May 3, 1998
Dear Greenwood Families and Friends,
It is with great anticipation that I write this letter as I think of the experiences to come for our school. This week, after two and one-half years of planning, Greenwood will make its first personal connection with the school in Babaco-Hatte Cotin in rural Haiti we have corresponded with beginning in the winter of 1995-96.
On May 7, Taci Styer, Red Fox kindergarten teacher, and I will travel to Haiti. We will spend six days visiting our sister school in Babaco-Hatte Cotin, getting to know the community of the school, visiting other schools in the country, and meeting with Parole et Action, the Dutch Christian development organization that has helped us with our project to "twin" with the Babaco-Hatte Cotin school.
Our connection with the children and community of Babaco-Hatte Cotin in Haiti has been guided by our desire to extend ourselves to another community, to live the Friends Testimonies of Community and Peace.
We found Babaco-Hatte Cotin through the help of Anne and Mark Bradley, Friends in the Philadelphia area. Anne is from Haiti and Mark worked there for several years. The Bradleys first helped us exchange letters and photos with the school. Anne traveled to Haiti last November to represent us to the school community there.
Haiti was our all-school thematic study during the 1996-97 school year, ending with the musical, "Haiti in Our Hearts."
As interest in the project picked up within Greenwood and Millville Friends Meeting, others got involved. Millville Friends Peace and Service Committee received a grant from the Chace Fund, a Quaker fund administered by Friends in Philadelphia, to help with a development project for the families of the children in the Babaco-Hatte Cotin school.
The grant of almost $15,000 is being used buy supplies and to provide small loans to families who have an agricultural or small business project. As families pay back their loans, they will be committed to turning some of their profit to the school as tuition for their children. This plan is designed to provide the families with a source of help and the school a source of tuition. One of the problems the Babaco-Hatte Cotin school has been plagued with in the past is lack of money to pay the teachers.
Last fall Greenwood faculty and Millville Friends Peace and Service Committee created a Joint Committee on Haiti to oversee our project. Joan McCoy, Anne Foulke, and Bob Mosteller represent Millville Meeting and Judy Hunchar, Taci Styer, and I represent Greenwood. The Joint Committee has planned our upcoming trip.
Funds for the trip have come from generous Friends: $1,000 from Friends Council on Education for travel, $300 from Philadelphia Yearly Meeting's Committee on Education for the cost of a substitute teacher in Taci's absence, and $600 from Millville's Peace and Service Committee for our lodging and food there and for supplies for Babaco-Hatte Cotin. Friends from Millville and families and staff at the school have contributed school supplies and toiletries for us to deliver. Concord Friends Meeting has also gathered supplies for the Haitian school.
Taci and I have a two-part mission. We want to meet the children, families, teachers, and church leaders whose school we are visiting. This is a person-to-person mission of caring and love. Our second task is to gain some understanding of how the community works, its cultural and economic characteristics, and to assess how the loan-development project is functioning. This is a complicated task and one we will report on in detail after our return.
We hope you will share our excitement about this next step in our community building with Haiti.
In peace,
Sheila Lunger
Director