A Dining Hall and Updated Electricity for the the NICL School in Haiti
Background
Adat Shalom, a Reconstructionist congregation of 500 households in Bethesda, MD, is now in the sixth year of its Haiti Project. The Project involves the support of an elementary school in Leogane, Haiti as well as regular service missions to Haiti for adults and youth.
The project started when Adat Shalom’s founding rabbi, Sid Schwarz, travelled to Haiti in January 2011 at the invitation of Tevel B’Tzedek, an Israeli organization that put a relief team on the ground in the country soon after the devastating earthquake in the winter of 2010. During that visit, Rabbi Sid gave a series of presentations both to the Israelis and to some 40 Haitians who the Israelis were training in a range of skills to help them rebuild their community. Rabbi Sid’s translator was a young charismatic pastor named Johnny Felix who had recently started a school and a church in Leogane, close to the epicenter of the earthquake. 
Less than 50% of Haitian children attend any school and the public school system is quite inadequate. More popular are private, Christian schools where the instruction level tends to be higher. Pastor Johnny’s New Christian School of Leogane (NICL) serves 170 children, 60 in its pre-school and another 110 in grades 1-6. Tuition is $75/year which is still more than many families can afford.
When Rabbi Sid spoke about his experience in Haiti, he invited members to become Haiti Partners by committing $100/year for five years to support Pastor Johnny’s NICL school. The model was one of micro-philanthropy, insuring that a small institution not get a one-time infusion of money and then lose that support. About 100 households have signed up to be Haiti Partners and Adat Shalom is currently supporting about 50% of the budget of the NICL school. Synagogue-sponsored mission trips provide a hands-on way for Jews to fulfill the obligation of “tikkun olam,” Hebrew for “heal the world.”
For more information see http://www.rabbisid.org/success-stories/the-haiti-project/
2016 Project
The service missions also have a very strong Jewish flavor. Shabbat services are held at the Notre Dame dormitories where the group stays on its visits. Pastor Johnny and his church leadership join for that worship. Every evening the group meets for reflection and study of Jewish texts led by Rabbi Sid. For many of the youth, the combination of our service work during the day with Jewish study and worship provides a newfound sense of pride in the Jewish legacy of tikkun olam.
The next Adat Shalom Service Mission is scheduled for late December 2016. Twenty people have already committed to the mission.
The Campaign
Despite hundreds of millions of dollars in relief aid that was raised by the international community for Haiti after the earthquake, none of it reaches small institutions like NICL. In fact, it is unlikely that the school would still be functioning were it not for the partnership of Adat Shalom. In addition to the annual support for the school’s budget, the service missions become the impetus to take on a special project that could otherwise not be undertaken.
In 2014, service mission participants raised $9,000 from friends and family to start construction of a dining hall on the small campus of NICL. We also created a vegetable garden on the campus which now produces food for the children. The garden is called Gan haMazon, The Garden of Plenty. The focus on food is important because virtually all the children in the school are food insecure, not uncommon in Haiti. A child who has not been able to eat breakfast, or perhaps even dinner the night before, will have a hard time functioning in the classroom.
For our upcoming service mission in December 2016 we hope to raise $15,000. The money will be allocated in the following priority order.
· $9,000- to complete the building of the dining hall at NICL. The first half of the fundraising and construction was completed by our mission in 2014.
· $1,000- to construct an irrigation system for Gan haMazon
· $4,000- to upgrade the electric grid at NICL; they currently only have electricity for two hours a day
· All monies raised over the above enumerated projects (total of $14,000) will be allocated to a matching grant to allow the NICL to begin a school lunch program.
