This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.
by Dan Hampton
Shortly after the massive earthquake that devastated Haiti back in 2010, taking the life of a relative, Yves-Marie Desir decided she would help her native country.
Desir, a classroom assistant in the School District, founded the nonprofit Crayons for Haiti to collect supplies for the thousands of schools affected by the earthquake. In cardboard barrels, decorated by Philadelphia children and placed in several locations throughout the city, the organization is hoping to ship supplies like pens, paper, paint, and, of course, crayons, to the Haitian children who are learning in impoverished conditions.
Desir was inspired to start Crayons for Haiti after the death of her cousin, whose house had collapsed when the ground shifted, preventing his escape. “I didn’t want him to die for nothing,” said Desir.
After an earthquake that killed as many as 316,000 people and left 1.5 million displaced, Haiti is still rebuilding. The Haitian Ministry of Education estimates that nearly 5,000 schools were affected by the earthquake.
And recovery has been slow.
In January of this year, four barrels of supplies arrived at four different Haitian schools. Along with Quibila Divine, a former School District administrator who helped found Crayons for Haiti, Desir visited all the schools to see the conditions of the schools and find out what they still needed.
“For me, it was an opportunity as [someone] who dealt with parents from all over, of different ethnicities, to show the compassion that we have for people here in Philadelphia or abroad," said Divine.
The first stop on the tour was Loving Hands Kindergarten and Daycare in Port-au-Prince. The school was full of colors and community spaces, Desir said. What they lacked, though, were crayons, markers, paper, and the one supply, she said, that every school needs.
“Chalk. We need chalk. We always need chalk,” Desir said.
At Ecole Mixte de Lamentin, also on the northern tip of Haiti, Desir, who described seeing tarps serving as schoolhouse walls, said supplies at the school are borrowed from local businesses.
“They’re working off of a projector they’re loaning from the movie theater to teach their computer class. We’re trying to see if we can help alleviate that pressure a little bit by getting them their own projector."
Next, Desir and Divine traveled to the town of Jacmel, on the southern tip of Haiti, to see two more schools.
Ecole IOA de la Pentcote has a single schoolhouse for 200 children. It serves as an early childhood education program as well as a pre-K-1 school. In addition to a lack of supplies, Desir said, Pentcote has major structural issues.
“They have a water issue, so we’re trying to see if we can connect with a nonprofit organization that can help us get water pumped from the ground so they can have water. Because, right now, they have to go fetch it,” said Desir.
On the final leg of their tour, they visited an SOS art school, also in Jacmel, which helps orphaned and abandoned children. The school, Desir said, is badly in need of art school basics: canvases, paint, crayons, pastels, construction paper, and scissors, as well as crochet needles and sewing machines.
“What stuck out to me the most was the poverty,” said Divine, who visited New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina and saw the devastation brought by a natural disaster and the slow recovery that follows. But she was moved by how hard people were working, despite the conditions.
“They were vending, working, in the streets selling. They were striving to make something happen and, regardless of how downtrodden they were, they weren’t giving up.”
Dan Hampton is an intern at the Notebook.