26049: Vedrine : A call for action to save Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: E Vedrine <evedrine@hotmail.com>


A call for action to save Haiti
[August 22, 2005
YVONNE ABRAHAM'S article about the Haitian community in Boston who came 
together to reflect and pray on the wave of abductions in their homeland 
deserves attention (''From lawless homeland, demand for ransom," City & Region, 
Aug. 15).
However, will this recent prayer gathering result in long-term positive changes 
in the Boston area that could affect Haiti's politics? Though Haitian 
immigrants are in their third generation, and numerous individual attainments 
can be observed, the Boston Haitian community remains fragmented and civically 
uninvolved. The educational achievement of Haitian students has deteriorated 
over the past decade, while the number of young Haitians adversely involved in 
the justice system has increased. I hope that prayer day had a ''call for 
action" agenda. The Creator will guide Haitians through our actions in 
addressing these pressing local issues, but might not respond to our 
perfunctory invocations, as our 201-year-old saga has proven. Hence, the newly 
arrived Haitian priests, a disengaged Haitian Catholic laity, 
Evangelical/Pentecostal adherents, and service providers will need to enter a 
dialogue with established professionals to prayerfully engage three generations 
of Haitians in this 21st century knowledge-based Western society.
NEKITA LAMOUR © Copyright 2005 Globe Newspaper Company.]