Aristide Foundation for Democracy » Cultural Events

Mobile Schools Continue in Nazon, Fontamara and Tapage

lauraflynn — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 20:31:28 +0000

One month after the quake, the Aristide Foundation opened mobile schools in five refugee camps across Port-au-Prince. Throughout the spring these schools held open-air classrooms led by young high school and college graduates, offering a refuge for children who survived the quake. The schools gave the kids a safe place to go each day to relax, learn and spend time with supportive adults in the midst of the utter calamity they were living though. The mobiles schools served 1,200 children five days a week and employed 100 young Haitians during the first few critical months after the quake.

By summer as schools across the city began to slowly reopen, we ended the full time mobile school program. We had never intended the project to be permanent, and we did not have the funds to keep the schools open indefinitely.

However, in Nazon (central Port-au-Prince), Fontamara (Carrefour) and Tapage (La Plaine) the monitors along with the parents and members of these communities decided these schools were so important, and the collaboration was so successful, that they determined one way or another to keep the schools going on their own.

Each schools took a slightly different path. In Fontamara, the director Rithie Mettelus kept aschool for 180 kids going in the donated yard of a house that was destroyed. Four of the original monitors stayed on to work with him. Carrefour was the hardest hit neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, nearly every building was damaged. This school is a vital the presence for children whose parents have lost everything.

In Nazon in central Port-au-Prince, director Zamor Duboirand, along with five of the original monitors kept the school going in the yard of his own house. This school now has eighty students, and seven teachers. And in Tapage, Mirlande Jeudi runs the school for about 100 kids in the yard of her home.

These schools function on a shoe string, funded by small fees paid by the parents, and the great generosity of the teachers who sometimes go without salaries. Each school is smaller than the original mobile schools – fortunately some children were able to return to the schools they attended before the quake. But many were not, because the schools are gone, or their parents don’t have the money to send them. These schools are meeting a vital need right now. Giving children who nine months after the quake are still living under tents, organized activities each day, some very basic schooling and a sense of dignity.

School Supply Distribution in November

In November, thanks to a grant from the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund we were able to assist all three schools in purchasing and distributing school supplies and offering the kids a day of celebratory activity. (Dance, Music, Poetry, and Food!) Photos from those events are posted here.

Over the next few months we hope to keep supporting these schools and the teachers. We’d love to find sister schools outside Haiti who might want to build a direct relationship with one of these schools. If you are an educator and are interested in learning more, please contact us.

If you would like to support the work of the Aristide Foundation for Democracy tax-deductible donations can be made here:

Or mail checks to: Aristide Foundation, PO Box 490271, Key Biscayne, Florida 33149

All donations are tax deductible and will be acknowledged.

FET MANMAN – Mother’s Day in Haiti

lauraflynn — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 20:37:31 +0000

Every year on the last Sunday of May (Haitian Mother’s Day) the Aristide Foundation for Democracy, holds a special event to honor mothers. Sunday May 30 the AFD welcomed 3,500 women to the auditorium of the Foundation for a very special day of communion and solidarity– to offer solace, and encouragement, and a chance to speak out to women representing mothers across Haiti.

The event was planned for 2,000 people, but an overflow crowd filled the balconies, hallways and rear of the auditorium.

The event opened with a multi-denominational religious ceremony – including a presentation by Pastor Eddie Hebron, an African-American Minister from Savannah, Georgia.

Three mothers, Gladys Delouis, a long time AFD staff member and women’s organizer, Merry Roche, the coordinator of the AFD Mobile Schools Program, and Madame Florence Agenor, a community organizer from Cite Soleil who spoke in the name of the mothers of Cite Soleil, rallied the crowd. All of them spoke of the hardships faced by Haitian mothers today. After losing family members, children, their homes, and whatever small businesses they might have had, are now suffering in the “tents of humiliation” where they have to sleep standing up when it rains. They also spoke of the courage and the endurance that women are showing in the face of this crisis.

Madame Agenor thanked Titid’s mother for giving them this “gwo garcon.” Everyone present was thrilled to have the opportunity to say loudly and clearly in the presence of several foreign delegations that they want an end to injustice, that Jean-Bertrand Aristide must return to his homeland to continue to work with them for social peace and justice for all Haitians.

To this end Gladys Delouis read a petition which was launched one week ago calling on President Barack Obama to return Jean-Bertrand Aristide to Haiti. The petition has already been signed by 15,000 Haitian women. In the coming weeks those present committed to gathering the signatures of thousands more women across Haiti.

Then Kolonb Dor the 120-person dance and music troupe of the AFD took to the stage. They performed the Haitian National anthem and offered a prayer for everyone present — then asked for one minute of silence in memory of the thousands of mothers who were lost on January 12. Kolonb Dor performed several traditional Haitian dance pieces accompanied by Haitian drumming.

The heart of their performance was a theatrical, musical and dance piece commemorating the events of January 12, which closed with a Requiem for the earthquake dead. It is hard to describe in words the kind of emotion and catharsis that this piece once again evoked. The pictures below offer some sense of the creative response these young people are offering to a nation in need of outlets to mark and to mourn losses that remain incalculable.

After the cultural presentation Toussaint Hilaire, the Director of the AFD greeted all present in the name of the Foundation and of President Aristide. He then introduced a representative of the Mexican Embassy who made a surprise announcement that they were donating 1,500 tents to be distributed to those present.

The event ended with a massive distribution of tents to 1,500 people and food kits to an additional 2,000. The food kits contained rice, beans, cooking oil and sardines — provisions for a family for one week. The distribution took 3 hours – but went smoothly due the hard work of 50 volunteers who formed a human chain to keep order and make sure everyone received something.

