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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Circles of Change Video
December 5, 2011
This 3-minute video provides an explanation of the two methods that we use in our Circles of Change training: Reflection Circles (influenced by Touchstones Discussions) and Open Space Technology.
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Community Open Space Meeting at Children’s Academy
December 5, 2011
Yesterday’s community open space meeting on future site of Children’s Academy convened more than 300 people. The meeting opened with Haiti Partners Youth Choir singing welcome song and closed with them too. Participants and planning committee were thrilled with the meeting. Notes were taken, will be typed up and will shape philosophy and program of Children’s Academy.
I (John Engle) had two older men, independent of the other, come and tell me, “I thank God that I’ve lived long enough to see this. I never imagined in my life that Bawosya would have a wonderful program develop like this.”
Haiti Partners is thrilled to be in partnership with Architecture For Humanity and their affiliate BAR Architects in design and construction of Children’s Academy. Click here to see the architectural plans and other documents and photos.
We’re also thrilled to be in partnership with Grameen Creative Lab toward creating a social business that generates revenue to help pay the school budget.
Click here to download vision for CHILDREN’S ACADEMY .
Photos from top to bottom: closing circle of open space mtg, small group break-out session, foundation/cistern for first building of Children’s Academy. Click here for more photos.
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Children’s Academy – Community Engagement
December 4, 2011
It’s exciting to see community involvement in construction of Children’s Academy. Below is video and photos of foundation being dug and also of folks clearing land in preparation for a large open space community meeting to discuss “The Role of Education in Development of a Community.”
Below that is a video of a community meeting in November. There are 55 community members (2 groups) participating in Circles of Change training, which helps develop communication and collaboration skills. They are also doing research toward developing a business that generates revenue for the school.
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USAID Circles of Change Project Thriving in North
November 12, 2011
Last week John Engle and I (Erik Badger) had the opportunity to visit our Circles of Change project in the Northeast province funded by USAID. We observed two of the four groups and met with mayors and their staffs. We were excited to see the level of engagement both in the groups and with the local officials. The project is off to a great start!
To learn more, view the short video below.
*For more information on this project, click here.
*To view a gallery of pictures from this project, click here.
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GRAMEEN FOUNDER, Muhammad Yunus in Haiti
October 14, 2011
Nine of my close colleagues and I (John Engle) drew inspiration from Muhammad Yunus today. Hats off to Grameen Creative Lab for organizing this conference of thought leaders, entrepreneurs (all ages) and many like my colleagues and I who are committed to social business. It was wonderful to see the two young people awarded their prizes of all expenses paid to participate in Social Business Conference in Austria.
Later in the afternoon I joined with others working in close partnership with Grameen to discuss with Muhammad Yunus our various plans and projects for social businesses. His insights, questions and comments that come from decades of experience are golden.
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New Industrial Park and Circles of Change
October 8, 2011
I (John Engle) flew from Port au Prince to Cap Haitian with two Haitian colleagues Frantzie Cyril and Wilmont Jean to finalize contract with USAID. As part of the contract Frantzie and Wilmont will move to Cap Haitian next week and join our Cap-based colleague Nellie Norristin to do a 6-month Circles of Change training for groups of 25 in each of the four towns impacted by a large industrial park soon to be built. The mayors of each of these towns will participate and help determine the other 24 people in their respective group to participate in these weekly seminars. In addition to participants learning better skills in listening, dialog and “invitational” leadership, each group will also complete a project proposal for addressing community priorities that gets submitted to USAID for consideration. We’re excited about this project and thrilled to be in partnership with USAID on it. Click here to learn more and to download actual project description.
While in the north, I had the opportunity to spend time with friends Luke Renner and Sylove who with Haiti Partners created this film about a Haitian community doing social business to fund their local school. Below is short video CIMT language lab where they have an income generating project using Rosetta Stone program to help paying customers learn English.
We love working with Luke and Sylove and have a number of projects in the works. The above mentioned film which was done for the Haitian audience already has subtitles in English and very soon DVD’s will be available with subtitles in French, English, Spanish and Portuguese. The film will also soon be airing on 80 different television stations for Haitian audiences.
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Matenwa Community School
October 1, 2011
Our friends at Matenwa Community School have a great new video that explains their philosophies and practice. This school is a wonderful example of the type of education that we are working toward with our seven partner schools. Chapo ba Chris, Abner ak tout ekip nou an ! (Hats off to you Chris, Abner and all of your team)
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TEDx Port-au-Prince
October 1, 2011
TEDxPort-au-Prince was a great success. What power there is in connecting people and sharing ideas.
