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Last Updated: 02/04/2005
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Local church raises money to build a school in Haiti
(All photos courtesy of Josh Harvey) By Rob Armstrong Hundreds of Haiti’s poorest children may never forget the Rev. Alan Lipscomb and St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Lexington. The parish has launched a $65,000 fund raiser to build a school for a rural town in Haiti. The building would be the second structure without a dirt floor in the area. Lipscomb and his friend Josh Harvey, a musician who is heavily involved in St. Patrick’s parish, visited the Haitian parish Fond Pierre over Thanksgiving. “There is an ugliness to some of the poverty that is shocking,” said Lipscomb, as he remembered his first impressions of Haiti from his airplane window. “Port-de-Prince looked like a city built out of a trash dump. I’ll never forget that moment.” Fond Pierre is a rural parish community that has a dilapidated general
store and a crumbling school building. Parishioners live in small huts
along the countryside. Their parish and school are the only centralized
meeting places in the area. “It’s basically a stretch of dirt road with a church,” said Harvey. “You just see all the tin roofs and it looks like a giant shanty town…It’s breathtaking in a very sad way.” St. Patrick’s charity drive is part of a diocesan effort launched in 1984 to support the development of Haiti. Each parish in the diocese of Richmond pairs with a Catholic congregation in Haiti, a country that is more than 90 percent Catholic. St. Patrick’s has worked with the parish of Fond Pierre, located in one of the areas of greatest need. According to Lipscomb, Fond Pierre has moved to the top of the diocesan list of priorities because of the condition of their school. “Places where there are no schools are considered to be in the worst situation,” he said. “Fond Pierre must certainly be one of the worst.” Both Lipscomb and Harvey were equally astonished to see Fond Pierre’s existing school. Lipscomb said that it would be “an inadequate storage garage for Americans,” with its dirt floors and raw concrete block. “At best, it’s a chicken coop,” said Harvey. “But when you go inside and see these beautiful children who sing for you and are just happy get some sort of an education, it’s amazing.” Every day, children who can afford the school’s tuition of a few dollars per year come in large numbers to get instruction in mathematics, French, and geography. Most of them go to school on empty stomachs and some must travel several miles each day. According to David Kauffman, Washington and Lee University’s Catholic Campus Minister, the $65,000 goal is ambitious for St. Patrick’s Parish. The fund raising effort has reached $17,660, but the school’s construction must wait until the entire project can be completed at once. Otherwise, the foundations of the school could sit for years in decay. Lipscomb said that construction in the Haitian countryside is rather difficult because all the materials must be bought at the capital, Port-de-Prince, which is four hours away. Harvey said that the roads to Port-de-Prince were “the worst roads I’ve ever experienced.” Haiti, which used to be known as a tropical paradise languishing on a vast plantation island during the 1600s, is now considered the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Political strife and natural disasters have increased the current hardship of Haiti’s natives. In October, the U.S. Department of State condemned political violence in Port-de-Prince that led to killings of police and civilians. In addition, the recent hurricane season has left over 300,000 already-impoverished Haitians without food or water. Members of St. Patrick’s believe they can make a difference. “They’re just living with what they’ve got,” said Harvey. “They have very basic needs, and it would be special to them to have a place to get an education.”
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