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Haiti Earthquake: If you are medical or emergency personnel interested in donating your services to Haiti, neither Rotary Partnership for Haiti nor Haiti Outreach is not equipped (at this time) to connect you with the emergency medical needs and trips to Haiti. Thank you so much for your interest in Haiti and your compassion for the people of Haiti. We do have an Earthquake Fund set up to accept donations that will be used in the relief and repairs needed in Haiti. Click here to donate directly to the Haiti Earthquake Relief and Reconstruction Fund through the Haiti Outreach website. Thank you!
Show Your Support for Haiti
Click here for more details about the January 23rd Deep Freeze Dunk
Special Announcement: January 14, 2010
The Rotary Partnership for Haiti was founded on the belief that individual Rotary Clubs can do more together to benefit the people of Haiti than they could as individual clubs. Carrying forward on that belief, and with the extremely tragic events of the earthquake in Haiti, we all want to do what we can to help the people of Haiti in the near and the long term. As a partnership organization, we also know that there are immediate and very effective steps that can be taken by organizations that are well positioned to help people in Haiti quite rapidly, and yet there are other organizations that are focused and equipped to deliver the very necessary longer term strategies to help Haiti for generations to come.
In this spirit, the RotaryPartnershipforHaiti group of Rotary clubs is promoting several potential options for Rotary Clubs and other organizations to consider as they look for ways to assist in Haiti:
- Tactical: www.Shelterbox.org
Shelterbox is a very effective and immediate-response program supported by individual Rotary Clubs worldwide. Shelterbox provides equipment and teams on-the-ground quickly in disaster areas in order to immediately improve the conditions for people. Shelterbox was founded by Rotarians with the belief that we can immediately provide service where it is needed to respond to disasters as they occur in the world in which we live. Shelterbox teams are already arriving in Haiti to provide relief. Of note, funds provided to Shelterbox at this stage would likely go to replenishing stocks of boxes for relief efforts elsewhere in the future. - Intermediate: www.haitioutreach.org
Haiti Outreach is a Minnesota-based and Rotarian-led organization that has had teams on-the-ground in Haiti with over 20 years of experience serving the needs of Haitians to build solutions for safe water and education. Haiti Outreach is truly in the right place at the right time to help Rotary deliver service above self where needed to meet these most immediate of needs that result from the earthquake, yet those same services that will also have a long term impact to improve the lives of the people of Haiti.
Haiti Outreach (Memo Line – Haiti Earthquake)
15119 Minnetonka Blvd.
Minnetonka, MN. 55345 - Strategic: Rotary District 5950 Foundation – Haiti.
Rotary District 5950 has been VERY active in establishing safe water, polio eradication, education and healthcare services to the people of Haiti. The Foundation works to find those longer term solutions that transcend the immediate, local and political events to bring meaningful services and change to the people of Haiti.
District 5950 Foundation (Memo Line – Haiti Earthquake)
Holly Callen
7903 Wyoming Ct.
Bloomington, MN 55438
Project Overview
An Innovative Rotary-to-Rotary Partnership: Making the Impact of the Whole Greater than the Sum of the Parts.
Project Overview – PDF
School Brochure – PDF
Background:
In May, 2008 representatives, from several Rotary Clubs located across two different Rotary districts in Minnesota, together with representatives from Haiti Outreach, met to discuss how they might be able to combine their energy, talents and resources to most effectively collaborate and make a big difference in the lives of the people in the Central Plateau region of Haiti.
Haiti is one of the poorest and most underdeveloped countries in not only the Western Hemisphere, but also in the whole world. Rotary has already embarked on significant projects in Haiti to bring safe water, healthcare, education and other vitally needed resources to benefit the people that live there. In partnership with organizations such as Haiti Outreach on safe water projects alone, real change has already taken place. In the words of one elderly Haitian woman, ‘since the well has come, the children
have stopped dying’.
Realizing that a great deal more can and needs to be done, and wishing to have a more profound and ‘game-changing’ impact in assisting the people of Haiti to move from a ‘hand-out’ to a ‘hand-up’, these Rotary clubs have established ‘Rotary Partnership for Haiti’. The member clubs believe that there is a significant multiplying effect and benefit than can be derived by combining the resources of several clubs to take on larger projects that these clubs would not be able to otherwise address individually.
This partnership has initially been formed by the Brainerd, Hutchinson and Minneapolis-City of Lakes Rotary clubs, and additional clubs and resources are already being added. Each of these clubs has considerable previous experience working on international projects both inside and outside of Haiti.
However, it’s not expected or envisioned that this venture evolve into something much larger than a handful or two of clubs in order to preserve agility and speed.
Purpose:
After consultation between representatives of these Rotary Clubs and representatives from Haiti Outreach, the initial focus of the consortium efforts will be to fund and construct a secondary school in the community of La Victoire in the central plateau region of Haiti. Haiti Outreach is non-profit organization committed to the development of Haiti, already well established and experienced in this region with a permanent staff of 18 people and country manager on site. They have constructed safe water wells throughout many local communities for over 10 years, as well as two public schools in the Pignon area, only 8 miles from La Victoire. In their relationship with local community leaders, they have a solid understanding of the needs in the area. They also know what it takes to get work accomplished in the country, as well as how to work with local and national government officials. Haiti Outreach is based in Minnesota and in managed by a Rotarian.
Plan:
Illiteracy is a major problem in Haiti – only about half of the population can even read and write. In addition, there are only enough PUBLIC secondary schools for 2% of the students to attend. With the addition of private schools, there still are only enough secondary schools for 18% of the students that age in the whole country. The Central Plateau region of Haiti has a population of over 500,000 people. In this region of approximately 3,000 square miles, there are only three public secondary schools. Given the high poverty level of the area, most students cannot afford to attend the few private secondary schools. Unless there are public secondary schools to attend that their families can afford, they simply are not able to further their education and have to stop at the 6th grade level.
In an effort to move beyond safe water and into a sustainable means to develop an educated population so that future generations can make further progress, educating the youth of even the most remote regions of the country is critical. The La Victoire area has a population of about 10,000 people with no public secondary school. Work is already underway in this same community on a safe water system, and so education is the logical next step to advance the community.
Resources:
Haiti Outreach has already established agreements with the Haitian Ministry of Education and the member of Congress who represents this region to fully staff and support the school once it is constructed. But the national government has no money to construct public secondary schools. The mayor’s office and other local government officials are eager for a public school to be built, and there is community land available for the construction of a school.
It is expected that the total cost of the project, as managed by the US and Haitian based staff of Haiti Outreach, will be approximately $200,000 (USD), with completion targeted for September 1st, 2009. Because Rotary International (RI) Matching Grant funds are not eligible to be used for building projects, there is no expectation that funds from RI can be provided. However, other corporate, foundation, nonprofit and individual sources for funding may also be available. The consortium members are in the process of working with their own clubs and others to assess both their willingness and ability to assist in this project.
Timeline:
The school year in Haiti starts in September. Working backwards from then, it’s expected that the construction and outfitting of the school will take five to six months. Therefore, in order for the school to be complete by September of 2010, all of the plans, approvals, and funds need to be in place by January 2010. That is our goal.