The Friends of St. Vincent's Center, Inc. is a 501c (3) tax exempt non-profit Connecticut corporation started by a volunteer group in 1997 as an interfaith outreach ministry of St. James’s Episcopal Church in West Hartford, Connecticut dedicated to supporting the children and staff at St. Vincent’s Center for Handicapped Children in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. St. Vincent’s Center is a residential facility, day school, orphanage, out-patient medical clinic and hospital owned and operated under the auspices of the Episcopal Church of Haiti. The institution serves 310 seriously handicapped children from pre-school to high school.
During 2009, the second floor was constructed over the recently completed new brace/prosthetic shop. It was designed and built to provide needed additional classroom space with funds provide by “The Friends”. This project could not have been successfully completed without the generous financial help of the Diocese of Connecticut whose Mission Development Fund voted a matching funds grant, and the continuing generosity of St. James’s. The recent re-modeling of the surgical suite and recovery room is another major improvement at the facility.
Also during 2009, “The Friends” continue to address issues of enabling 11 older children to move out into society with useful skills by providing scholarships to attend local high schools. The prejudice barrier that prevented handicapped children from attending secondary schools has been broken. Our students are competing well in regular classrooms, making us proud and providing role models for others by their academic and social success.
Our friends in Hanover, New Hampshire, had a very successful fundraiser to purchase braillers and other blind supplies for the blind students. There are currently 72 blind students enrolled at St. Vincent’s.
“The Friends” applied for and received a grant from the Virginia Theological Society. The funds will be used to enrich the Blind Program. The braille duplicator machine, in use for many years, finally died and we were able to purchase and sent a new machine to the school at the cost of $3000, thanks to our friends in New Hampshire. The teachers of the Blind Program were thrilled to receive it.
Recently, Dr. Susan Nelson’s Medical Team from St. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral in Memphis, graciously assisted us by volunteering to hand-carry down to St. Vincent’s some additional new braillers and a new wheelchair for the for the handicapped cook at the school.
Projects that remain to be addressed include the need for orchestral and band musical instruments and non-electric typewriters. The development of musical ability provides a marketable skill that helps graduating students to become self-supporting. Typing services are also needed and marketable. Since electricity is unreliable in Haiti, use of non-electric typewriters is mandatory. Anyone with musical instruments or manual typewriters in good working condition can contact “The Friends” or the office at St. James’s to arrange pick-up.
Another pressing issue is teacher salaries. They do not currently come close to meeting government mandated minimum requirements. Salaries that are now about $40 per month need to be more than doubled. The teachers at St. Vincent’s are highly motivated and dedicated to the primary education of the students but, at the miserable current compensation levels, many are finding it impossible to pay work related expenses and/ or feed their own children! The administration at the school, under the capable leadership of the director, Father Sadoni Leon, and the principal, Mde. Denise Compas, understand the urgency of the need but are severely constrained by chronically inadequate revenue. Given that the country is so impoverished that there is a practically non-existent tax base, and given the same pervasive poverty results in inadequate church revenues relative to the important institutions like St. Vincent’s, it is not difficult to understand why St. Vincent’s is chronically under-funded. It, of necessity, falls to us who have been blessed with greater resources to help meet the need.
“The Friends” are dedicated to doing all they can to improve the life and lot of the handicapped children who depend so completely on the Center and welcome the involvement and support of any interested individuals or organizations.
Respectively submitted,
Hope C. Lennartz, RN, MSN
Founder and Volunteer Executive Director of the Friends of St. Vincent’s Center
Updated on 1/10/10