Long time – no post! It’s been a manic couple of weeks here in Haiti because, on December 1st, our volunteers will be leaving Haiti. That means that, in just a few short weeks, I’ll be leaving Haiti.
EDV’s work in Haiti won’t be finished at that point – just our volunteer presence. We’re pulling out our volunteers - like Steph in the photo to the left - not because there’s no more work to do, but because after a year and a half of extraordinary growth, thousands and thousands of volunteer hours, and 20 projects, our Haitian leaders are prepared to take over our long-term initiatives and lead those projects into the future.
The programmes which will be continuing after we leave are our English and Scholarship Programme. Together, these programmes will keep at least 50 children and 120 adult English students in school. We have secured funding for the next six months and, if all goes to plan, those six months should be just the tip of the ice-burg.
Our goals are to the keep the English classes running indefinitely and offer a primary school education to 100 children over the next five years.
For me personally, leaving Haiti will be bitter-sweet. I’ve made great friends in this country, and formed relationships with children in orphanages, local youths, and our Haitian staff. We look after them to the best our abilities, and it’s worrying to think that soon they won’t have our volunteers to fall back on. On a more basic level, I’ll miss them.
But then I also think that this is what sustainability is. You spend time with a community, put systems in place, and then leave those systems (in this case English classes and a scholarship programme) so that they can be put to work by the people they belong to: Haitian community leaders.
And for me, it will be my first Christmas with my long-term partner, who is also EDV’s Executive Director. Every other year, we’ve been apart doing different things in different disaster zones. After the joy of sharing Christmases with volunteers and survivors for years, I’m looking forward to having a Christmas which is all ours.
However I may be feeling now, as I come to terms with having just shy of a month left in Haiti, I have a feeling that while I’ll leave Haiti on December 1st, my experiences in Haiti will stay with me for a life-time.
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