One Church and One School

We are just a couple of weeks away from the year 2012, and that means we will be just three years away from 2015 – target date for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (or MDGs).   Established in 2000 at the United Nations by 189 world leaders, the eight goals are:

1)   Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

2)   Achieve universal primary education

3)   Promote gender equality and empower women

4)   Reduce child mortality

5)   Improve maternal health

6)   Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases

7)   Ensure environmental sustainability

8)   Develop a Global Partnership for Development

Not your average to-do or to-get list.  By going to www.un.org/millenniumgoals/ or www.endpoverty2015.org/ you can learn something about different kinds of efforts underway all over the world to address these goals.  Is it even possible that we could arrive at a time when we can say with assurance that even one of them can be checked off?  That’s hard to imagine.  But it’s all about the journey.

At the Episcopal church where my husband serves, one committee has been working hard since 2008 to address, in its own small way, the #2 goal on this list:  universal primary education.   It all started with just a few people who took the MDGs seriously and knew that the Presiding Bishop had called upon congregations to contribute .7% of income annually towards achieving one or more of the goals.   They heard a call to action.   The clock was ticking towards 2015.  What can we do from here, they wondered, to make a real and positive difference in the daily lives of children somewhere else?

So they had an idea:  what if their church, located in a town where education is of paramount importance, could reach out to the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti –known for its large network of institutions in the country — and establish a partnership with one particular parish/school there? In Haiti, most schools are not state-supported and must rely on other sources of funds.  Adult literacy is at around just 50% and, in rural areas, only about half of the children are even enrolled in school.  Other churches in the United States were already trying these partnerships, and important procedures for effectiveness and accountability were being developed, so the time seemed right.

The Haiti School Committee at Grace Church was thus created to form a one-to-one relationship with St. Matthew’s School in Bayonnais, Haiti.  A bit like the line where the ceiling paint meets the wall paint in my mind, two cultures would be coming together for a common purpose: to improve the quality of education for perhaps 80 children. Located in the northern part of the country, near the larger city of Gonaives, the primary school –also the church on Sundays –was in need of just about everything:  funding for teachers’ salaries (they had been working for hardly any pay), repairs to the building, school supplies and textbooks, uniforms, and lunches.   When the first contingent from the church, including my husband and daughter, visited the school in the company of the local presiding priest, the whole region around Gonaives was recovering from a second recent episode of terrible flooding (in 2004 the death toll had been even greater).   But spirits were high and hope for the future abounded.  The kids gathered around my daughter with so much curiosity; how different she looked with her light colored hair and skin and her silver braces.  They kicked a soccer ball together and tried to communicate in French.

On that trip, while in the capital of Port-au-Prince, the group was able to visit the magnificent murals in Holy Trinity Church, the Episcopal Cathedral in Haiti.  A couple of years later, that church— and so much else around it in the city – would be destroyed by the massive earthquake.   And the loss of human life was on a scale almost unimaginable to us.   From home, my husband and others waited with trepidation for news of people they had come to know on their visit.  Not statistics, but individuals.

Fortunately for St. Matthew’s School, the earthquake did not bring further devastation to that region of the country.  But the same basic needs remained.  As the new website ( www.graceinhaiti.org ) of the Haiti School Committee explains, much has already been done and much more needs doing.

Teachers are now being paid (still a pittance compared to wages here) for their hard work.  The picture shows a group of the youngest scholars in their brand new uniforms, provided by funds from our church.  Here’s an example of that line again:  school uniforms may not seem terribly important to people living in many regions of the United States, but in Haiti they are considered essential – a real source of pride and dignity.  The roof has also been repaired, and looming on the horizon is a big question about whether a whole new building will soon be needed.  This past summer, the church organized a first-ever arts camp for children in Bayonnais, leaving behind a treasure trove of supplies for more creative work.  In the months ahead, we are hoping to develop our “Friends without Facebooking” effort: pairing individuals here with individual children there and starting correspondence going both ways– with some Creole (or Kreyol) translation help in the mix.  There will be more visits and gathering of stories.  And plenty of challenges, too.

I feel truly privileged to be a part of this kind of effort because the benefits to both sides of the equation are so clear.  Whether or not the world can fully meet all eight Millennium Development Goals by the year 2015, there are small groups of people all over who are paying attention to them and trying to work towards the light.