Joanne Schafer has been dreaming about this for 17 years, and her dream was realized August 20-24 in Pignon, Haiti! Over 70 teachers and principals from the nine Christian Schools established by Comite Bienfaisance of Pignon came together for a teacher training event organized and funded by H.E.L.P. (Haitian Education and Literacy Program) of Pella, Iowa. H.E.L.P. was founded by Joanne Schafer 17 years ago to provide scholarships for students in the Pignon area that could not otherwise afford to go to school. Dr. Guy Theodore, who established Christian Mission of Pignon (now Promise for Haiti) in 1981 had been helping young children go to school by providing funds from his own pocket and realized the need was just too great and shared his concern with Joanne. That’s when God gave Joanne the vision for a scholarship program and she stepped in to create H.E.L.P that now sponsors over 1,200 students yearly in the Pignon area to attend primary and secondary school.
But that wasn’t the end! Joanne also had dreamed of training and equipping teachers and principals, who have little or no opportunity for formal training and had also dreamed of the day students could have access to real textbooks. Until this fall, teachers have taught without the aid of textbooks and have had no visual or teaching aides except for one chalkboard in each classroom. Bev Brand, who has been working with Joanne for the past 8 years and has 21 years of experience at the university level in teacher education at Central College in Pella, Iowa, organized a team of educators, including Katie Peterson of Pella and Sherry Grunder of Mount Vernon, Iowa to lead the four day workshop. Stages of child development, learning styles, and effective teaching strategies were shared and demonstrated. Hands-on learning, puzzles, counting chips, Venn diagrams and sequencing were new ways of preparing children for higher order thinking and problem solving that teachers in Haiti rarely experience. Members of Third Reformed Church in Pella, donated “a mountain” of teaching supplies, people in Mount Vernon donated 106 puzzles and H.E.L.P. provided teacher bags, gifts and meals for all participants. CRECH (the Consortium for Reinforcement of Christian Education in Haiti) sent instructors from Port au Prince, Haiti and provided excellent instruction on how to use the 2,100 new textbooks purchased by H.E.L.P. and most importantly, the Gospel of Jesus Christ was shared, teachers were given Bibles, the school year was dedicated to the Glory of God and praise and prayer filled the conference room at Hospital Bienfaisance.
This fall, there will be a new reality! Students will have textbooks to study Christian education for grades 1- 6, social science textbooks for grades 1 -2, and government grammar books for grades 3-4-5 and 6, plus globes, maps and manipulatives for each school. The following years, more textbooks will be added, more teacher training will be offered and many other school improvements will be realized.
H.E.L.P sincerely thanks all of our faithful sponsors who have supported children in our scholarship program over the past 17 years and for numerous donors who have generously contributed to make teacher training and textbooks a reality this fall. We just wish you could have been there with us to see the joy on the faces of teachers and principals as they were valued, honored, empowered and given tools to be better teachers and to also feel the power and presence of the Holy Spirit as we sang, prayed and worshipped together.
It was a dream come true for Joanne and all of us were blessed far beyond what we could have ever dreamed!
