30273: Craig (news) Haiti's street kids given a lift (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Dan Craig


from the March 28, 2007 edition - 
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0328/p13s02-lign.html
Haiti's street kids given a lift
How the efforts of a few have changed the lives of many Haitians.
By Melanie Stetson Freeman | Staff photographer
CAP-HAÏTIEN, HAITI

They are derisively called "sangine," which in Creole means "one without soul." 
Sleeping in alleys and living in the shadows, the street children of Haiti 
spend their days skipping school, hustling to get enough food to survive, often 
running afoul of the law, and getting high on paint thinner to try to forget 
their lot. Their communities and families, if they have them, are too poor to 
help.

The children are among the most visible signs of Haiti's poverty, even more 
apparent than the nation's 65 percent unemployment rate. Foreigners visiting 
the nation are often overwhelmed by the sight of them. But not American Douglas 
Perlitz.

About 10 years ago, Mr. Perlitz visited Cap-Haïtien – Haiti's second-largest 
city – where he was soon being followed by "a pile of street kids," he says.

Perlitz, a pastoral minister and volunteer at a nearby hospital, would 
occasionally come back to town to get to know the kids. Although he didn't 
speak the language, Perlitz would play basketball and soccer with them, 
befriending the friendless. One child, Wilnaud Pierre, only 8 years old, 
especially touched his heart.

"He was going through the initiation of being a street kid. He was tiny, the 
littlest one, and the others were mean to him," Perlitz says. "He pulled me 
aside and said 'Would you send me to school? I want to learn to read and 
write.' For four or five months, he kept at me."

Wilnaud, now about 18 (many street children don't know their own birth dates), 
recalls that time. "I asked Douglas because I did not want to stay ignorant ... 
someone who knows nothing," he writes in an e-mail. "School would show me how 
to live."

Perlitz talked to some local priests who offered him space in an old building 
behind their church to start a school. He told Wilnaud to tell his friends to 
come on Nov. 3, 1997, and he would teach them. Some 25 to 30 kids, ages 8 to 
17, were waiting for him when he arrived.

"I gave them paper and crayons," Perlitz says. "You could hear a pin drop. They 
drew stuff – trees, boats, houses. Some didn't even know how to hold crayons. I 
saw that they had the desire to go to school. They were focused. I knew they 
could do a lot.... They came regularly, so I got more teachers and started 
giving them food."

Within a year, the school grew into Project Pierre Toussaint, named after a 
Haitian slave who cared for the poor in New York City in the early 1800s. 
Today, the school helps about 120 kids a day at a drop-in center, where they 
can get three hot meals and schooling.

Children participating in the project aspire to one day enter the Village, a 
residential program on the outskirts of town with space for 50 kids who have 
proven themselves responsible and committed to excel. There, children are 
offered a wide variety of vocational training, including sewing, driving, 
welding, woodworking, and tailoring.

"This program is evidence of one person making a difference against incredible 
odds," says Paul Carrier, a chaplain at Fairfield University in Connecticut. 
Father Carrier encourages Fairfield students – including Perlitz, who first 
visited Haiti in 1991 – to do community service work in the third world.

Carrier supports Perlitz's program through visits and constant fundraising. He 
once brought down 70 pairs of donated shoes – each designated for a specific 
child.

"I work with a lot of different organizations," says consultant Amber Elizabeth 
Gray, who has worked in the international human service field for 20 years. 
"Doug's program is consistently the program that I can say is honest, true, 
community-based, meaningful, humanitarian work. It has managed to avoid the 
usual bureaucratic snares and tangles. The program grows in direct response to 
the kids."

In addition to helping street children, the project provides jobs for 35 
Haitian men and women, who have been taught to be role models, teachers, 
counselors, cooks, drivers, social workers. They learn to avoid violence when 
disciplining.

"Everyone in Haiti has witnessed violence on a large scale," says Perlitz. 
"Those over 25 have woken up four different times to a coup, surrounded by 
violence. People internalize that, and it becomes an accepted way of life. All 
the schools here use the whip – not ours."

Some staff members, like Francillien Jean Charles, went through the program 
themselves. Francillien was one of the boys who came to Perlitz's original 
school. Although learning disabled, he got his primary school certificate.

"He is one of our best staff because of his ability to understand the kids and 
what they're dealing with," says Perlitz.

"You have to have realistic goals," says Perlitz. "They live in a country with 
high unemployment. I can't pretend they'll all get jobs. We hope the time they 
spend with us will make them better fathers and neighbors. We hope they become 
good citizens of Haiti with solid ideas of right and wrong."

Wilnaud can now read and write, and he hopes to become a mechanic.

"I lived on the street," Wilnaud remembers, "like someone who walks but does 
not know where he is going ... [but then] I started to see my life change. 
After two or three years, people forgot the old me.... I became a new Wilnaud."

• For more info visit:www.haitippt.com