e-Newsletter
Windows on our Worlds e-News!
from PARTNERS IN PROGRESS - Fall 2007
Students in Fondwa "defy the odds" with their academic achievement
 Last year marked the first time ever that students from Fondwa could complete secondary school without leaving their home community! After gradually adding a class a year the St. Antoine school now has students enrolled from pre-kindergarten through "philo" - the final year of secondary school! Having a good elementary school in rural Haiti is rare. Having a good secondary school may be unique to Fondwa!
Each summer school, children in Haiti must take standardized, national exams put out by the Haitian ministry of education in order to complete elementary school and to graduate from high school. Last summer the 6th. graders at the St. Antoine school marked the end of their elementary school program by achieving a pass rate of 100% - a rare accomplishment for any school in Haiti and even more unusual for a rural school like St. Antoine's. The students in "philo" achieved an even more remarkable success rate of 100% - more remarkable because that is about TWICE the success rate overall of schools in Haiti.
Partners in Progress - with the support of Sacred Heart church, Pittsburgh, PA, St. Margaret Mary church, Lower Burrell, PA, St. Peter Claver school, Cincinnati, OH, and Holy Trinity school, Ligonier, PA - along with Family Health Ministries and other partner organizations - helps subsidize the salaries of more than 40 teachers at the St. Antoine school. "Mesi anpil" ("thank you VERY much") to all our donors for making this possible!
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"Sak vid pa kanpe" - "An empty sack can't stand up"
The "need to feed" almost 600 children daily
 Last year some 535 children attended classes daily at the St. Antoine school with some of them walking as much as THREE HOURS - one way - to get to school. Imagine leaving home at 5 am with no more than a piece of bread for breakfast or - as is the case for some children - having nothing at all for breakfast and then walking three hours to reach school in time for 8 am classes. When classes end at 2 pm you walk home again and arrive there around 5 pm. Without something to eat at school you will gone 12 hours without food.
Two years ago the St. Antoine school was able to provide a lunch to all the children, relying largely on donated food and financial help from its supporters in the US. When the donated food was no longer available it became impossible to feed all the children every day. Rising food costs forced the school to suspend its lunch program entirely last year. (A sack of rice that used to cost $80 HD a few years ago now sells for almost $300 HD!)
This year our goal is to meet the "need to feed" by providing lunch to all the children at least 2 or 3 days a week. Our "long term" goal is to put in place a complete and sustainable program that will provide complete and balanced nutrition to all the St. Antoine students every school day beginning in September 2008. To meet this goal PIP has begun a new collaboration with graduate students David Duong and Robin Johnson from the University of Michigan's School of Public Health to design and implement a "school nutrition program". We will need to raise approximately $3,000 a month to achieve this end and your support will make a difference in the lives of more than 500 children!
Contributions to "Partners in Progress" with "School Nutrition Program" in the memo line of your check may be mailed to: Partners in Progress, 329 N. Fairfield Street, Ligonier, PA 15658 or you can click here to make a secure, tax-deductible online donation.
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"Change for Haiti" Project Supports St. Antoine School
 St. Margaret Mary Church in Lower Burrell, PA has been "twinned" with the St. Antoine school in Fondwa for two years. Recently PIP executive director, Rich Gosser, and recently-returned Fondwa volunteer, Becky Newlin, (shown on the left of the photo) visited St. Margaret Mary's to say "mesi anpil" ("thank you VERY much") for their strong support for the St. Antoine school, to celebrate the successes of the school, and to present the challenges the current school year. Vera Swiergol (shown on the right of the photo) heads the St. Margaret Mary Haiti Committee first visited Haiti with Rich Gosser in 1992 was instrumental in gaining the support of other parishioners. Her committee created the "Change for Haiti" project that invites church members to "change their hearts" and GIVE their pocket change in a monthly collection to support the St. Antoine school. "Mesi anpil" to Vera Swiergol and her committee, to Msgr. James Gaston, the pastor, and all the PIP supporters at St. Margaret Mary!
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PIP and University of Pittsburgh Collaboration Continues
 At the invitation of PIP and the Association of Peasants of Fondwa (APF), Michael Hatch and Erin Smith, students at the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of International and Public Affairs (GSPIA), spent the summer in Fondwa, Haiti where they worked with members of APF to better understand the social, environmental and economic impact of some of the APF grassroots development projects that PIP supports there.
Applying a simple "poverty scorecard" for Haiti, Mike and Erin collected baseline data that will help PIP and APF monitor their efforts to improve the lives of more than 6000 residents of the Fondwa community. GSPIA professor, Michele Garrity, has organized a graduate course around the information gathered in Fondwa last summer. Her class class of nine international development students will create various "performance indicators" for the main components of the Fondwa model of sustainable development (infrastructure, agro-forestry, health care, small businesses, and education) that APF can track in order to better assess the impact of its development efforts.
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Come and See Haiti on PIP's 2008 "Reverse Mission Solidarity Delegation"
Many people know Haiti only as “the poorest country in the Western hemisphere”, but PIP wants people to know the hospitality of Haitians and the richness of Haiti’s culture. Join a PIP solidarity delegation to Haiti this Spring!
Participants will spend a week in Haiti visiting rural Fondwa and other venues where PIP is involved. This is an opportunity to experience first-hand the richness of this "poorest country". It's also an opportunity for an "up close" look at some of the development efforts that PIP supports, to meet our "odds defying" Haitian collaborators, and to witness some of the challenges we face!
For more information on the Spring 2008 "Reverse Mission Solidarity Delegation" contact info@PIPHaiti.org and request an information packet and application.
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Makaya Water Project Advances "ti pa ti" ("little by little")
 While continuing to prove the maxim that “nothing is easy in Haiti”, progress on the PIP-sponsored Makaya Water Project in Fondwa is moving forward "little by little"! The diesel power-supply was shipped last month from Grand Rapids, MI by Rays of Hope for Haiti.
Construction of both the underground and aboveground parts of the pipeline is advancing and should be completed by year-end. The need to coordinate construction with the natural cycles of the seasons on which the community of Fondwa depends for its livelihood has caused the progress to be slower than it otherwise would be. Damages caused by severe storms that struck the region at the beginning of the hurricane season resulted in some additional setbacks. More information about the Makaya project is available on the PIP website.
PIP invites YOU to become a “dollar-a-day”, sustaining partner!
PIP’s donors are both very loyal and very generous! A simple “mesi anpil” (“thank you VERY much”) never seems adequate as a response to the continuing support PIP receives from its donors. Your support is essential if PIP is to have the resources needed to carry out its mission of promoting and supporting the Fondwa community-based model of integral sustainable development in rural Haiti. We know that the great majority of Haitians living in the rural provinces subsist on incomes of less than US $1 a day and PIP invites you to become a sustaining partner by contributing just a “dollar-a-day”. Just click here to make a tax-deductible, secure, online pledge of $30 or more a month! Sustaining partners will each receive a copy of the 20 minute DVD “Road to Fondwa” edited by Justin Brandon and produced by Fondwa long-term volunteer Brian McElroy. Don’t delay -- make YOUR gift today!
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