In Brazil, Haitian Takes up a Collection to Construct a School in Her Country

02/23/2017 - 11h00

Geneviève Cherubin, a 34-year-old professor, left Haiti nearly two years-ago and now teaches French classes in São Paulo.

After finding a job and getting settled in Brazil, she wants to help her own country.

Gene, as she is known, set up a collection site on the internet to raise R$ 55,000 (US$ 17,700) and with this money plans to construct a school in the Corail region, a poor area in Haiti where she worked as a volunteer for four years, after the earthquake that devastated the country in 2010.

She wants join with and work together with a friend, Marjorie Belance, who set up a makeshift school for nearly 150 children. "We don't have a building, we don't have anything. The blackboard is a wall that they color on, write on and then erase", she says.

The money raised by the campaign (juntos.com.vc/pt/ecole) will be sufficient to buy a property lot and erect a school, which will also have an area for planting fruit and vegetables. As of Wednesday (22), the site had registered R$ 4,075 (US$ 1,315) in donations.

Geneviève grew up in a middle-class area of Porto Príncipe, far from Haitian poverty.

With a degree in Pedagogy, in 2010 she accepted an invitation from an NGO to serve as a volunteer in Corail, where she was shocked by the experience of living side-by-side with misery.

"I saw a world that had never existed before in my life. People didn't know what lights, television, telephones were. You had to go far to fetch water. There were no cars. If someone died, the body had to be carried by motorcycle to another city."

Translated by LLOYD HARDER

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