It was an old dream that Bobb Q Rousseau always caressed with his long-time mentor Jean-Rony Cineus, the dream to invest toward education in Haiti because education is the biggest weapon that can force Haiti out of its misery.
After the earthquake of January 12 2010, Bobb felt that time was now to assist the government and NGOs in their civil assistance and humanitarian programs. He shared that same dream with Christina Majors who automatically fell in love with the project and encouraged him to pursue such a dream.
The same day, around March, Haiti 2020 Scholarship Fund was founded with the mission to provide a clear vision for education in Haiti through the promotion of excellence where students in humanitarian classes will be rewarded based on their academic performances regardless of their parent’s financial means.
While seeking for donations, Bobb met Edwidge, Crevecoeur-Bryant PhD, a Haitian-born education teacher at the University of Central Florida (UCF). Edwidge took it on herself to contact her colleagues at the UCF to tell them about the project.
With the involvement of the UCF staff, Haiti 2020 Scholarship Fund moved from a national project to an international sensation and from providing “just” scholarships to students to providing tuition assistances backed up by an online learning environment.
Haiti 2020 Scholarship Fund comes to play because we, Haitians living in the Diaspora, strongly believe that Haitians needed more than surplus T-shirts, canned food and tents. They want something that will give them a reason to believe there was a better day ahead. They need jobs; they need things to help themselves. They need things that can give them hope for the future,” reported Crevecoeur-Bryant to Orlando Sentinel.
Thus, the reason “volunteers from Central Florida University’s efforts have shifted from disaster relief to sustainable recovery,’ wrote the same journal.
The result was the “Computer Project,” conceived by Crevecoeur-Bryant and another faculty member, Bobb Q Rousseau, then carried out through the university’s task force for Haitian assistance.
Now more than 100 surplus computers and laptops donated by departments at UCF are in Haiti where they will be the key to two community learning centers in Léogâne and Petit-Goâve with solid plans to expand throughout the country by 2020. Volunteer instructors from UCF will conduct on-line classes for students trying to learn English and adults wanting to become literate in Haitian Creole.
Other college level courses such as French and Haitian literatures, Introductory to Law, Internet Technology, Communications & Journalism, Social Work Services and many other many liberal studies will also be offered this year to 25 students who have passed a tough exam that was administered on January 14, 2011 by Fondation Feuilles d’Hier.
The desire for education and the technology that can provide it, satisfies a different kind of hunger in Haiti. The adults who crave to become literate in their language, the children who want so badly to learn English and computer skills, now define survival not as something that keeps you alive, but something that gives you a reason to live.
“I think providing technology to Haiti is a huge step,” Edwidge said. “The computers give you a sense of the future and the future gives you a sense of hope.”
As Haiti 2020 Scholarship Fund is gearing to start the project in the next thirty days, we invite other Haitians and friends of Haiti to join the program by providing advice, suggestions or by investing into a child education.
For more information about the project, please visit our charity’s website at www.haiti2020.org or if you wish to sponsor a child for $20.20, please click here.
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