I’m (John Engle) honored that I had the opportunity to present about our work. While there are a lot of things I could talk about thanks to having the opportunity to be a part of such a dynamic team for so many years, I focused on Circles of Change, which includes our more than 15 years experience with Open Space Technology and “Wonn Reflection” (influenced significantly by Touchstones Discussion method).
Video of talks are not yet on website. I presented in Haitian-Creole sharing history of our work, assumptions, successes and details about our past USAID funded project “Civic Empowerment” and our new one called “Circles of Change.”
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10th Annual Open Space Haiti Gathering
June 29, 2011
This past weekend was the 10th Annual Haiti Open Space Gathering. Every year this gathering convenes 60-80 educators and community leaders for an inspiring learning exchange. This event, which is completely run by Haitians, is among our many efforts to develop professional learning communities.
We couldn’t be more grateful to Open Space Institute, USA, for the generous contribution that allowed numerous committed colleagues who didn’t have the means to participate in this meeting.
Posted in Capacity Building 3 Training, Circles of Change, Haiti Partners, LEADERS Program, Open Space, Reflection Circles, TEACHERS Program, Uncategorized | No Comments | Email This Post
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SOCIAL EXCHANGE RESEARCH
May 30, 2011
I (John Engle) had the opportunity to participate in research at Cirano, a Canadian-based think-tank. For some time, colleagues and I are trying to better understand the role of social exchange in people’s learning and decision-making. Click here to download the paper describing the research and findings. Below is a brief summary of this paper. We are extremely grateful to CIRANO, and particularly to James Engle-Warnick for inviting our involvement in this research.
Participatory development is an increasingly popular approach to development policy and program implementation. Part of its popularity is due to its potential to reinforce the role of social capital. We present an experiment in which we test for the effect of participating in a social exchange exercise on revealed risk and ambiguity preferences. In our experiments, subjects make choices over lotteries that reveal their risk and ambiguity preferences. They then participate with a small group in an unstructured on-line chat. After the chat, they reconsider their choices in the risk and ambiguity instruments. In a control session, different subjects view, but do not participate in, past chats. Through a content analysis we investigate the role of chat content and chat participation on changes in revealed preferences. We compare our results to the “Discovered Preferences Hypothesis” (Plott, 1996) and “Fact-Free Learning” (Aragones, Gilboa, Postlewaite, and Schmeidler, 2005). Our results suggest that the role of social capital in participatory development may operate through the social exchange of information, that is, when people have a voice.
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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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Circles of Change Spreads by Tens of Thousands
March 28, 2011
Haiti Partners’ mission is to help Haitians change Haiti through education for students, teachers, leaders, and disciples. Our educational efforts focus on helping Haitians change their country’s top-down, dictatorial teaching and leadership approach to one that empowers children and adults to discover their potential to create and to collaborate effectively.
Our educational and leadership practices are grounded in mutual respect and are designed to help people develop their capacity to think critically and outside of the box, and to collaborate to solve complex problems. This is in stark contrast to Haiti’s “rote memorization” teaching approach and to authoritative commands shouted from on high to subordinates. Haiti’s present state is not surprising given these practices that can so effectively stifle human development.
Knowing that changing cultural practices, especially those concerning education and leadership, would be a significant challenge, our team of Haitians and ex-pats developed early on a strategy to foster local and international organizations integrating our Circles of Change methods, which are largely shaped by Touchstones Discussion and Open Space methods.
Concern Worldwide, PADF, Save The Children and many others have learned the Circles of Change methods from our trainers and have integrated them into their activities. Below, longtime friend and colleague Dr. Steven Werlin, a professor at Shimer College and staff member of Fonkoze, shares how Fonkoze will be using this new book they’ve just published with 50,000 women who are part of their micro-credit program.
The book contains stories that will be discussed by the women using our Circles of Change approach. Steven first started coming to Haiti in 1996 and has played a critical role in the development of our Circles of Change program. Click here for his regular great essays about his life in Haiti.
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Circles of Change in La Saline
March 6, 2011
Yesterday I (John Engle) visited one of the Circles of Change trainings in La Saline, a slum of Port au Prince. Here are some photos and a video.
Click here for more photos downloadable in high resolution.
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Facilitators’ Meeting
February 26, 2011
Yesterday our facilitators met for planning and evaluation of the USAID funded Civic Empowerment Project that Haiti Partners is doing. Click here to download report.
Click here to learn more about the Civic Empowerment program.
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