We are back in school. Nothing has changed in Cité Soleil. With no functional government in Haiti – the last 10 remaining senators in Haiti’s parliament officially left office on Wednesday – the country is left without a single democratically elected government official. Meanwhile, the gangs continue to vie for power. Gunfire erupted yesterday and …
Category Archives: Team Guepard
Looking Forward to 2023
In 2023, we enter our 13th year publishing the Vitruvian Man website, and we remain committed to the two most important stories in all of literature: the story of the good Samaritan and the story of the adulterous woman. We are obligated to be our brother’s keeper to ensure that all life matters. We must …
The Children Need Your Help
After a brutal summer characterized by unparalleled gang violence and delays mandated by the Haitian Ministry of Education, we opened the doors to the Barefoot School in Cité Soleil, Haiti last week. This will be our second scholastic year. Our relationship with the Guepard Boxing Club of Cité Soleil [GBCCS] which operates the school goes …
Season Change
We faced many challenges on many fronts this summer that affected our work on our Haiti agriculture project in Arizona. The reasons are unimportant. The fact is, after planting 2,400 linear feet by the end of May with Armenian cucumbers to okra to squash to melons, and everything in between, we realized zero harvest excluding …
Doing the Right Thing
Over a month ago, we posted that the Haitian Ministry of Education had delayed the September 3 school opening to October 3. October 3rd has come and gone. Schools remain closed. Speaking to the United Nations Security Council yesterday, October 17, the Haitian Minister of Foreign Affairs Jean Victor Généus opened his remarks by stating, …
New School Year to Begin in Haiti
The Haitian Ministry of Education has delayed the start of the next school year for one month, until October 3. I have the budget for our Barefoot School in Haiti for the upcoming school year, now October 3, 2022, through July 2023. The total budget to operate the school for 10 months is $37,972.25. Our …
“One of Our Students Was Shot Last Night”
Yesterday evening, Justin informed me that we successfully concluded our summer camp. “Today we are surrounded by happiness,” he writes. “During the camp, the children play with each other, eat together, tell jokes, learn about their culture, and history, and learn things that can be useful to make a little money in the future, like …
Continue reading ““One of Our Students Was Shot Last Night””
Promises to Keep
As July’s horrific violence in Citè Soleil subsided, we delayed our summer camp until the second week in August, and we completed the first of three weeks without incident last week. As many as 276 children came to the camp each day. Sadly, we could only accommodate 150; we had to turn 126 children away. …
Let Me Give You a Definition of Ethics
“Let me give you a definition of ethics: it is good to maintain life and further life; it is bad to destroy and damage life.” So writes Dr. Albert Schweitzer in his 1933 autobiography “Out of My Life and Thought.” The recipient of the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize, Dr. Schweitzer offers other thoughts that came …
A Sad Day in Citè Soleil
In a country torn by violence, earthquakes, hurricanes, political unrest, and poverty, last week may be one of the worst in Haiti’s 200+ years as a free and independent country. The United Nations reports that nearly 250 residents in Citè Soleil were killed or injured in gang warfare between July 8th and July 12th. The …