BY: DIANNA SMITH

They traveled to Haiti to offer their help.

And now they’re asking those here to do the same.

Joe Bernadel and Diane Allerdyce, founders of Toussaint L’Ouverture High School for Arts and Social Justice, are creating partnerships with schools in Haiti so they can provide guidance to teachers and give more students an opportunity to learn.

“We don’t believe we can change Haiti overnight, but we can influence people,” Allerdyce said. “There’s a strong demand for education. Kids are yearning to learn.”

Bernadel and Allerdyce recently returned from a trip to the impoverished country and were invited by the Spady Cultural Heritage Museum in Delray Beach to introduce their mission to the community tonight.

The Spady museum provides background on the city’s early African American history and culture.

The school leaders spoke of the back-to-back hurricanes that devastated Haiti last year and the relief effort they helped create to get those suffering simple things such as food and clothing.

They plan to create a much deeper connection with the country as they begin to plan programs, including cultural exchange opportunities for teachers and eventually the creation of schools.

In Haiti, 435,000 children do not go to school, Bernadel said, either because their families cannot afford it or because there’s simply no school in their town to attend. Most schools in Haiti charge an annual tuition.

Long-term goals include building educational villages that can sustain its own economy and broadcasting teachers’ lectures on the Internet so schools in Haiti can tune in.

Toussaint L’Ouverture High School is a charter school where the majority of the students are Haitian. The original school is in Boynton Beach and a new school recently opened in Fort Pierce. The leaders plan to open a school in Pahokee soon.

Volunteer opportunities include helping locally at the schools, donating money, sponsoring a child in Haiti, providing textbooks to children in Haiti or traveling to the country with Bernadel and Allerdyce during one of their many mission trips.

Anyone interested can call (561) 738-9860.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 4th, 2009 at 10:47 pm and is filed under Economy, Fort Pierce, Schools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.