We wish to thank everyone who made this extraordinary event possible: the staff and volunteers of the AFD and the young performers of Kolonb Dor who all worked for weeks to prepare the event; the government of Mexico who contributed 1,500 tents, and Pastor Eddie Hebron, of the Christian Revival Center and the Hosea Feed the Hungry Project, who contributed half of a container of food and some medical equipment which will be used in the weekly clinic at the AFD. Most of all we thank the 3,500 mothers who made their way to the Foundation from across a devastated city to declare with us once again - Nou pap bay legen nan batay la. We will not give up this struggle.

A Day Away from the Mud and Heat

lauraflynn — Wed, 05 May 2010 18:20:34 +0000

On Saturday April 24 thousands of children from the AFD Mobile School gathered for a cultural celebration at the Aristide Foundation. Since late February the AFD has been operating open-air classrooms serving 1260 children who lost their homes in the January 12, 2010 earthquake. The schools are in refugee camps at Fontamara, Nazon, Tarpage, Carredeux, and Building 2004.

For two weeks leading up to the event teachers and kids in the Mobile Schools prepared presentations on the theme “Life with Love.” On the afternoon of the 24th buses from the Foundation brought the children, their families, and friends to the AFD for the event — over 2000 people in all.

Marie Stuart Roche, the director of the Mobile School project welcomed all the kids to the Foundation — which she reminded them is their home.

Toussaint Hilaire, the Director of the AFD welcomed the children and their families on behalf of former President Aristide and his wife. He reaffirmed to them the Foundation’s commitment to work with them for a better life –a better life meaning: school, food, healthcare, hospitals and parks for them to play in.

Zamor, the coordinator of the schools at Nazon then took over as MC and introduced the kids, who put on a spectacular show. The kids from the schools at Nazon danced and sang, the schools from Fontamara put together a threatrical piece about what they lived through at the moment of the earthquake. The kids from the camps near Building 2004 danced and read poetry. The schools at Carradeux and Tarpage performed music and danced.

All the children who attended received new t-shirts, part of a large gift of new clothing from American Apparel. The AFD is distributing these clothes to the kids in the Mobile Schools and to others living in refugee camps around Port-au- Prince. We want to thank American Apparel for the generous donation. There are a lot of used clothes coming into Haiti as donations right now, and while people are in great need of all kinds of assistance, it is especially nice to be able to give the kids new clothes — made in the US, and sweatshop-free to boot.

After the event, everyone present, teachers, kids and their families shared a meal together. It was chance for everyone to be out of the mud and heat that is a daily part of their lives and to celebrate what the teachers and kids in the Mobile Schools have accomplished together over the past two months, under these extraordinary circumstances.

A Cathartic Easter Celebration

lauraflynn — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 21:05:29 +0000

Member of Kolonb Dor on stage at the AFD

On April 4, 2010, Easter Sunday, Kolonb Dor, the choral and dance troupe of the Aristide Foundation offered a concert at the auditorium of the AFD, attended by 1250 people.

Kolonb Dor was founded in 2008, when a group of students in the Computer School of the AFD asked to form a performing arts initiative within the Foundation. The group has since evolved into a forty-person chorus and dance troupe, who perform at many Foundation events and produce two yearly benefit concerts – one at Christmas, one at Easter. This year, with Easter falling less than three months after the quake, with the whole country still on its knees, the members of Kolonb Dor and everyone at the AFD, felt we had to go forward with a cultural event on Easter Sunday, which could symbolize a renewal of life and hope.

Tickets were distributed primarily to women living in refugee camps in Port-au-Prince and its environs – over 1,200 of whom gathered for an afternoon of music, dance and theater.

The emotional highlight of the afternoon came when Kolonb Dor performed a requiem for those lost in the earthquake written by Farah Juste, and first performed at a funeral mass organized by the AFD at Titanyen (the mass burial sites) two weeks after the quake. Kolonb Dor opened the requiem with a dramatic on-stage re-enactment of the quake, followed by the song itself, which offers a libera (an opening of the doors to the next world ) for all those who died–unnamed and unmarked — in the quake. Audience members found the presentation powerful, jarring, but also emotionally cathartic. The piece was so powerful, in fact, it was shown in its entirety on three of Haiti’s main television stations repeatedly over the next few days. This represents one of the first organized cultural responses to the tragedy.

A re-enactment of the quake

At the close of the program Toussaint Hilaire announced that all funds raised by the concert would go to support the Mobile Schools program of the AFD. A passing of the hat followed – with many present contributing what they could – a gourde, five gourdes—to support their children, or their neighbors children in the Mobile Schools. A total of 51,000 gourdes was raised (about $1500US).

We salute the young people who put this concert together. We look forward to working with them and others to support artistic and cultural responses to the January 12 earthquake which can aid in the spiritual recovery of the country.

Elrose Revolte and Pierre Richard, directing Kolonb Dor

Honoring the Dead

admin — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:57:44 +0000

On Monday February 1, the Aristide Foundation for Demcracy and the Bureau of International Lawyers organized a memorial to honor the victims of the earthquake at Titanyen, where the government has been burying the dead in mass graves. Several hundred people gathered to pay tribute to those lost. A mass was held, accompanied by Kolonb Dor the youth chorus of the Aristide Foundation and legendary singer Farah Juste.

Watch a video of the Memorial at Titanyen to honor the dead organized by the AFD on February 1, 2010