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In Port au Prince there is a large slum known as Cite Soleil. This is an extremely impoverished area, perhaps the worst in the Western Hemisphere. It is made up of two to three hundred thousand people living in a swamp area filled with garbage and open sewage. The people live in small hovels with little or no running water, no toilets, no jobs, and very few children can afford to go to school.

On the first trip to Haiti in 2003 we connected with a small school there run by an organization known as Action Chretienne pour Development. This organization is administered by three volunteers who run two schools in Cite Soleil with a total population of 440 students. The Administrators are Joel, Willy, and Jean-Marcel. We have brought school supplies for the children but we also undertook, in 2004 to assist in the rebuilding of a kitchen facility with the hopes of starting a regular meal program there. Most families in Cite Soleil eat only a few times a week and most, if not all, the children study without having eaten for days at a time. There is a woman who lives across from the School who cooks for the children but they must pay a small fee according to what they eat. 5 gourds for a small plate, 10 for a larger portion etc. Many children cannot afford even this meager fee and so do not eat. School costs money in Haiti and the slums are no exception. The school has no lighting except what little bleeds through the windows. There is a small dedicated group of teachers there doing what they can but they are dealing with worsening conditions. Teachers often go unpaid and as a result occasionally do not show up to teach because they have found temporary work elsewhere and cannot afford to turn it down. They return however when this work is done to continue teaching. After completing the kitchen in 2005 we undertook to expand the project and help renovate the existing building on the new land so that the school could leave the rented facility they were presently in. As reported in the 2005 post project report , the original plan was to renovate an existing kitchen facility inside what was then a rented building. We were informed later that the kitchen would be built in another school and not the existing building. The Administration had explained that they did not want to build the kitchen in a rented building in case they were evicted after making the improvements. They went to the community and parents and collected the down payment on a new piece of land half a block or so from the rented school. The Administrators told us that the landlord of the existing building had evicted them after demanding that they buy the existing school building for an extortionate price of $20,000.00 (US). This purchase was impossible and the building is not worth that price. A deal was struck between the landlord and the Administration which allowed the students to stay in the rented school until we could renovate the new facility. The building still has mortgage remaining with a deadline of December 2006 to complete the purchase. The challenge of the food program remains as the Administration has decided that it is more important to have their own facility owned by the community which will allow them to dedicate future resources to the children and a future food program. They would no longer be at the mercy and whim of landlords and outside influences. This was not an easy choice to make. We do not have the funds to accomplish both at this time and they have no other sponsors within the Haitian or International community. They do not have the "connections" needed to gain access to international food aid. The school community continues to struggle in near isolation.

We all know of the violence in Cite Soleil but there is more to the community than this. Something that main stream media and other sources do not report on and we would be unjust to not include it here in our report. Third World Awareness has local gang permission to work at the school site and we are safe from harassment so long as we are with the school administrators and remain within the the school neighbourhood while we are inside Cite Soleil. The head Administrator, Joel Janeus is a respected and well known community leader and commands the respect of local gang leaders. Our group members visiting or working at the site in Cite Soleil on any given day could add up to fifteen people. Mixed religions and races. With the exception of May'05 when we were asked not to walk around unescorted we have moved freely within Cite Soleil and neighbouring Simon Pele. We have seen the evidence of violence, bullet ridden schools, destroyed buildings etc. including the sound of gun battles going on in other sections of the community.

