Lawrence students to help build a school in Haiti

Several students spent the past year raising money to help build and maintain a school in Haiti. Back row, from left: Isaac Springe, Quentin Herrington, Mary Jo McPherson, Carly Oliver, Tia Hermann, Claire Walther and Barb Nitz. Front row: Maddy Johnson and Anna Bial

After a group of teenagers spent almost a year raising money toward a summer trip, coming weeks will see them shoveling dirt, mixing cement and making bricks in a village in Haiti.

The students’ labor will go toward construction of a school for the village, which will be its first. The project is part of the international volunteer program buildOn, which will help to sustain the school. Through those combined efforts, the group of nine students hope to leave the villagers with much more than just a building.

“It’s not just us going in and building them a school,” said 15-year-old Maddy Johnson, who helped organize the student-led effort. “The village has been working just as hard as we have to get prepared for us coming: they signed contracts, they donated the land, they started to prepare it.”

Several students spent the past year raising money to help build and maintain a school in Haiti. Isaac Springe, Tia Hermann, Mary Jo McPherson, Anna Bial, and Claire Walther man the table of baked goods during one of the many bake sales held downtown.

The group will travel to Haiti next month along with an adult sponsor, Barb Nitz, who teaches English at Southwest Middle School. Nitz had many of the students in her class at Southwest, and said she remembers them as a unique group.

Group members

Maddy Johnson

Claire Walther

Anna Bial

Emily Low

Carly Oliver

Mary Jo McPherson

Quentin Harrington

Isaac Springe

Tia Hermann

“They were just so community-minded, even back then,” she said.

During the day, the school will hold classes for children, half of which are required to be girls. At night, the school will offer adult literacy programs. Johnson, who is a sophomore at Free State High School, said coordination with the villagers is vital to ensuring the school plays a role in the community in years to come.

“I feel like there’s a lot of well-intending Americans that go in somewhere and build a building and leave, and then it kind of doesn’t get used or reach its full potential to really help the people they’re trying to help,” Johnson said. “So their goals are noble, but it doesn’t always end up the way they want it to.”

The students raised about $38,500 in all for the project. Of that amount, $24,000 will go toward construction and programming at the school. The rest will cover the students’ travel expenses. Over the past year, the students held garage sales, bake sales and coffee sales, as well as collected personal donations. Most of the money raised was done in small increments, Johnson said.

“We didn’t have anyone that came and gave us $1,000 or a couple thousand,” Johnson explained. “A lot of it was like teachers donating $10, friends giving us $5, just a lot of small things that really added up.”

Despite their enthusiasm about the project, Nitz said when the students came to her with the idea, she was worried they didn’t realize how difficult it would be to raise so much money. Now that they’ve reached their goal, Nitz said she thinks their effort over the past year will be integral to the experience.

“I think the raising of the money and then actually going to see how it’s going to come together and helping in that process is going to be so meaningful to those kids,” Nitz said.

While in Haiti, the group will stay in homes of different village members as they work on building the school. Once the students leave, staff with the buildOn program will continue to work with villagers until the school is completed. Claire Walther, Lawrence High School sophomore, said she is looking forward to working closely with the villagers.

“It’s going to be a really immersive experience of sitting in their house, cooking meals with them and just learning about these people,” Walther said. “We have such different lives.”

The group will leave for Haiti June 23 and will be there for about 10 days to prepare materials and build the foundation of the school.