How I Got Here

For the first time this week I was able to call home and speak to my family. I was really excited to hear their voices and update them on my journey. I was especially excited to speak to my dad, because not only was he unaware that I have access to a phone, but today is his birthday. Even though I could not be home to celebrate, it was great to surprise him and hear how his day was going.

So I figure day four of my trip is the proper time to finally share more information about the reason why I am here in Haiti for the next few weeks. Beginning last summer, I started looking into the possibility of applying for a Father Smith Fellowship through Providence College. Having spoken to a former PC student, Kathryn McCann, who had gone to Kenya with the program, I immediately became dead-set on applying for this incredible opportunity.

The Father Smith Fellowships are an opportunity for students to create their own program for study or service abroad alongside peoples and organizations that coincide with Providence College’s beliefs and their mission. Typically these fellowships are fulfilled alongside members of the Dominican order and strongly focus on the faith aspect of the student’s trip. This fully paid for trip creates an incredible opportunity in which students can be transformed mentally, emotionally and intellectually. For these reasons and more I feel incredibly blessed to be granted one of the ten of these highly competitive fellowships.

After becoming interested in the Father Smith Fellowship, I began to search for a site at which I could fulfill my fellowship of service. As a student of the Liberal Arts Honors Program at PC, Providence College has already given me so much in terms of my education and the experiences that have accompanied it. As a result, I began to search for a site in which I could pay forward the gift of education and the vast amount of opportunities that schooling opens up.

Last summer Father Cuddy, Chaplain at PC, travelled to Louverture Cleary School in order to plan an immersion trip for the summer of 2013. From the moment that I read his blog and began researching The Haitian Project, I knew that a fellowship at LCS would be an unbelievable blessing.

Louverture Cleary School functions just outside of Port-au-Prince as a Catholic school that provides an education to academically motivated and talented students from Haitian families who cannot afford the cost of education. This school serves students from Sizyem, 7^th grade, to philo year, what would be equivalent to a 13^th grade in the United States. In addition to these students, the school offers various programs in which the students of LCS can interact with the surrounding neighborhood. It is the goal of LCS that its students will use their education and lessons learned at the school to be empowered to enact change within the community and throughout Haiti.