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News from Yele Haiti - January 2006, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt
Teledjol.com - Wednesday January 25, 2006
Wyclef Jean and the Yéle Haiti team were in Haiti on January 13 to host a visit from Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.
Hello from Yéle Haiti!We have had a monumental week, to say the least. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that Wyclef Jean and the Yéle Haiti team were in Haiti on January 13 to host a visit from Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. This coincidentally commemorated the anniversary of the first year of Yéle Haiti’s existence – Yéle Haiti is now one year old! Angelina and Brad came over while Angelina was filming The Good Shepherd in the Dominican Republic. As you may know, Angelina travels the world learning about and bringing attention to global poverty issues, and is a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, and she came to Haiti, for the first time, with her friend Wyclef Jean. Wyclef and Angelina first met in 2004 at the LA film premiere of Hotel Rwanda, a film about the 1994 genocide where more than a million Rwandan citizens were killed. Wyclef created the song “Million Voices” for the film, where he integrated the voices of the African Children’s Choir, a group of African children who have lost one or both parents to AIDS and who tour the world singing. Million Voices has garnered Wyclef both a Golden Globe and a Grammy nomination. Angelina and Brad’s visit has brought the world’s attention to the plight of Haiti through television, newspapers and radio coverage. Their visit is on the cover of every weekly entertainment magazine in the United States this week, including People, US Weekly, In Touch, Life & Style, Celebrity Living and more. There will also be another story in the upcoming issue of US Weekly, on newsstands tomorrow. If you haven’t seen the coverage, pick up a copy before Wednesday when the next issues come out, or just Google it. Hundreds and hundreds of media outlets covered it all over the world, so now everyone is thinking about Haiti. Their trip started with a helicopter ride from the DR to Port-au-Prince. Wyclef, Angelina and Brad were joined by Gracia Delva, one of Haiti’s most popular kompa musicians. The first stop was at Ecole Immaculee Conception in Delmas, where they were greeted by the school children who performed songs and dances. Also present at the school were scholarship recipients from a fundraising effort held in Alberta, Canada. Elementary school children in Alberta donated US .25¢ each, totaling $$1,116, enough to put 20 children in school in Haiti. (This is in addition to the 3,600 scholarships we funded in Gonaives and the 134 scholarships we funded for L’Athletique d’Haiti). 10 of the scholarships went to children in Gonaives, and 10 went to children who attended Ecole Immaculee Conception, who were there to greet Angelina and Brad. Angelina and Brad were then taken to meet some of the children who participate in L’Athletique d’Haiti, the sports program who received funding from Yéle Haiti. L’Athletique d’Haiti offers youth from Cite Soleil and Bel Air the opportunity to play sports after school. The children are required to be in school in order to participate, to keep them tempted from joining the gangs. L’Athletique d’Haiti also provides the children with after school tutoring and one hot meal a day. After Brad played a little soccer by kicking a soccer ball through a very small goal that Wyclef set up for him, Angelina, Brad and Wyclef joined the group for a photo, holding up the Yéle Haiti “hands.” The open hand means “stop the violence.” Inside the open hand is a heart, which means love. The two fingers on the other hand means peace. In total, it means “stop the violence, love and peace.” Next, still at the school, Wyclef, Angelina and Brad met and took a photo with the Yéle Haiti Pwoje Lari Pwop workers. For those of you new to the newsletter, Pwoje Lari Pwop is Creole for Project Clean Streets. There is little garbage pick up in Haiti. On June 6, 2005, Wyclef and Yéle Haiti launched Pwoje Lari Pwop with the Pan American Development Foundation (PADF). We started picking up garbage in 6 areas: Tabarre, Carrefour, Crois-des-Bouquets, Delmas, Port-au-Prince and Pétion-Ville, and the day we launched, we were putting 600 people to work each day – no small accomplishment in a country that has an 80% unemployment rate. Since then it’s increased, and we’re not employing 1,400 people PER DAY and we’re picking up garbage EVERY DAY in Cite Soleil and Bel Air! And, we’ll be increasing that to 1,700 workers per day in February. There are more plans to improve the conditions in Cite Soleil and Bel Air, so watch for the next Yéle Haiti newsletter… After leaving the school, we went to L’Apena Prison Civile De Delmas, a children’s prison. This was a very solemn moment for everyone. The children held in this prison range from ages 9-17 and are incarcerated for being child soldiers recruited by the gangs. There are 4 cells that house 18 boys each. When our group arrived, all the boys were seated outside in the patio area. While many of these boys have been active in criminal activity, one has to take into consideration that in a country where the options are no food or join a gang in order to eat, the choices for survival can be limited. And remember as well that in Haiti, you are not tried for your crime or even charged, in the cases of children and adults; you are thrown into jail without any of the due process that is afforded in many countries and without a sentence. Up until our visit, there were no rehabilitation programs for the children. If they were let out, they had not gained any skills during their incarceration, and had few choices for survival. Yéle Haiti made a donation to the prison establishing the prison’s first educational system. Now, the boys will have an opportunity to get an education while they are incarcerated, and will have more options when they are released. The NGO Institut Mobile d’Education Démocratique (IMED) will run the educational program. After we left, we were told that many of the boys cried because someone cared enough to come to see them. After the prison, the group went to Telemax, a television station in Haiti. There were about 150 children waiting there who would be guests at the Yéle Haiti Birthday Party, all wearing birthday hats, blowing noisemakers and waiting for Wyclef, Angelina, Brad and some cake. But they had a surprise – Wyclef, Angelina and Brad joined them outside for dancing and fun! They formed conga lines and just had a blast dancing with the children. Once inside, Wyclef introduced Bernard Fils-Aimé, Director General at Comcel, who presented Wyclef with a check to fund more Yéle Haiti activities in education for the second year of operation (you may remember Comcel funded education programs for our first year also!). Yéle Haiti has named Comcel the “Yéle Haiti Education Sponsor.” Please spread the word about Yéle Haiti and if anyone is interested in donating, $60 will send a child to school for a year. Yéle! P.S. If you want to see some amazing photos of Haiti, and what it’s really like, go here: http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world... If you want to see what we’ve accomplished this year, with photos, go here: http://www.yele.org/pdf/yele-haiti.pdf.
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