[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
27022: Hermantin(news)New role for voice of islanders (fwd)
Miami Herald
Posted on Sun, Dec. 25, 2005
THE CARIBBEAN COMMUNITY
New role for voice of islanders
After seven years, Marvin Dejean, an advocate for South Florida's Caribbean
Americans, is leaving Minority Development & Empowerment for a position with a
St. Croix-based media company.
BY DARRAN SIMON
dsimon@MiamiHerald.com
They were just dreamers nearly a decade ago.
Holed up in an office, they stayed up into the night, writing grant proposals,
working to find money to start programs to help their community.
Other days, they withdrew cash from their own bank accounts to pay their small
staff at their new agency, Minority Development & Empowerment (MDEI), a
nonprofit angling to start social programs to help needy Caribbeans in South
Florida. ''All of us were just barely broke, but we really believed in what we
did,'' recalled Marvin Dejean, MDEI's vice president of business development
who is credited with raising close to $1 million for the agency.
Stacks of rejected grant applications later, Minority Development is now
roughly a $3 million agency that has helped some 10,000 Caribbeans in Broward
County.
With its success sealed, Dejean takes over next month as director of public
relations for Innovative Communication Corp., a telecommunications and media
company headquartered in St. Croix, V.I.
As the agency celebrates its 10th anniversary, Caribbeans flood its office in a
Fort Lauderdale strip mall, seeking healthcare services, prenatal care,
immigration guidance, and free income tax assistance with maneuvering
government bureaucracy.
''It's been an emotional marriage, and a commitment for the last seven years,''
said Dejean, who has done everything at the agency from public relations to
sweeping floors and answering phones. ``I didn't have a job; I had a passion.''
He will work out of Innovative Communication's West Palm Beach office. His new
post involves traveling to the Caribbean, where the company owns the Virgin
Island Daily News, a Pulitzer Prize-winning paper, and two TV stations.
TOUGH TO REPLACE
MDEI's founder, Francois Leconte, a former journalist who fled Haiti, wishes
his friend the best.
''We had that 8 to 5 where we had our own responsibilities. After 5, we were
friends,'' said Leconte, who asked Dejean to be the best man at his wedding.
He will try to fill the position with someone with the fundraising experience
Dejean brought, said Leconte, MDEI's CEO and president. Edna LaRoche, host of
The New Haitian Generation, a show on Broward Education Communications Network,
will become a consultant and take on some of Dejean's duties.
Dejean was born in New York and grew up in a Port-au-Prince suburb. There he
learned French and listened to classical music after Sunday dinners.
Dejean met Leconte when MDEI was operating out of the back of a church. Using
savings, Leconte had started MDEI a few years earlier as an HIV/AIDS outreach
program for the Haitian community in Broward.
He wanted Dejean to join him. But corporate America was his world, Dejean
thought. Besides, MDEI was a new agency with a skeleton staff. Dejean hadn't
thought about working with the Haitian community.
But he bought in when he saw the building Leconte purchased in Fort Lauderdale.
''It spoke volumes of what he was trying to do,'' Dejean said.
PRAISED BY POLICE
Leconte sat him down, telling Dejean that he needed to give back to the Haitian
community.
Dejean worked with Fort Lauderdale police to hire Haitian-American officers and
employees. He helped facilitate police town-hall meetings in Creole and
English.
Fort Lauderdale Police Chief Bruce G. Roberts recently honored Dejean for his
work. ''Everyone knew Marvin was a voice for the Caribbean community,
especially the Haitian community,'' said Junia Jeantilus-Robinson, community
relations specialist with the Fort Lauderdale police who works with the
Haitian-American community.
A MAJOR SUCCESS
MDEI has expanded to West Palm Beach, where it has an office that offers a
breast cancer program and an after-school program to improve FCAT skills.
The agency now has 50 full-time employees and 25 to 30 part-time workers in
Broward and Palm Beach counties.
Dejean laughed as he recalled Leconte's advice at the time.
At first, Leconte could only afford to pay him enough to cover his bills.
''Don't think about going to the movies or anything extraneous,'' Dejean
recalled Leconte saying.
In the beginning, they didn't know much about running a nonprofit and there
weren't many agencies reaching out Caribbeans, Dejean said.
''People were waiting for us to fail,'' he said. ``We never gave them any
credence.''
ABOUT MARVIN DEJEAN
• Name: Marvin Dejean
• Place of birth: Born in New York City to Haitian parents, raised in
Petion-ville, a Port-au-Prince suburb, traveled the world before moving to
Miami in 1990.
• Education: Bachelor of Arts in sociology and psychology from the University
of Miami in 1993.
• Last position: Vice president of business development at Minority Development
and Empowerment Inc.
• New position: Director of public relations for Innovative Communication Corp.
• Role model: Lyonette Vincent, Dejean's mother.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------