Schools, Students, Parents Persevere in Haiti

Drawing from 'Many Blessings--January, February 2024' and 'Haitians Must Be Very Strong'

Please click on over to our 2024 Update on the Sticking Up For Children website.

You’ll see that there ARE ‘Many Blessings’ from January and February and March and SUFC’s partners in Haiti’s capital of Port-au-Prince, Cayes Jacmel on Haiti’s southern coast, and the southern Department of Nippes.

Lekòl Toupatou means “School Everywhere” in Haitian Kréyol. Lekol Toupatou is a project four years in the growing. The brainchild of the life’s work of Madame Marie Marthe Franck Paul, Principal at College Canapé Vert since she founded it in 1974 and Mayor of Port-au-Prince between 1986 and 1988, Lekòl Toupatou (don’t you like the sound of it?) now has more than 150 half-hour Video Lessions ready to reach across Haiti.

The FEPE orphanage (Foyer Espoir Pour les Enfants). and the EFE school (Ecole Foyer Espoir) are partners with SUFC since 2013. Maryse (my wife) and I have watched schoolchildren grow into photographers and administrators. We’re seen hundreds graduate at EFE and College Canapé Vert and at the Youpi Youpi (Youpi Youpi means Happy Happy in Kréyol) school in Cayes Jacmel. We’re most astounded by Staff’s and Students’ perseverance in the face of daily duresses.

Since Maryse and I married in January 2014 I’ve visited Haiti 11 times. The first visit, sponsored by the very accomplished 2014 Port-au-Prince International Jazz Festival, gave me impressions of dignity and spirituality in a people such as I’d seldom (Tanzania, Native sites in North America, a pre-school in Bogota, Barrio 23 in Caracas, the Wesley United Church Sanctuary in New Orleans, …) known before.

One commonality most stands for me from the 11 visits: Parents bringing children to school, children who are immaculate in their dress and guileless in their faces.

Please see, too, this piece from 2018 that relates progress among students in the FEPE orphanage—’Haitians Must Be Very Strong’.

Two pieces of music and words.

‘In Port-au-Prince They’re Picking Up’ with Kidd Jordan and Morikeba Kouyaté from our Album Women Center Earth, Sea and Sky.

‘Music Spiritual on a Friday Night’ with melody by Lòlò of Boukman Eksperyans, recorded at home here in New Orleans, May 2, 2019, with Lòlò and Manzè and pianist Michael Torregano Jr.