By Jim Mahar, Professor Columnist
After months of planning with our partners (CAMSL) in the Mayanka area outside of Makeni, in Sierra Leone, where the garden program got started. Agriculture is a sustainable way to help individuals out of poverty and this “teach a person to fish” model has worked well for us in Haiti. The garden is much more than a piece of land, it is a school, a jobs provider and a source of food. It is hoped that some of these students become farmers, but if not, they at least have the ability to help feed themselves and their families, which is no small feat in a nation whose per capita GDP is about $500 USD.
In Les Cayes, Haiti, another round of ten microloans was repaid and seven new loans were made, thanks to the great work of Tout Moun Se Moun. The repayments bring the total number of loans repaid to 115 (100 percent). There are few higher returns on investment (remember, my day job is a finance professor) than changing a life for less than $100 and then getting the money back, with interest, to be lent again.
Two other microloans stories from Haiti also happened this week. Just outside of Les Cayes, Rochelin, who was on campus as part of the 2016 Bonas and Beyond program, oversaw the disbursement of seven new loans to rice farmers. In Leogane, Haiti, Normil installed his solar electric system. The loan to Normil was our largest ever and followed a multi-year study by SBU business students. The loan will provide Normil’s Achievenet business with safe, clean and dependable electricity. It will also save him from a daily forty-minute motorcycle ride carrying two heavy car batteries to the charging station.
BonaResponds was also busy locally. During the week, in conjunction with the Pink Pumpkin Project, we sent out and delivered more WarmSnuggyBlankets to people fighting cancer. These blankets are made by volunteers, as evidenced this week when Kim and Sue sewed patches on blankets that will soon go out.
On Saturday, in Hinsdale, New York (about nine miles from campus), a team of BonaResponds volunteers took advantage of the nice January weather to tarp a roof and to build new steps for a disabled woman who had fallen four times in recent months on the existing steps. It was not a huge job in size, but to her it was.
To wrap the week up on Sunday, before the monthly HaitiScholarships board meeting, a very small team explored building desks as a pilot program for a schools we work with around the globe. Using a design that we saw in the Bahamas, we can make a full-sized desk for about $25. This knowledge and design will no doubt come in handy in the future.
One week. Seven days. No, we didn’t bring world peace. We didn’t eliminate poverty. We didn’t cure cancer. But we did make things better. We made new connections and new friends. We gave people the tools to move out of poverty. We allowed one woman to get out of her house more safely. We reminded people who have cancer that they are still loved. Sure, each person still has problems to deal with, but each person was also reminded that people care and that there is reason for hope, and that poverty is not a life sentence, but rather merely a starting point for a better tomorrow.
You can do this too. Get involved. It does not take superhuman strength, incredible intellect or even experience. It just takes a willingness to volunteer and change the world.
BonaResponds notes:
* Buy your airline tickets soon (only one week left) to Houston, Texas for Spring Break! For more information see bonaresponds.org and email Yvonne Gerhmann (gehrmayn14@bonaventure.edu). Our goal is to subsidize your travel costs by $150 or more.
You will have a place to stay, food and a free BonaResponds shirt. Additionally, if you cannot afford it, let us know SOON and we will help you to arrange donations in order to go. It will be life changing!
* Want to help in Texas but don’t have time to take off? A $50 donation to PositiveRipples will buy five sheets of drywall! (donate at positiveripples.org)
*Quote of the week: “There is no “them” and “us.” There is only “us.” – Fr. Greg Boyle
This is the second in a series of articles on BonaResponds leader Jim Mahar, Ph.D.
