Office of External Affairs

Bonjou!

As you might have heard, no longer am I a volunteer with The Haitian Project. Instead, I am now staff, working as the In-Country Director of the Office of External Affairs. My general responsibilities include managing scholarships for alumni, facilitating alumni employment searches, securing in-kind support from the Haitian business community, and any other random task that Mr. Moynihan (THP President) needs completed.

For example, this past week included writing the final report for one of our neighborhood housing projects (we rebuilt the home of one of our cooks - she has worked with LCS for 20 years!) as well as traveling to the largest IDP camp in the country (Petionville Country Club, 54,000 people) to interview a LCS alum for the THP fall newsletter. These tasks are in addition to slowly taking over the office, preparing to hire additional staff, and compiling an alumni database that includes all current alumni. Despite the business, I am very excited about the upcoming year. Even without Wyclef running, it is an important time to be working in Haiti...

Interviewing Mackenzie (the LCS alum who is running all 16 of Catholic Relief Services camps) easily made last Friday my best day. He is intelligent, disciplined, and has the necessary charisma of a terrific leader. Haiti is fortunate to have people like him. He gave me a tour of some of the projects he has been managing, and we ran into another LCS alum from the same promotion (99'). The other alum is now a doctor, having studied medicine in Cuba before returning to Haiti...