Tendai Musakwa Opinions Editor

Are we the self-involved, ignorant students that some people assert we are, or are we more in touch with the communities around us than people give us credit for? While this issue has sparked many debates and remains contentious, what is not is the fact that both the Vassar community and Americans at large are caught in a similar bubble in which the only issues that concern us are only those of immediate interest to this country. A prime example of this unilateralism is the U.S. invasion of Iraq without U.N. authorization, and, on a smaller scale, the fact that most Americans are unconcerned about other countries (according to research done by Laura Miller for her book America the Ignorant).

However, some members of the Vassar community are doing their part to interact with and assist the less fortunate in other countries. The Vassar Haiti Project, in its quest to educate and feed the children of Chermaître, a desperately poor and isolated community in northwestern Haiti, is a role model in international charity.

Director of International Services at Vassar, Andrew Meade founded the Vassar Haiti Project in 2002 to support the education of children in Haiti and inform Americans about Haitian culture and history. To date, the project has raised more than $200,000 towards educating children in Chermaître.

The project is a good model of doing service in a way that directly impacts the lives of those receiving it. It raises money for a school being built by the project as well as the salaries and food of teachers and students at the school. By providing this direct support to the poor of Chermaître, the project ensures that the money it raises does not change hands and thus goes directly to the purpose it was raised for. It is often the case that money donated to charities ends up in the hands of corrupt officials or, even worse, terrorists. For example, CBS News reported in 2004 that Al Qaeda siphoned millions of dollars from Islamic charities that help poor Muslims in Africa and Asia, and used these funds for terror attacks in Kenya, Tanzania and Indonesia. If more people were involved in charities that directly impact communities, situations like these could be avoided and more of the underprivileged we aim to help would actually benefit from our philanthropy.

The Haiti project educates over 150 young people from a deprived village who would otherwise have found it difficult to attain a comparable education. The most direct way to impact the development of a country is through education. In German educationalist Kurt Hahn’s words, “Education is a potent tool that enables young people to effect change.” Haiti has a severe shortage of skilled laborers and a very low 52 percent literacy rate. For that reason, the best way to achieve sustainable development in Haiti is to foster high levels of economic growth through education, which is the objective of the Vassar Haiti Project. This method of building an economy has worked in other countries such as South Korea, whose gross national product has expanded by an average of more than eight percent per year since 1962 through an intensive education program started by the Korean government in the ’50s. The program increased the number of skilled laborers and hence the productivity of Korea. If we really want to attain tangible results from charity in developing countries, we should follow the example set by the Haiti project.

To return to the issue of ignorance about interational affairs, endeavors such as the Haiti project promote cultural understanding and awareness, which are sorely needed within the Vassar community and the United States as a whole. One of the aims of the Vassar Haiti Project is to expose the campus community to the culture and history of the Haitian people. To that end, the Project, in conjunction with the Episcopal Church of Vassar College and other area Episcopal Churches, sponsored Les Petits Chanteurs, a Haitian boys choir accompanied by a string quartet of the Haiti Philharmonic Orchestra, to hold a concert at Vassar last semester. In addition, the Project also holds Haitian art sales and exhibits every year to raise funds for the school. The effects of this kind of cultural education are far-reaching. It advances awareness about the global community, develops our sense of national identity and also promotes respect for people who are culturally different from us. We need more of this cultural edification if we are to free ourselves from the ignorance which Americans are often accused of.

The Vassar Haiti Project has enabled the Vassar community to perceptibly effect change for the better in Haiti. We should promote charitable efforts such as this to better the lives of the far too many under privileged in the global community.