Provide Technology for Haitian Students

Dear Friends,

Your support has enabled so much good to come about in our schools in Haiti! As we celebrate our 5th anniversary on GlobalGiving this month and look back over our previous 25 project reports, we celebrate the accomplishments your support has helped bring about.

In the fall of this current school year, Jenn Eason from GlobalGiving conducted a site visit to our facilities in St. Marc. Jenn had a wonderful visit interacting with our students and seeing the technology you have helped to provide in use offering unprecedented learning in St. Marc as you can see in the video link provided with this report.

As the year progressed, we were able to celebrate the progress of our project through presentations at the Pennsylvania Science Teacher’s Convention at Penn State University, the Embassy of Haiti in Washington, DC, the National Science Teacher’s Convention in Boston, a Haiti gathering in Pittsburgh, and at a local education foundation in our home town of Palmyra. We continue to spread the word about the good being done in Haiti thanks to your support.

This school year also marked the publication of the acclaimed book, The Global Education Toolkit for Elementary Learners by Tavangar and Mladic-Morales.  Our project is highlighted on page 98 and 169.  Look for more on this book in an upcoming project report.

Our project recently was awarded a grant from the Lebanon County Chapter of the Pennsylvania Association of School Retirees (PASR) to purchase a Classmate PC laptop for use with our project leaders in Palmyra. The Classmate PC is an Intel product designed in particular for schools in developing countries.  These are the laptops purchased for primary use at our schools in Haiti.  They are an amazing product that are like a laptop, E-Reader, and a tablet rolled into one.

Please mark your calendar for Microsoft YouthSpark Bonus Day which will begin June 25, 2014 at 12:00:00 PM (EDT) (noon) and will end June 26, 2014 at 11:59:59 (EDT). There is $200,000 available in matching funds from Microsoft. Matching is applied at 100% for every donation from $10 up to $1,000 per donor until matching funds run out. What a great opportunity to help celebrate our 5 years of success on GlobalGiving by continuing the legacy of what you have helped to start.  Please share this report with friends and family who may want to help enhance the learning opportunities of children in Haiti.

Thanks again for your support!

Links:

• Video of a recent GlobalGiving site visit to Les Bon Samaritains
• Classmate PC product information
• District news article on our Classmate PC grant

Dear Supporters,

This year marks the 5^th anniversary of our project being posted on GlobalGiving, which brings an opportunity to reflect and celebrate our accomplishments over the past five years. We hope to do just that in the next few posted updates.

To kick off our five-year anniversary on GlobalGiving, we thought a student trip to the GlobalGiving headquarters in Washington, D.C. would be appropriate.  While we were at it, we thought a trip to the Embassy of Haiti would also be a great way to celebrate our partnership with two schools in Haiti. 

Our Palmyra-Haiti Technology Project applied for a local grant from the Palmyra Area Education Foundation (PAEF) to fund our trip to D.C.  After nearly a year’s worth of planning and logistics, we arrived in D.C. on March 14^th with ten students representing the many students involved in our project.

Our first stop in D.C. was the Embassy of Haiti.  The embassy staff demonstrated “Haitian Hospitality” to it’s fullest. If you ever have the good fortune of visiting Haiti, then you will understand the concept of Haitian Hospitality.  The embassy staff could not have been more generous with their time and attention on our visit.  Staff gave us a tour of the embassy complete with displays of art, culture, history, and education. We presented the history of our Palmyra-Haiti Technology Project to the embassy staff as well.

In addition, the staff fed us delicious Haitian patties, which our students thoroughly enjoyed.  To top off our visit, His Excellency, Paul Altidor, generously spent a significant amount of time visiting with us.  We shared a local taste of Central Pennsylvania with ambassador Altidor complete with Seltzer’s Bologna and Hershey products.

Our next stop on our D.C. visit was the offices of GlobalGiving, just a few blocks from the embassy.  We jokingly called this a “Reverse Site Visit” because GlobalGiving frequently visits project sites all over the globe to validate what the projects are doing.  In this case, we were the project validating what GlobalGiving does.  GlobalGiving passed our site visit with flying colors!  Our students met in the meeting room and learned about the history and culture of GlobalGiving along with the concept of “Unmarketing”.  It was an awesome experience putting names with the faces of people who have been working with our project for the past five years.

Our last stop before leaving D.C. was the Old Post Office Pavilion Tower to take in a breathtaking view of the city before leaving for the Metro and home.  All in all, it was a pretty spectacular way to spend a day celebrating five years of bringing help and hope to Haiti.

There is a great opportunity to continue the successes of our project on April 16^th, 2014.  Microsoft’s Youth Sparks initiative will be matching all donations to our project by 50% that day starting at 12:00:01 PM (noon) EDT.  Please consider a contribution to our project on April 16th and please spread the word of the good work being accomplished. 

Links:

• The Embassy of Haiti's post of our visit.
• Harrisburg newspaper report of our visit to the Embassy of Haiti
• Our Facebook page with more updates. Please "Like" us. : )