This year we continued the construction of the school compound and hired the same work crew as the year before with a few extras. The exception to this was Jimmy who worked with us the year before after working only for food until we found enough money to put him on the payroll. This year though he didn't show up on the first day and no one knew where he was. He did not show up on the second day and the school administrators had to decide what to do. It was decided that he would have to be replaced. I was approached by two young men appealing for a job. We don not interfere with the hiring and it is the Forman's job and the administrators job to hire the crew. I was moved though by what one of the young men said to me. He explained that it was time for the killing to stop and that he wanted to work and not pick up a gun. It was time to start building he said. I wanted to hire him right then and there but couldn't. Two friends competing for one position. All i could do was suggest that they talk to Joel the lead administrator for the school. As it turned out Joel hired the young man and his friend offered to volunteer. We have always had several volunteers from the community who come to work on the project. We pay a fair wage by Haitian standards, $100.00 Haitian/day for crew, $150.00/day for brick layers and $200.00/day for the foreman. This was not our suggestion but their request. We could have hired more for less but we would rather hire only seven guys and pay something worth while rather than 20 guys and pay them essentially nothing.

The next day we ran into Jimmy outside the school. I asked him what had happened and that we had a job for him but couldn't wait. It was explained that he was with his father who had been sick in his home town and couldn't make it before now. We talked with Joel but there simply wasn't enough payroll to hire him and we couldn't take the job away from the young man we had hired the day before. When this was explained to Jimmy he didn't miss a beat. He said he wanted to volunteer anyway and took his shirt off and went to work immediately. Laurent is another of the volunteers who had helped on the kitchen the year before. He has no fingers on one hand. He explained that his home had been invaded a few years before by gang members who threatened to kill his family if he didn't give them money. He had none so in frustration one of them cut off his fingers with a machete. This did not stop him form working with us carrying buckets of cement, rubble, climbing ladders and so on throughout the two weeks we were there. Anytime he saw someone tire he would jump in and relieve them. Toward the end of our two weeks there he approached me and explained that he wanted to go to high school. Scholarships are part of our mandate and this we could do for him so this year he is going to high school. Not because of generosity or charity on our part. This man earned every cent of it and more. Another young man named Leger is a about 23 years old. he not only worked dedicatedly as part of the paid crew but then after a full days work volunteered for the school helping the students and administrators. He is a regular volunteer throughout the year.

The teachers at the school work for next to nothing and volunteer when the teacher's pay runs out which happens regularly. The three school administrators work completely for free. Teacher salary when it is available is $600.00 Haitian dollars per month. Approx. $80.00 US. On the last day we sponsored a meal for all the 280 students at the school with money raised by two of our Canadian volunteers, Anneka and Grant who have a group called "For the Love of Haiti's Children". Local women came out to help prepare and serve it. The women only had one request and that was that we consider one of their children for sponsorship to go to school. We also had a basketball challenge. The school put together a team of young men who played our Canadian basketball enthusiasts. We walked from the school to a local basketball court about ten or fifteen minutes away. People came out from the community and we had about two hundred people watching as Cite Soleil beat our asses decisively 26 - 16. No one hassled us, no one asked us for money. Cite Soleil was relatively calm for the whole time we were there. Everyone came out and had a good time. The young men on the Soleil team have recently sent us a message that we are welcome to return and have our asses kicked anytime in any sport of our choice.

In the end it is important to keep perspective. We didn't build anything. The people of Cite Soleil did. We didn't feed anyone. The school community did. We just financed it and stayed out of the way. As for the gangs, well after talking to Joel and seeing that he and the other administrators were not getting paid decided that we were free to continue working. In point of fact I don't think I've ever seen a gang member come by the site but maybe I'm just blind to it. So let no one tell you either in the main stream media or any other source that Cite Soleil is a lost cause full of gangs and political violence. That there are no hard working people in Cite Soleil.

There is a sleeping giant of prosperity and creativity in Cite Soleil waiting and longing to be set free.

Financial Actuals

It was our goal to raise $30,000.00 (US) to continue with the second phase of the project and rehabilitate the existing building and make it into the new school building. Fundraising did not go well during the year and we arrived in Port au Prince with approx. $6,000.00 to work with. This was directly thanks to the RTO, (Retired Teachers of Ontario) who came through with a $4,000.00 donation just weeks prior to our departure. This would have to include materials, delivery fees, labour, lunches for the workers, "tap tap" transport to and from the work site and other incidentals. As the project progressed we were able to use emergency funds which are set aside on each trip and these were slowly "adopted" by the project. Individual members also decided to contribute and pledge money toward the project which allowed us to complete almost all the building renovations and render the school habitable for the students for the 2006/07 school year. In the end we managed to raise approx. 33% of our original target of $30,000. More needs to be done.

