St. Margaret’s Haitian sister school still standing after earthquake
Photo Credit: Haley Lynch
A collage of photos from Haiti hang on a poster in St. Margaret's Elementary School. St. Margaret's Haitian sister school is still standing after the recent earthquake.
Allison Siegel, Managing Editor
February 19, 2010
Filed under News
The St. Rose of Lima School in Haiti, the sister school to St. Margaret’s for nearly a decade, has not been drastically affected by the recent earthquake, according to St. Margaret’s Haiti correspondent and former Vice Principal Carol Delss.
The town of Jacksonville, where St. Rose of Lima is located, is approximately sixty miles from Port-Au-Prince, where the majority of the destruction from the earthquake has been.
St. Rose of Lima is intact and only the tremors of the earthquake were felt there, according to Delss.
St. Margaret’s has previously raised money through their students to build a bridge across a river in order to give the teachers of St. Rose of Lima a passage to work. The bridge St. Margaret’s paid for with their “One Million Pennies Campaign” that supplies the teachers of St. Rose of Lima with a passage to the village is also still standing.
According to Delss, the people of St. Rose of Lima are now reaching out to their fellow countrymen.
Many families in Jacksonville are now harboring their extended family in their own homes because they have nowhere else to stay.
With the increased population of Jacksonville, Delss estimates there will be a larger amount of children wishing to attend St. Rose of Lima, thus increasing the needs of the school in general.
St. Rose of Lima will remain closed for a month in order to bring a sense of order back to their community, said Delss.
The partnership between the two schools started in 2001 after a chance connection made through Delss’ son in college.
While attending Virginia Tech (VT), Delss’ son met Gabriel Thelus, a Haitian native who was attending college in America. Thelus had the dream of starting a school in Haiti and bringing the children that attended it a better life.
Finally, with the aid of some classmates from VT, Thelus was able to start the St. Rose of Lima School in Jacsonville, Haiti.
Delss was inspired by the actions that her son and his classmates took to help a country with less fortune. Ever since, Delss has been running St. Margaret’s outreach with the school.
“There are people around the world that don’t have anything. I wanted to make the students of St. Margaret’s aware of that. And I want them to have a love and compassion for people that really aren’t that far away,” Delss said of her reasons for beginning this charity program.
Over the past eight years, St. Margaret’s school has raised over $100,000 for St. Rose of Lima, accumulating $20,000 last year alone.
“It truly is dreadful. They live a very, very poor life. [However], maybe something good will happen because of this,” Delss said.
Allison Siegel can be reached for comment at asiegel@jcpatriot.com.