Mark and Anne Bradley brought a bit of Haiti with them May 2 as they delivered letters from children there to our Violet Fox fifth and sixth graders. This was the first exchange in our twinning project.
The background: Last fall the Haiti Task Group of the Phildelphia Yearly Meeting Peace Committee invited Friends schools and Meetings to twin with a school or church in Haiti. The Bradleys were the contact people.
The GFS staff was eager to explore this project. We arranged with the Bradleys to send photos and letters from the Violet Foxes to them to be delivered to a school in Haiti on the Bradleys' Christmas trip there. This accomplished, it took several months to get the responses back.
Mark and Anne brought the responses and photos of Haiti to GFS. Mark translated the notes from the Haitian children from Creole to English for us. The Bradleys visited the Violet Fox class and the Yellow Fox class and met with teachers at staff meeting last Thursday, May 2.
Mark and Anne live in Upper Darby. Anne is a college student in social work and Mark works for a Philadelphia homeless project. They are expecting a child July 10. Anne was born in Haiti and lived in a rural area before moving to the capital of Port-au-Prince when she was 12 to further her education. They met in Haiti when Mark, a U.S. native who was a public health worker, went to work in a hospital in Port-au-Prince.
We are very pleased with this project. The Bradleys brought wonderful information to us about children in another country. We are hopeful that this is the beginning of an exchange between students that will help all of us gain a better understanding of children everywhere. Although we began with the Violets, we will include all classes in the twinning with the school of Hatte Cotin.