Exchange rate changes depending on where you are and who you are dealing with. The general exchange rate used to make calculations for negotiations and transactions for the school project is based on the local supermarket where we exchanged money. There are 5 Gourd per Haitian dollar which needs to be noted as money is exchanged and quoted in Haitian dollars but paid in Gourd. Prices are stated in Haitian Dollars but paid in Gourd. There are 38 Gourd to the US dollar.

Total cost of the building materials - $5,980.00

Delivery fee - $567.00.

Note: The delivery fee was increased over last year because of the extended period of the project from two weeks to three and this required more deliveries than the year before. A man named Augustine, was again the delivery agent and he remembered us from the year before and agreed to keep his delivery prices down in order to support the project. It should be noted though that the risk to delivery trucks traveling within Cite Soleil is still prominent and influences the cost of deliveries. Augustine was assured that his trucks would be safe to travel to the work site and free from hassle by the local gangs. Third World Awareness has local gang permission to work at the school site and we are safe from harassment so long as we are with the school administrators. The head Administrator, Joel Janeus is a respected and well known community leader and commands the respect of local gang leaders.

Negotiated salaries

Foreman - $200.00 H/day or $26.31 US/day

Brick layers - $150.00 H/day or 19.72 US/day

Labourers - $100.00 H/day for each worker or $13.15 US/day

Total cost of labour - $2,463.00 (US)

Note: These salaries were agreed to based on the suggested minimum wage we set for ourselves and based on our inquiries in 2004 as to what would be the minimum salary needed to survive in Port au Prince. A wage of $200.00 (US) per month would allow a person to modestly feed their family pay modest rent and send their children to school. This is roughly $8.30 US per day based on a six day work week. We had agreed to a minimum of $10.00 (US) per day among ourselves and the above wages which were requested by the Foreman were naturally deemed fair and agreed to without hesitation. These wages are generally higher than those paid on other projects in Cite Soleil. It should be further noted that the Haitian minimum wage is lower than $3.00 US per day with work days stretching beyond the standard 8 hours.

We agreed to hire the previous work crew from the Kitchen Project the year before plus a few others. The Foreman, Yves, agreed to work with the deadline of three weeks having explained to us that two weeks was impossible. We were not going to be there for the third week so it was agreed that we would leave the final week's salaries and any material costs with the Joel, Willy and Jean the school administrators who would then handle the disbursement of the funds after our departure back to Canada. Yves brought in a third brick layer, an older man in his late sixties or early seventies, and told us he would take care of him. We agreed to try and come up with some money for him and did so, although it was only half the salary of the other brick layers. I never saw him take a break except to stretch and light up a cigarette. So in total we had the foreman, Yves, three brick layers, five paid work crew, four volunteers working for food, plus an average of five Canadian volunteers working each day. The number of Canadian volunteers varied throughout the project but there were four or five who chose the school as their dedicated work site. The crew worked from 8:00 am to 4 pm., six days a week, with only a single official lunch break. In order to stay on schedule the brick layers and Yves decided on their own to come in on Sunday for free to make further progress. At the end of the two weeks it was clear that it couldn't be done in the three weeks agreed to. The skimming and finishing of the walls would take another week and more material. We scrounged up a bit of money for materials but had nothing left for wages. The crew again volunteered to keep working for the fourth week without pay. They would simply keep working until they ran out of material.

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It was further agreed that all money exchanges would happen in private and that the School Administration would pay the workers or buy items within Cite Soleil. It was important to establish that we ourselves did not have any significant amounts of money with us or the authority to hire workers. Requests by local people to be involved or hired had to go through the School Administrators. This also created the further advantage of getting materials or services at fair rates rather than artificially inflated ones. An example of this were the doors for the school. The iron worker would not have charged he usual fee if I had gone with Joel because when he saw me he would have artificially inflated the price.

