Progressive Efforts for the Advancement of Change in Haiti [PEACH], a sub-organization of the Haitian American Student Association, will be collecting toiletries and school supplies for Haitians until the semester ends.
The group will use these supplies for a two-week curriculum they are teaching in the Corail area of Arcahaie, a city 45 minutes outside of Port-au-Prince.
The curriculum will be cut into a health and fitness portion for each respective week and will run from May 31 to June 13. Any contributions can be dropped off in a box in room 415 of the Student Union or the Resource Room in room 314.
Hygiene is currently an issue in Haiti as the country is in the midst of a cholera outbreak. PEACH coordinator Theresa Alphonse said that this makes it all the more necessary to hold seminars as opposed to simply donating goods.
“We feel as though we should be handing out goods in a form that’s more [about] solidarity … than just … standing at the corner and giving [stuff] out,” she said. “We’re collecting those things and it coincides with our curriculum so that we can be like, ‘Okay, here’s how you brush your teeth properly and you can practice using this.’”
These seminars bear a direct connection to the issue, as cholera is often attributed to poor hygiene.
“You can get [cholera] by not washing your hands properly [and] not cleaning your food properly,” Alphonse said. “You would never get it in America.”
The group’s members have direct connections to Haiti.
“Our parents are all from Haiti,” said Alphonse. “A couple of us are actually from Haiti, so it’s going to be nice to go back and see where our parents came from [and] contribute to our country.”
Because of their links to the country, the members all speak Haitian Creole. This will not only help them communicate with locals, but also help them feel more comfortable in a politically tense nation.
“There’s a lot of political unrest in Haiti and a lot of problems with security,” Alphonse said. “The fact that we have the dialogue and can speak to the locals is [something that] I think … makes us feel safer. I think, in turn, that’s going to make us wholeheartedly be able to be in the community and help out without [the] fear that someone that is not tied to the country [might] have.”
The country’s current political conflicts make the group’s donations a direct contribution to the lives of Haitians too sick to bring about change in their country.
“The fact that the government isn’t really stable…affects everyone in all aspects of life,” Alphonse said.
This will be PEACH / HASA’s first trip to Haiti. They will be going with Hope on a String, an organization that aims to bring social change in Haiti through music education. PEACH ran an instrument drive for the group last semester, which was co-founded by Alphonse’s uncle Pierre Imbert. Both the instruments and this semester’s collections will be distributed to seminar attendants in Corail.
Sarah Fonder can be reached at [email protected].
