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29940: Hermantin(News)Elite Private school to help kids in Haiti (fwd)
From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>
Posted on Thu, Feb. 01, 2007
BLACK HISTORY MONTH | FORT LAUDERDALE
Elite private school to help kids in Haiti
On the eve of Black History Month, acclaimed author Edwidge Danticat on
Wednesday unveiled a partnership between a wealthy Fort Lauderdale private
school and a struggling education center in Haiti.
BY TRENTON DANIEL
tdaniel@MiamiHerald.com
Students don't have pencils, running water or restrooms at the Three Little
Flowers Center in a remote village in Haiti, where the operating annual budget
is $3,000.
At the private Pine Crest School in Fort Lauderdale, students excel in
advanced-placement courses, advertise their college plans on Yale sweat shirts,
and see their parents come up with $17,890 a year in tuition.
On Wednesday, the two schools found common ground: author Edwidge Danticat, who
announced a partnership that will allow Pine Crest students to raise money for
Three Little Flowers Center.
''I am hoping this morning begins a conversation between your school and a
school that's in Haiti,'' Danticat told an auditorium full of students.
During a Black History Month program at Pine Crest Wednesday, Danticat also
discussed her works Krik? Krak! and Behind the Mountains, told students about
her first impressions of moving from Haiti to the United States at 12, promoted
a new memoir and talked about black Americans' interest in Haiti.
She cited author Zora Neale Hurston's anthropological work in Haiti and the
fact that choreographer Katherine Dunham lived and danced there as examples of
black Americans who shared an interest in Haiti.
''These are only some of the bridges between us,'' Danticat said in a speech
that preceded a series of skits performed by the school's Black Students'
Association.
The Three Little Flowers Center got its start in the rural village of Petit
Goave in 1987 -- one year after the Duvalier dynasty fell -- with a simple yet
groundbreaking idea.
Named for a trio of girls who died from lack of medical care, the school sought
to teach students in their native Creole, rather than the colonial French.
''Everything in this school was organized around the native language there,
which is Creole,'' said Yves Dejean, the school's founder and a well-known
Haitian linguist. Dejean founded the school after discovering the kids of Petit
Goave did not have a school.
Today, the five-classroom school offers a flexible curriculum and serves as a
neighborhood center to some 100 students.
''It's more than a school, it's a community center,'' said Karla Dejean,
diversity director at Pine Crest, who helped spearhead the partnership. She is
not related to Yves Dejean.
The partnership between Pine Crest and Three Little Flowers is still in its
early stages, but one idea is a photo essay, Karla Dejean said. Students from
each school would snap photos with disposable cameras en route to class, then
share them, she said.
Organizers already have a few ideas on how to spend the money raised by Pine
Crest students: the school in Haiti needs lots of repairs and plumbing. Boys
and girls share a patchy field for a restroom.
A pickup truck would bring rice and water for school meals to Petit Goave from
Port-au-Prince, 50 miles away.
After speaking about the school project on Wednesday, Danticat answered
students' questions about writing, race, and Haiti.
Asked by one student why she became a writer, Danticat said, ``If anything led
me to being a writer, it was listening to stories.''
WRITING TIP
Asked what advice she has for aspiring writers, she said: ``Every word counts
-- the economy of it, it's important.''
And on her first impressions of the United States, she recalled boarding an
escalator at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York.
''It felt like time travel to me, to get on that escalator,'' Danticat told the
students.
After the talks, fans huddled around Danticat to ask more questions and to get
autographs.
WRITES MEMOIR
She talked about her upcoming book, a memoir about her uncle, the Rev. Joseph
Nozius Dantica, who died in 2004 in custody at Miami-Dade County's Krome
Detention Center. The book, Brother, I'm Dying, will be published by Knopf in
September.
One student really appreciated Danticat's first-hand perspective on her work.
''By having the author there you have the real, authentic commentary,'' said
Gabriel Seidner, a 17-year-old senior bound for the University of Pennsylvania.
``I've always wanted to speak with an author.''
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