WORLDBLU Team in Haiti
December 25, 2011
My co-workers and I (John Engle) were thrilled to host in Haiti the WorldBlu team December 10-17. Their training on organizational and workplace democracy for our partner school leadership teams and for 35 people in our LEADERS Program was incredible.
We are so grateful to Vista Hermosa Foundation for making their visit possible. WorldBlu team also participated in Open Haiti Camp open space meeting, that was a follow-up to TEDx Port-au-Prince, and met with business and NGO leaders. Haiti Partners is deeply grateful to be part of the WorldBlu worldwide network of democratic workplaces. Thank you for making time available, WorldBlu team, to spend time in Haiti to help us build better schools and institutions!
Click on links below for albums of photos:
Habitat Santo Visit
Visiting Partner Schools
Seminar for Partner Schools Leadership Teams
LEADERS Program Seminar
WORLDBLU, Miranda Ash’s Photos
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WorldBlu Team in Haiti
December 12, 2011
My co-workers and I (John Engle) are having a wonderful time hosting WorldBlu team in Haiti this week. They’re putting photos and updates on their Facebook page. Click here.
We are so grateful to Vista Hermosa Foundation for making their visit possible. In addition to them participating in Open Haiti Camp open space meeting, that was a follow-up to TEDx Port-au-Prince, they’re networking with business and NGO people and will do seminars for leadership teams of Haiti Partners partner schools and for 35 participants in our LEADERS program. Thank you for being here, WorldBlu!
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Social Business Meeting
September 27, 2011
Here’s a super quick video (14 seconds) of community meeting yesterday with Philippe Lagrenade facilitating a brainstorming about possible social businesses that could help fund the Children’s Academy and which will also help meet a community need. Philippe is doing meetings like this with all communities where our partner schools are. Today he arrived in the remote community of Bel Platon on the island of La Gonave.
We’re fortunate to have Philippe and to be in partnership with Grameen Creative Lab. Click here to learn more about this partnership and Grameen Creative Lab.
Posted in Annonciation Community School, Bèl Platon Community School, Cabois Community School, Capacity Building 3 Training, Cité Soleil Community School, Haiti Partners, Henri Christophe Community School, IMN Community School, Lalo Community School, Partner Schools, Social Enterprise for Quality Education, Uncategorized, Vista Hermosa Foundation | No Comments | Email This Post
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LEADERS Seminar – Social Business
August 15, 2011
Last week was another LEADERS seminar. Our LEADERS program consists of four seminars a year over three years for community leaders and school principals. The focus of this year’s seminars has been social business. In December this 3-year phase will be finished and we plan to start a new three year LEADERSHIP Program in March 2012. Click here to learn more about the three-year training that is finishing in December. Click here to learn more about the social business component.
Click here for more photos from LEADERS Seminar focusing on Social Business.
Posted in Capacity Building 3 Training, Capacity Building 3 Training, Circles of Change, LEADERS Program, Social Enterprise for Quality Education, Vista Hermosa Foundation | No Comments | Email This Post
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Social Business Seminar with Grameen Creative Lab
May 6, 2011
35 community leaders/school directors are convening for three days as part of Haiti Partners LEADERS Program, which is funded with a grant from Vista Hermosa Foundation.
This is a three-year training to help leaders build capacity in: use of computers (they all receive laptops), in participatory education and leadership, and in institutional development. This year’s focus is social business. Participants convene four times each year. Yesterday we fortunate to have Claudine Francois, Country Director of Grameen Creative Lab (GCL).
Haiti Partners is thrilled to be in partnership with GCL. Among the possibilities being explored for social business that can help our partner schools to become more autonomous is green houses and hydroponics.
Posted in Capacity Building 3 Training, Capacity Building 3 Training, Circles of Change, Haiti Partners, LEADERS Program, Partner Schools, Social Enterprise for Quality Education, Special Projects, Vista Hermosa Foundation | No Comments | Email This Post
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Reports on Major Grants
April 10, 2011
Haiti Partners has the privilege of working with Vista Hermosa Foundation, which is making possible through significant grants, two important Haiti Partners projects: Capacity Building 3 and Social Enterprise for Advancing Quality Education.
We invite you to review our two-year and 18 month reports, respectively, for these projects.
Click here for Capacity Building 3 Two-Year report.
Click here for Social Enterprise for Advancing Quality Education 18-month report.
Click here for presentation of Grameen Creative Labs Haiti project plan.
We’re excited about partnering with Grameen Creative Labs Haiti!
