21463: (Hermantin) Palm Beach Post-Leading Haitian advocate to step down (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Leading Haitian advocate to step down

By Gariot Louima, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Sunday, April 18, 2004



DELRAY BEACH -- Daniella Henry, perhaps the most outspoken advocate of the
Haitian community in Palm Beach County, said she's leaving her position as
executive director of the Haitian American Community Council before the year
is out.

Henry said last week that her decision has nothing to do with the agency's
financial troubles, or the series of scathing reviews she and the agency
received last year.

"Right now, I'm looking into some business opportunities in Haiti that will
require that I spend several days in each month over there," she said
Thursday. "This is a full-time job and I can't fulfill my full-time
obligation and go to Haiti every month."

She declined to elaborate on her business opportunities.

Henry said she'll launch a search for her replacement in June, after she
returns from a trip to Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital. Ideally, her
replacement would take over by Oct. 1, the start of the next budget year,
she said.

"It's been slow and it's been difficult," Henry, 45, said of her 12-year
tenure at the council, one of largest social service agencies serving the
Haitian community in the county.

"I sacrificed so much. What about my life? I have to start thinking about
me," she said.

The chairman of the agency's board of directors said she will do everything
she can to keep Henry around as long as possible. Carolyn Zimmerman, who
founded the Haitian council with Henry, said even after a new executive is
hired, Henry will remain in an oversight capacity.

"She's not finished sacrificing," said Zimmerman, Henry's longtime friend.

Since 1992, the Haitian council has been a community fixture. It is the
agency of choice -- many times the only choice -- for young men seeking
political asylum, mothers filing visa applications so their children can
join them in the United States and dozens more seeking answers to the many
questions that come with life in a new country.

Throughout the years, Henry's name has been synonymous with the Haitian
council. And she's emerged as a vocal political activist, leading voter
registration drives and protest rallies.

"I had no plans to go into nonprofit work. I guess maybe it was some kind of
calling," she said while sitting in her corner office. On the walls are
pictures of Henry with former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide,
Henry with President Clinton, Henry in the pages of Boca Raton magazine.

A former department store model and businesswoman, she is perfectly coifed
and stylishly dressed. Behind a cluttered desk, she periodically taps away
at her computer and juggles calls on her desk phone and cellphone, which
ring constantly.

"When I came here, my heart went out to the people. I said, 'They shouldn't
have to live this way.' I see myself as fortunate. I wanted to help the less
fortunate."


Council investigated

But things seemed to unravel in April 2003 after Henry fired her deputy
director, Karlie Richardson, and two other employees.

Henry said she fired Richardson for insubordination. She said Richardson
didn't follow directions and their arguments were sometimes so heated she
feared for her safety. Richardson countered that she was fired because she
wouldn't go along with practices she felt were unethical.

In June 2003, the county's Children Services Council traced the feud to a
"nepotistic relationship" between Henry and a former employee, Gethro
Louis-Jean, with whom Henry co-owned a house. Henry said she co-signed on
Louis-Jean's home loan as a favor because he had bad credit.

That same month, the county Department of Community Services criticized the
Haitian council as having an uninvolved board of directors and significant
organizational problems.

Henry responded on a Creole-language radio program on June 19 that she was
being unfairly targeted and hinted for the first time that she was thinking
of leaving the organization.

Then in August, West Palm Beach officials started an investigation into the
Haitian council's AIDS housing program. They found that the program paid
$20,400 over two years to Henry's sister, Aline Jean-Baptiste, to rent her
house to AIDS patients. They also found $3,750 in rents paid at a house
co-owned by Henry's mother, Germaine Filsaime. Federal guidelines prohibit
people affiliated with the program from profiting from it.

Henry said she placed clients in her mother's and sister's homes because she
had no other place to put them.

Last month the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said Henry,
Jean-Baptiste and Filsaime received $95,450 to rent their homes to clients
in the housing program. The city must repay that money for failing to
properly monitor the program.

Henry denies making any money from the rents. She said she made mistakes,
but her conscience guided every decision she made.

"Maybe right now, if I didn't make that decision, my conscience would bother
me for the rest of my life," she said. "I made mistakes, but my mistakes
were legitimate."

Many mistakes have been corrected.

Sharon Nangle, a program monitor with the county Department of Community
Services, said Henry and the agency's five-member board of directors
recently were trained to properly manage a nonprofit organization and its
employees were taught how to maintain case files.

Marlene Passell, spokeswoman for the Children Services Council, said Henry
and her staff spent the last year working through many of their problems.
The county supplied $140,000 of the agency's $800,000 budget this year.

"They completed what they were supposed to do, but we're continuing to
monitor their programs," Passell said. Acknowledging the council's progress,
the services council gave it $147,501 in October to run a family assistance
program in Lake Worth.

The agency isn't completely out of the woods. The IRS has fined the agency
$20,000 for failing to properly file employee tax forms. And the council is
at least three months behind on its rent, owing $9,000 to its landlord,
Henry said.

Henry says she'll always be a part of the organization, but doesn't have the
energy to run it anymore.

Finding a replacement might prove difficult.

"The hard thing will be to find someone that has the same dedication," she
said.

"This is not the kind of job where the executive director can stay in the
office in the back and not deal with the people," she said of the
$56,000-a-year job. "I need to find somebody that's ready to serve the
people."


'Daniella's place'

Some clients, such as Joseph Sainvil, call the center "Kot Daniella," Creole
for "Daniella's place."

On Thursday afternoon, Sainvil, 63, sat on a plastic chair holding letters
from the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services and pictures of his
23-year-old son Robenson, who was shot in January at a political rally in
Port-au-Prince.

Sainvil made an hour-long bus trip from his home in West Palm Beach to speak
to Henry about bringing his 13 children to the United States. He arrived at
the council shortly after 8 a.m. and refused help until Henry arrived six
hours later.

"I only deal with Daniella because she does good service," Sainvil said.
"She was the one that helped me get residency when I came here. If she's not
here, why would I come here?"

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