Building a Better School for Haiti's Poor

There's a world of difference between the Soho neighborhood in New York City, where Madeliene Sinor lives, and the town in Haiti where she spent nine days with a group of volunteers building blackboards, desks and benches for a school.

"They only have electricity for a few hours in the evening there," Sinor said. "So we had to build everything with hand tools."

Haiti is not on many Americans' radar screens despite the fact that the United Nations says it is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. The country has a long history of authoritarian rule and governmental corruption. In many ways, according to Sinor and others, Haiti is a "failed state," like Somalia in Africa, where no central government exists.

"People should be more aware that Haiti is our neighbor, and that its people live in extreme poverty, with 70 percent unemployment and an average age at death of 56," Sinor said. "It's a few hours flight from us, but there are no real roads, no education, no healthcare."

Sinor, who is a full-time mother, traveled to Haiti in August with 11 other volunteers from New York's First Presbyterian Church, on Fifth Avenue and 11th Street in Greenwich Village. The volunteers paid for all their own expenses and the building materials used to make school furniture. In the town of Cap-Haïtien, which is about 40 miles outside Port-au-Prince, the nation's capitol, the group stayed at a Catholic church and worked building school desks at the church's school.

"We should be sending the Marines in to bring food into the people," Sinor said. "Haitians are wonderful people. They need just some of the many things we take for granted here: food, education, safe streets. They need everything, including a government."

Photo courtesy of radio nederland, via Flickr