had talked to 50 people informally making a Capacity Inventory for the area -- a list of potential skills that people may have. His final data gathering activity was a focus group, co-lead by Gabi Van Schoyck, Derold Mompremier and himself. They asked community leaders about the community’s capacities. He then analyzed the information and designed a Capacity Catalog. This catalogue kind of like a Yellow Pages of Bohoc Community Capacitie will enable us to better serve the people in the community by offering non-formal education programs that fit the needs and desires of Bohoc community members and so we can know who to go to if we have a need. There is also a potential for a version of the catalog to be supplied to the community.

HAFF intern Jonathan Fischer has completed his internship and is back in the States now. He was a great help in so many areas – helping to home-school Rachel Wilson and teaching English pronunciation at the school were his primary duties. As mentioned in 2 previous posts, he was instrumental in starting a student prayer partner ministry at school.
He continued to work with that ministry and with the students who have taken it to heart. Before he left Haiti, he helped the young people elect a student committee to keep the program rolling. Please keep them in prayer as they strive to encourage one another and uphold each other in prayer.

Gabi and Zach Van Schoyck have been serving in Haiti this summer as well. Gabi has been a valuable part of the HAFF Ministry Team since November. We have all relied on her training in Community Development and her willingness to graciously tackle just about anything asked of her. She finishes her time with HAFF this month to return to Atlanta and prepare for her Global Health program at Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health. Zach has been the “man on the ground” in Port-au-Prince with an Atlanta based ministry called 410 Bridge. He has been organizing and facilitating the logistics associated with large work teams from the U.S. which have been serving the Haitians in a variety of practical ways. They have constructed a widows’ center, removed the rubble of collapsed homes, rebuilt houses, and held VBS programs for kids. He finishes up his work in Haiti in early August and then heads back for his final year of engineering studies at Georgia Tech in Atlanta.

The 9th of July HAFF received a gift of literacy material which can be used with the literacy classes which meet in the communities Met Claude Suffrance works with in his Project Healthy Family. The materials are workbooks for the students themselves -- handwriting, reading, and flashcard booklets and a hefty Arithmetic booklet. We did not receive the same amount of each booklet, so please pray for Met Claude and the others involved with the program for wisdom to know how to most equitably get the materials into the hands of the people who need them.

Right after the earthquake, as soon as we realized the extent of the devastation in Port-au-Prince, Barb and I looked at each other and said in unison, “Well, that's the end of school for the year.” But, thankfully, the Haitian government was able to get many schools open about 3 weeks later. Even universities in Port-au-Prince which lost buildings and teaching staff were opened within a few months meeting under tents with professors from other areas of the country and even from other countries. The Ministry of Education was even able to get things organized for national exams for the end of the year.

HAFF was again honored to be the testing site for the national exam for the end of primary school and for the national exam at the end of 9th grade. This year, HAFF was also asked to help transport the 9th grade national exams to Pignon and Bohoc. After the exams, the inspectors in Cap Haitien and Pignon were very, very appreciative of our help to get the 4e exams distributed.