Helping Haiti

A middle-school student proudly shows her sewing accomplishments.
Photo courtesy of Sophie Bartels

Here at Hanover High School there is a Helping Haiti Club that meets every Tuesday in Madame Doyle’s room. Sophie Bartels, a student at Hanover High school, and Janet Daniels, an instructor of sewing, together founded the club in 2010 with the help of Sophie’s parents in order to find ways to help raise money for Haiti. If people are part of the Haiti Club or interested, each year during Winter Break in February there is a chance to go down to Haiti and experience how the Haitians live. The trip to Haiti costs six hundred dollars this year which is not a bad cost to learn about a different part of the world and to experience how it is for other people. This project has already been mentioned in the article written by  Chi and published in 2011. <http://www.broadside.dresden.us/?p=241>

Since 2010, a group of people from the Haiti Club go down each year to help the Haitian people. The Haitian women and men there learn simple ways of sewing. After the women and men learn how to sew simple fabrics together and make patterns, the group from HHS each year collects the fabric that the Haitian people have made and they bring it back to the Club for projects. This is the first year that the club is selling the work made by the Haitians  to raise money. This year in the club, we were using many different colored fabrics all sewn together by the Haitian people. We in the Club have been taking the fabric and making cards out of them. The Club sold the cards at the Holiday Craft Fair at Tracy Hall this year and raised a lot of money there. The Club also sold them at the Co-op. The cards made at Hanover High School using the different colored fabrics were sold for 4 dollars. 1 dollar goes to Haiti, 1 dollar goes to the Hanover High school and 2 dollars go to Materials such as fabrics to bring down to Haiti for the people to use.

After talking to Sophie about her experience going to Haiti four times now, she says “The trips for me have been amazing and eye opening. I have loved getting to know and teach the Haitians from the village. Although it is shocking to see so much poverty, it is wonderful to see how the people have been able to recover from the disasters of the earthquake”. I joined the club this year and I am really enjoying it, I have learned a lot about Haiti just by joining the club. I am planning to go to Haiti next year during February break in 2014. I am looking forward to this because I know I will be amazed by seeing the way other people live and when you think about it,  our lives are so much easier compared to these people.

Accomplished on the sewing machine. Photo courtesy of Sophie Bartels.