Transportation - $460.00 (US)

Note: Tap-Taps are the local means of transportation in Port au Prince for the poor and working poor. These are essentially modified pick up trucks that charge 5 gourd, or thirteen cents (US). It was established again by the School Administration that it was not safe for us in general to enter Cite Soleil alone. Even though things were calmer in Cite Soleil and tap taps were once again traveling inside the community the risk of robbery was still there. There was still a risk of fire fights between rival gangs and/or UN troops near the entrance to Cite Soleil. They felt more comfortable escorting us in and out so that the local community and gang members would come to associate us with the school and make our travel safer. We agreed to hire Jonas, a local tap tap driver who had driven us the year before, to once again drive us to the various work sites. The price increased to $50.00 US/day for Jonas to take all the volunteers to and from their various work sites. The middle weekend was a break for the volunteers to leave and go to Jacmel, another city on the coast, but one of us stayed to work on the Saturday at the school site and Jonas was paid a smaller extra fee for this trip.

Ceremonial meal on the final day. $300.00 (US)

Note: On the last day we sponsored a meal for all the 280 students at the school with money raised by two of our Canadian volunteers, Anneka and Grant who have a group called "For the Love of Haiti's Children". Local women came out to help prepare and serve it. The women only had one request and that was that we consider one of their children for sponsorship to go to school.

Total cost of the 2006 school project in Cite Soleil. - $9,770.00 US (Note: proof of the third and fourth week's work has been provided by the Administrators of the school and was sent in July '06.)

New challenges continue to emerge creating exciting possibilities. The school administrators and community have now been able to move the students from the present rented facility and now occupy the new school building. The building still needs finishing work done. The school is in need of new separate washroom facilities for boys and girls. Fresh, potable water. The school compound needs to be paved to create a playground space. To this end the building and land next to the school has come available. It was occupied by a woman who has to leave Cite Soleil and wants the school community to buy her house and lot. It needs renovation but now part of the perimeter wall can be taken down and an expanded courtyard built. The house can be renovated to provide a sheltered lunch room or even additional classroom space.

Target - $22,455.00 (CAN) This target would allow the school administrators to complete the land purchase(s) and complete construction on the new school compound. There are approx. 280 students in the school who come from all over Cite Soleil and neighbouring communities. Ecole Chretienne is dedicated to providing education for the children of poor families regardless of religious belief, political affiliation, or financial ability.

Target - $13,230.00 (CAN) This will allow us to subsidize the salaries of the five dedicated teachers, three Administrators and Principal who struggle to stay at the school. At present money runs out often and the teachers go unpaid which forces them to take time off to find work elsewhere to support their families. This target will also allow the subsidy of two cooks to assist with the food program. It is our hope that the woman who now cooks what she can for the students can start her own small business and perhaps expand the food program as a canteen for the community as a whole. But first we must feed the children.

Target - $15,000.00 (CAN) This will allow the Administration to supply stable funding for the purchase of food for the food program. At present the students pay a modest amount of 5 - 10 gourd (13 - 26 cents) for a plate of food but not all students can pay this much. It is our hope that as funding comes in that this 5 - 10 gourd contribution from the families can go into a general fund for the school and all students can receive one hot meal each day of the school week throughout the school year. It is common for children to go three days or more without eating making learning impossible. The challenge of the food program is to now find a way of getting food on a regular basis inside Cite Soleil to the school. There are problems with getting shipments into Haiti unless already run by larger agencies. Financially supporting the purchase of weekly food for the students is expensive but not impossible. We have been communicating with various agencies and continue to look for a solution.

Target - $3,000.00 (CAN) TWA Scholarship program which will help sponsor both elementary and high school students. This money would provide for 15 new students. Money covers tuition, books and elementary school uniforms.

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