Posted in Capacity Building 3 Training, Capacity Building 3 Training, Circles of Change, Grants, Haiti Partners, LEADERS Program, Open Space, Partner Schools, Reflection Circles, Social Enterprise for Quality Education, Special Projects, STUDENTS Program, TEACHERS Program, Uncategorized, Vista Hermosa Foundation | No Comments | Email This Post
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Film About Community Enterprise for Education
April 4, 2011
My colleagues and I (John Engle) are delighted to share a film that we’ve (we includes the amazing Luke Renner and Sylove with Fireside International along with others involved) created about a wonderful Haitian success story of communities creating income generating activities to pay teachers’ salaries to educate the children in their communities.
The purpose of this film is to stimulate imagination and creative solutions among Haitians toward tackling the problem that so many families and communities in Haiti confront of not having resources to educate their children.
The website address at the end of the film, www.natifnatal.org (natifnatal means local Haitian solutions) will eventually go to a website that is filled with information about Haitian solutions to the current education problem. We are grateful to Vista Hermosa for providing the funds to create this film along with a companion booklet for guiding groups through process of creating a community business. And hats off to our friends on La Gonave who are doing this amazing work seen in the film!
Posted in Capacity Building 3 Training, Capacity Building 3 Training, Grants, Haiti Partners, LEADERS Program, Partner Schools, Social Enterprise for Quality Education, Special Projects, STUDENTS Program, Vista Hermosa Foundation | 5 Comments |
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LEADERS Program: Social Enterprise
March 14, 2011
The successful long-term development of Haiti relies on Haitians acquiring and employing the skills they need to exercise their independence and autonomy in inclusive and respectful ways. Unfortunately, most Haitian leaders lack both the practical skills to make them effective and the experience which would allow them to lead inclusively and respectfully.
To address this, this weekend Haiti Partners held another three-day Capacity Building training. These Capacity Building trainings – the centerpiece of our LEADERS program – are generously funded by a grant from the Vista Hermosa Foundation and have been taking place four times a year since February 2009. They convene 40 community leaders from all over Haiti to help them strengthen their leadership capacity so they can be more effective change agents in their communities. Over the last two years these leaders have learned a number of crucial skills: they’ve learned how to integrate computers into their work – including using email, word processing, and spreadsheets; they’ve learned how to create measurable personal plans so that they can create clear goals and be able to evaluate progress against them; they’ve deepened their understanding of participatory/invitational/democratic leadership methods; and, they’ve learned how to better network so that they might find the resources they need to make their dreams a reality.
This weekend’s focus was on creating social enterprises, a key approach to generating revenue and ultimately making these leaders’ projects sustainable. To learn more about social enterprise, please view the short video below.
Posted in Capacity Building 3 Training, Capacity Building 3 Training, Haiti Partners, LEADERS Program, Social Enterprise for Quality Education, Vista Hermosa Foundation | No Comments | Email This Post
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Civic Empowerment Project – Update
December 4, 2010
Yesterday the 20 facilitators (photo below) in the Civic Empowerment Project we’re doing in partnership with USAID met to work on logistics and discuss what’s working and challenges. The objective of the project is to have forty groups, each comprised of 25 teachers, community organizers and young leaders (a total of 1,000) to complete an abbreviated three-month Circles of Change training with emphasis on studying Haitian Constitution.
Twenty groups have already completed their first weekly two-hour session. 14 of these groups have complete two sessions and several have already completed three sessions. We expect that an additional 20 groups will form and complete their first session within the next two weeks.
Comments from participants are very encouraging. Among the challenges include finding places for groups to meet and having people arrive on time. Some of the groups so far have less than 25 while quite a few have more than 25 coming to the sessions.
Photos of two different groups below
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Disciples Network Organizes to Educate on Cholera
October 26, 2010
Yesterday, we received a message from one of our Disciples Program leaders, Ysmaille Dorsainvil, who lives and works in the Central Plateau, where the cholera outbreak began. As soon as Ysmaille learned about the outbreak, he connected with a local nurse and organized a meeting with 38 members of his network as well as other community members. At the meeting, they learned about what cholera is, how it spreads, and how to avoid and treat it. Using the laptop he received as part of our Leaders Program training, Ysmaille downloaded, printed and distributed copies of Creole handouts about cholera that circulated on our listserv immediately after the outbreak began.
Here are a couple of pictures from the meeting. Ysmaille is wearing the striped shirt in the top picture.
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Women and Children: Briggs and Stratton Generators Help
June 27, 2010
Long-time colleague Eramith Delva, who just received a generator from Briggs and Stratton, shares how it will benefit Haitian women and children.
