L'Amitie pour Haiti (Friendship for Haiti)

Through a former teacher at our school who is Haitian himself, we were able to connect with a school for young artists in Haiti last fall. We sent them a flipcam, which was obtained through grant money, and began exchanging videos. My students wrote scripts in French for their videos, and practiced reading and listening skills through email and video exchanges with the students from Haiti. In between our correspondences, my students studied the geography, climate, politics and history of Haiti. We also began reading the book "On That Day Everybody Ate", by Margaret Trost, founder of the What If? Foundation. My students composed a letter to former President Bill Clinton who is the current UN Special Envoy to Haiti and received a response detailing his work there. Our original goal was to plan a fundraiser to help these students purchase art supplies. On January 12th, everything changed. Our friends' school was destroyed and many students remain unaccounted for. Our goal has shifted to sending aid so that they can rebuild. We will be sending them video messages of support and hope that they will be able to send us documentation of their rebuilding efforts with the new flipcam we will (hopefully) send them.