The founders of this group met through a club centered on raising positive awareness surrounding Haiti. Part of our club initiative this year was to lead an education conference through which we could work alongside Haitian English teachers and offer assistance in the area of English instruction. However, due to the UN's travel restrictions on Haiti, our university could no longer sponsor or sanction our trip. This is actually a blessing because it allowed us to reach out beyond our graduate school to other students in the greater Boston Area.
We hail from a variety of backgrounds but our commonality lies in our passion for sustainable education, respectful and mutual collaboration, and Haiti. This venture is the result of a brainstorm-- of figuring out whether or not it was even useful for us to be there. Rachelle, who grew up and worked in Haiti, brought up the issue that English education was crucial, and others realized that simply going for one week and teaching one group of youth wasn't enough.
Hence, rather than teaching at, we decided we wanted to teach with the Haitian population and sought the more sustainable goal of helping teachers and starting a relationship with them. We all come from teaching and administrative backgrounds and we have quite a few members who have had close connections with Haiti in the past.
