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Haitian students inspire young Fremont volunteer |
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Written by LAURIE STEVENS, Chronicle Writer
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Friday, 01 February 2008 |
TIFFIN—Beyond the barbed-wire walls surrounding the campus of Louverture Cleary School in Haiti, chaos reigns.
Teacher Cathy Setzler, a 2002 graduate of Fremont St. Joseph Central Catholic High School, first experienced the mayhem last summer on the 30-minute drive from the airport to the Catholic high school located on the outskirts of the capital city of Port-au-Prince. The streets of Haiti are in disrepair, with no marking lines or traffic signals, she says. Everyone fights for a place on the road.
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| Fremont native Cathy Setzler teaches computer class to a student at Louverture Cleary School in Haiti. (Photo courtesy of Cathy Setzler) |
“There’s trash on the sides of the roads everywhere. You see women who are making their whole source of livelihood from a basket of mangos they carry on their heads to sell for a few cents each,” adds Ms. Setzler, 23. “It’s very chaotic and overwhelming.”
In contrast, order and cleanliness characterize the campus of Louverture Cleary, where she teaches English, religion and computer classes as a volunteer this academic year.
The tuition-free secondary boarding school, operated by an American Catholic mission called The Haitian Project, educates and nurtures economically disadvantaged students from some of the poorest neighborhoods in Haiti.
“They develop them not so that they will come to the U.S. someday or travel somewhere else, but so that they will develop Haiti,” explains Ms. Setzler. “They will be the future of Haiti, and work to make their country better.”
About 8 million people live in Haiti, a Caribbean nation slightly smaller than the state of Maryland. The country is the poorest in the Western Hemisphere, plagued by violence and political unrest. Ms. Setzler says more than a million students have no access to education, because there are only 30 public schools.
Admission to Louverture Cleary is based on an entrance exam and an interview, in which prospective students “have to show that they want to stay in Haiti to make Haiti a better country,” according to Ms. Setzler.
Students board at school during the week, and are active from 5 a.m. until 10 p.m. every day. Along with academic work, they serve their school and community based on a motto taken from Matthew 10:8: “What you receive as gift, you must give as a gift.”
The teachers and 340 students clean the school daily and dispose of the trash, which must be composted, burned or buried since Haiti has no trash service. The oldest students help take care of sick babies at a nearby orphanage and teach 300 local unschooled children how to read.
“The students love the school,” says Ms. Setzler. “They will always tell you that this is one of the best schools in the country.”
While visiting home for Christmas, Ms. Setzler shared her experiences with a chapter of Pax Christi and group of Tiffin Franciscan Sisters Dec. 20 at St. Francis Convent in Tiffin.
She received a standing ovation from Sister Guerda Julien, a Haitian member of the Congregation of Little Sisters of St. Therese of the Child Jesus who has lived with the Tiffin Franciscan sisters for the past five years. Sr. Julien expressed support for the mission of Louverture Cleary and the work of Ms. Setzler.
“It’s amazing — and to see young like her to go there,” says Sr. Julien. “I feel she’s doing that with joy, helping people.”
Ms. Setzler admits teaching in Haiti has its challenges, including tarantulas, sporadic electricity and limited communication with loved ones at home. The biggest adjustment, she says, has been the loss of freedom — for safety reasons, teachers must stay within the 10-foot high school walls 99 percent of the time.
“But through doing that, we’re in solidarity with a lot of the Haitian people who also can’t leave their houses because they’re afraid of violence,” she adds.
She finds support living in community on campus with other U.S. volunteers, staff members and Haitian teachers.
The faith of her students, who have endured so many hardships as children, also inspires her. All are Christian, and she estimates about a third are Catholic.
“The students are very open about their faith in Jesus,” she says. “It’s the center of their lives.”
Ms. Setzler says service has been important to her since she was young. She had to complete service hours as a student at St. Joseph, and later traveled on service trips in college during spring breaks.
After graduating in 2006 with a degree in music education from Baldwin-Wallace College, she volunteered for the Amate House, sponsored by the Archdiocese of Chicago. She lived in community with other young adults and taught music to immigrant children in Chicago for a year.
The experience inspired her to look for an international service opportunity, and she discovered The Haitian Project on the Internet.
“It’s just great to be part of such a wonderful project,” she says. “My role may be small in it — I’m just there for a year, only teaching them one or two classes — but overall it’s a huge movement that’s influenced thousands of people already.”
Ms. Setzler plans to return to the United States next year, but she says her experiences in Haiti will forever change how she views her life here — particularly her perspective on the value of money.
“Even when we struggle with money in the U.S., we always have so much more than the women I saw working in a factory who make $2-3 a day. Or the students who have no food when they go home,” she explains. “When I make decisions in the future, I’ll always be thinking of how it impacts people in other countries.”
For more information about Louverture Cleary School, visit www.haitianproject.org.
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