On the north coast of Haiti, in the eastern edge of the city of Port-de-Paix, lies the neighborhood of Baudin-Gros Sable where Healing Art Missions (HAM) provides funding for teacher and staff salaries at the Charles Salomon Primary School. The school was founded in the mid-2000’s by Jean Herard Charles, who serves as HAM’s Haitian Operations Manager. Charles began working for HAM as an interpreter in the early 2000’s and was later trained by Granville Optometrist Dr. Janine Flood as an eye technician. Before COVID-19, he traveled to Dumay one week a month to run HAM’s the eye clinic. Charles has lived with his family in Baudin-Gros Sable for decades and realized that there were many families in the neighborhood with school age children who could not afford to send their children to school. His concern turned to action when he started the Charles Salomon Primary School. Over the years the school has expanded to include Pre-K through 9th Grade with over 326 student’s and employing over 25 teachers and support staff. The school also offers adult education classes as many of the parents of the school children are illiterate.
If you follow HAM’s monthly Newsletter you know that schools in Haiti have not been operating regularly since the beginning of the 2019-20 school year due first to political upheaval followed by the novel-corona virus Pandemic. The school’s teaching staff has continued to work with individual students both at the school as well as socially distanced outside their homes. In May, Charles started a mask making project for the students and their families, which you can read about on the NEWS page of the HAM website. The deepening economic downturn caused by the Haitian political crisis, the COVID pandemic, and worsening devaluation of the Haitian currency has dramatically increased food insecurity. Charles saw that many of the children from the school did not have access to adequate food supplies and proposed HAM fund a short-term feeding program for the school children and their families.
In July, HAM funded the purchase of 50 bags of beans, 50 bags of rice, and many gallons of cooking oil, which Charles and his family and friends divided and packaged for each of the 326 students at the school. The children were called back to the school, where Charles had set up hand washing stations, to pick up their bag of food. We are delighted that even though schools throughout Haiti remain shuttered, Charles and the school staff have been able to keep the school facilities available as a safe space for the neighborhood children, as well as extending our outreach to provide face masks and basic food staples for students and their families.