Posted in Capacity Building 3 Training, Capacity Building 3 Training, Haiti Partners, Social Enterprise for Quality Education, Uncategorized, Vista Hermosa Foundation | 2 Comments | Email This Post
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In Haiti Next Week
October 22, 2009
I (John Engle) go to Haiti early Monday morning. It’s exciting as there will be a group of 10 of us going to a remote village on the island of La Gonave to begin filming.
We’re creating a short documentary–with funds provided by Vista Hermosa Foundation–about Haitians in very difficult circumstances who are working together successfully to provide their children with a quality education. While the final DVD will have subtitles in English, French and Spanish, the target audience is Haitians. We hope that this gets aired on national television and we’ll also use it in our trainings all around the country. It’s an inspiring story and deserves to be told.
I will be a host on the second half of my 8 days in Haiti. Co-worker Kent and I have a great group of 5 friends joining us from Friday, October 30 through Monday November 2nd. The group includes two Haiti Partners board members along with our senior adviser. Our itinerary is relatively typical when we have a group for a quick visit. We pack a lot in and will make it possible for visitors to meet with a combination of leaders from four distinct sectors in Haiti: government, business, ngo (international non-governmental organizations) and grassroots leaders and educators.
We will break up into small groups–each having an interpreter–and spend one night in the countryside with Haitian families hosting us who are involved with a community school that we’re partnered with. Click here to download in PDF our full itinerary along with bios of visitors and people we’ll be meeting with.
We are excited about these friends coming to see the work that they are helping to make possible. In fact, they will help us carry 12 laptops for participants in our LEADERS Program, a three year training with 40 strategic community leaders and educators. Below is a video of Haiti Partners board member Johanna Jones and my wife Merline helping test and prepare laptops with necessary software for their recipients.
Posted in Capacity Building 3 Training, Capacity Building 3 Training, Grants, Haiti Partners, LEADERS Program, Social Enterprise for Quality Education, Special Projects, Uncategorized, Vista Hermosa Foundation | No Comments | Email This Post
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Capacity Building3 Mid-Year Report
September 2, 2009
We just completed mid-year report of our 3-year Capacity Building3 project financed by Vista Hermosa. Click here to learn more about the project.
Click here for the mid-year report.
Participants in Capacity Building3 Project
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Laptops going to Haiti
July 22, 2009
A quick update on the 35 laptops project, a component of our 3-year Capacity Building program in Haiti.
7 of our Haitian colleagues have already received laptops and 5 more will in two weeks.
While the total on the Give Meaning website is about $3,500, the actual raised to-date is closer to $10,000. Hurray! You just can’t imagine how excited my Haitian colleagues and I (John Engle) are about getting them laptops so that they can be more effective as educators and community leaders. A giant THANKS to everyone who has contributed!
Paulaine Presandieu, one of the people participating in the Capacity Building program just spent a week with my wife and I. She’s picture above and in video (link below). She talked about these laptops as she’s taking 2, one for her and her colleague, back to Haiti: “Getting access to a computer and internet in Haiti is not easy. There are little cyber cafes here and there but they’re normally packed full with people and the computers are in terrible condition. It’s common to have to wait in line to use a computer and then it can take an hour to successfully respond to a couple of emails. The computers have viruses and are old and have to be shut down and restarted etc. It gets so discouraging. Getting a good laptop like this is wonderful!”
Click here to view a 55 second video update with a number of the laptops pictured.
Our group of 40 (35 do not have a computer) convened for training and exchange in April and again in June. Click here for photo gallery. The energy and enthusiasm for this training is high and the laptops play an important part of this.
A very special thanks goes to Mark and Claire Dowds and Steve Walchek for spearheading fundraising for laptops. Let’s spread the word! Learn more and contribute at Give Meaning.
John Engle
Posted in Capacity Building 3 Training, Capacity Building 3 Training, Grants, Haiti Partners, LEADERS Program, Special Projects, Uncategorized, Vista Hermosa Foundation | No Comments | Email This Post
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Capacity Building Project
May 11, 2009
This photo (above) was taken yesterday morning before we finished our last session. The folks pictured will participate in this 3 year program. We couldn’t be more grateful to Vista Hermosa for providing the grant to make this all possible. Click here to go to a gallery of photos taken the during our first seminar (May 7-10, 2009) of the Capacity Building project. This and other photos by Eric Graham, one of the participants.
Posted in Capacity Building 3 Training, Capacity Building 3 Training, Grants, Haiti Partners, LEADERS Program, Special Projects, Uncategorized, Vista Hermosa Foundation | No Comments | Email This Post
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