Hello, Health for Haiti Friends! Health for Haiti and the SUNY Broome Engineering Club are excited to announce that on Saturday, November 16th we will host the second “Taste of Haiti” dinner. The dinner will be catered by the amazing TSha’s Kitchen and will be held from 6pm to 8:30pm in the SUNY Broome Cafeteria. Please join us for a fun evening featuring delicious Haitian food, entertainment, guest speakers, and basket raffles.

We are grateful for this opportunity to connect with and celebrate our local Haitian community while raising money to support our friends in rural Grande Saline, Haiti. Proceeds from the dinner will help to support creation of a solar bakery that will serve as a vital economic initiative for the community in Grande Saline. Although it is not safe for us to travel to Haiti with our SUNY Broome students, they are still using their talents to make meaningful contributions to our projects. The SUNY Broome Engineering Club is sharing their expertise to research and design the solar bakery that would be the first of its kind in the Grande Saline region, and we are grateful for their enthusiasm and participation.

Donations from the dinner will also help to support our ongoing projects to provide solar-powered safe and clean drinking water, community gardens to combat food insecurity, and high quality education for nearly 300 students. We are proud of what we accomplished with your donations over the past year, continuing to support clean water for over 1500 people, investing in community gardens that are used to grow rice, corn and other vegetables that can be used to provide a school lunch, and building new classrooms, desks, tables, and benches to accommodate our hard-working teachers and students. We had all 22 of our ninth grade students earn a passing grade on the national exam and this March we will celebrate ten years of clean water in Grande Saline!

We chose the date of our dinner to also acknowledge and celebrate the Haitian “Battle of Vertières”. This important event was the final battle in the Haitian Revolution that let to Haiti’s independence in 1804. This Haitian revolution has significance for the entire world because it was the first time that an army of enslaved people led a successful revolution and won their freedom. Today the Haitian people are fighting a different kind of battle – one against gang violence, chaos, and a deterioration of their freedom to live their lives in peace and prosperity. Please join us as we stand in solidarity with our neighbors in Haiti and continue to strive to bring hope and positive change.

There is a Haitian proverb that says “tout moun se moun”. This translates to “every person is a person”. When we see so many people in the world struggling against seemingly insurmountable challenges, it can be hard to imagine how we can possibly make a difference. And while we might not be able to fix most of these problems, we can remember that every person is a person and deserves to be treated with dignity, love, and respect. Please consider sharing your time to come out and attend a fun evening celebrating and supporting this vibrant people and culture and enjoying a great meal for an equally great cause. Sometime just showing up can make a big difference to those who are struggling.

Please email musajm@sunybroome.edu for tickets or more information. If you cannot join us but would like to make a donation, please click on the “Donate to Health for Haiti” button above.

Thank you !