Trip Report: VHP in Haiti- November, 2012

Donna and friend

   Two of Vermont Haiti Project's board members- Kimball and Donna- traveled to Haiti earlier this month, along with several USA volunteers.  Spending most of their time with location partners Despagne and Fenel, they checked the progress on all of VHP's current programs.  Below, in no particular order, is a list of some of the trip's news, activities and first-hand observations:

• Went to Ecole Foyer d’Espoir for lunch, to catch up a bit, and see what’s new at the Port au Prince school and community center.  Met with Maria and Ysmay (school directors) about future hopes and plans.
• Travel to Duchity took five hours, due to wet road conditions, following several downpours.
• Delivered five new water filters to Duchity.

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See Photo Gallery of Haiti trip below

Water Filter Installation

• Work on Duchity Vocational Center building of cement bed risers.
• Craft projects with the children in Duchity.
• Meetings and discussion regarding hopes for VHP to expand upon “Voluntourism”  in Duchity.
• Met with another USA-based group that was very interested in seeing what we were doing about building a vocational center. His group brought 30 ceramic water filters. We were able to talk to them about bio-sand filters and how they not only provided clean drinking water, but water for cooking, bathing, and washing dishes.   We told him the big costs was for transportation to Duchity ($750-$800 for 10 filters)
• Went to the secondary school where Robin gave out 5 cameras and taught a lesson on photography.

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• Ongoing discussion with Despagne  (program manager) and Fenel (business and communications) about the future of the vocational school.
•  Went to the secondary school where Adrian and Robin taught English to the 7th grade. Also, a second camera/picture taking lesson as held.
• Demonstrated our solar panels/power for another American group.
• A photographer from Puerto Rico were here and filmed Kimball and Despagne talking about VHP, and our water project.
• Patrick and Despagne installed a water filter for the Fido. Mary, from Puerto Rico, filmed the installation.  A neighbor stopped by while Patrick was installing and asked us to look at his water system which was not working well. He has the two bucket system which the St Thomas group gave out two years ago. No follow-up was done. The filter looked very dirty and clogged. The company that made the filter went out of business.
• Having brought a laptop computer, and projector, we watched the movie Shrek with village children.

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click on any thumbnail to view the gallery