At the 2005 Annual General Meeting of RPCVSF, former Peace Corps Country Director for Haiti Marty Mueller made an inspiring presentation about the work of Peace Corps in Haiti. RPCVSF
then enlisted RPCVs who had served in Haiti to identify how our community could best offer
effective assistance.
Over the next four years, RPCVSF raised over $15,000 to pay for pre-operation tests that hydro-cephalic children in Haiti needed in order to qualify for free corrective surgery offered by South Florida surgeons volunteering their services to Project Medishare. After Project Medishare secured a permanent source of funding for those tests, RPCVSF selected the Haitian Education Leadership Program (H.E.L.P.) as an organization to support.
H.E.L.P. provides scholarship and mentoring so that the top high school graduates from remote and marginalized areas of Haiti have the opportunity to complete college studies. RPCVSF has collaborated on H.E.L.P. fundraisers in South Florida generating over $20,000, and continues to support H.E.L.P. by providing proceeds from sales by RPCVSF's Fair Trade Market.
For more information about HELP, click here: HELP PPT for RPCVSF 2016.06.08v4 BFA.pdf
Project Medishare and H.E.L.P. are organizations with close ties to the RPCV community - with many RPCVs either working for or serving in leadership of these organizations.
In addition, a local RPCV suggested that Peace Corps hold recruiting sessions at Sant La Haitian Neighborhood Center in Miami, which has resulted in dozens of local Haitian-Americans learning about the opportunity of Peace Corps service.