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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.






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