SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
When it rains heavily in Petionville, Haiti, especially during the Caribbean country's rainy season, the children at God's Hope School have one task before getting to their reading, writing and arithmetic.
Yellowknifer Greg Brady poses with children in Petionville, Haiti, in 2009, where he later returned to found God's Hope School. On Saturday night, Brady is holding a Raise the Roof Dance at the Top Knight Pub, which will be the major fundraiser for another upcoming building project. - photo courtesy of Greg Brady |
They take buckets and drain water out of their 20-metre long schoolhouse, pouring it down the hill before class.
"They'll go in the classroom, but there will be a certain amount of mud on the floor. There's nothing they could do," said Yellowknifer Greg Brady, who founded the school following the 2010 earthquake.
The makeshift roof of the church building where the school is run is not waterproof, but things could be worse for the school's 160 students in the suburb of Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince.
While there are some people with money in Petionville, in the slum area where the school is located - Juvenat - there is no plumbing at all, and before the school was founded, none of the students would have had access to schooling, said Brady.
In Haiti, school children typically have to pay a fee of about $32 a month to attend class.
"Which means a lot of kids don't go to school. It's that simple," he said. "A school is something I wanted to start because people ask how to 'fix' Haiti. Well there's no simple way to 'fix' Haiti, the only thing you can do is empower the people. And if children can't read or write or if people can't read or write, they have no chance, really. Anybody that cannot read or write is destined to exploitation and poverty."
Students in the first graduating class of God's Hope are scheduled to be writing their national government exams this summer, graduating from the Haitian equivalent of North American elementary school.
Also this summer, Brady is hoping to begin construction on a second floor for the school, and a proper tin roof. The school has received a quote of $30,000.
On Saturday night, Brady is holding a Raise the Roof Dance at the Top Knight Pub, which will be the major fundraiser for the building project.
Jamie Schaap, a volunteer for tomorrow's event and member of the Yellowknife Vineyard Church, visited the school in September 2010 when it opened, and was struck by the children's' thirst for education.
"I think the thing I noticed the most was that there were kids who hadn't registered for the school who were outside poking their heads in through the door, the space between the tarp roof and the wall and stuff and just paying attention and listening in, kids who were too young to really be in school learning the things were just still there listening and trying to absorb whatever they could," Schaap said.
Since the visit, she has felt compelled to enlist more support for the school.
"When you're there and you've seen it tangibly, it's a lot easier to kind of latch on and try and get other people excited about it as well," Schaap said. "And going to church in town here with the person who started the school is a pretty neat connection as well."
Music at tomorrow's fundraiser at Top Knight will be mostly classic rock, Brady said, targeting his own 40 to 50-year-old age group.
"We're just inviting people to come out and shake it a little bit and help us raise some money to put a second floor and a real roof onto the building," he said.
