Current Opportunities

There are many immediate opportunities in Jeremie for the implementation of social programs. However the quickest way to provide urgent relief is to partner with other charitable organizations working in the Jeremie area. It may be a well-established and recognized civil servant organization like the Haitian Health Foundation, or a smaller group like the Haiti Bible Mission. These two organizations have a public and impressive record of overseeing small to medium projects in the Jeremie area, all while providing opportunities for volunteers to visit and have a hands-on experience in the various initiatives. 

But of course, the groundwork begins with the acquisition of land for the building of infrastructures. Several pieces of land that are within 5 miles of Downtown Jeremie and the Jeremie airport are currently available for as little as 8 cents (USD $0.08) per square feet, or USD $0.85 per square meter. In addition to these long-term options, there are the immediate opportunities in the Community Center at La Source Dommage (CCSD). The CCSD is a magnificent structure less than 1 mile for Downtown Jeremie. It already has 5,000 square feet of indoor space in its basement and the main floor combined, plus the 3,000 square feet of the first floor that has yet to be completed. 

The CCSD was an ambitious project started by the non-profit Coumbite Grand'Anselaise (COGA) of Brooklyn, New York. COGA's long-term objective was to build a cultural center in Jeremie that would hold a multi-purpose movie theater, hotel, restaurant, computer center and music-learning center, among other youth-driven facilities. Although the project started in 1998, many programmatic challenges slowed the pace of construction, leaving it only 20% complete in 2003, when COGA was dissolved. At that time its President, Dr. Raymond Rene of West Palm Beach, FL, singularly took on the task of finishing the center. Today it sits empty on one of Jeremie's major arteries, less than 2 miles from the Jeremie airport, 80% completed. 

Should the procurement of a vast building such as the CCSD be achieved through rental or co-ownership, and then several small and mid-term projects can be started immediately. Jeremie is devoid of infrastructures and extracurricular learning establishments for the youth. The most significant initiatives would be on the educational and social levels. Educationally, a institution of higher learning that provides long-term career stabiliy makes the most sense.  As such, World Youth Served, Inc. (Atlanta, GA) and Shaping Haiti’s Youth are jointly collaborating to open a Vocational School of Arts and Crafts in Jérémie, Haiti and are seeking approximately $380,000 over a three-year period to make the vocational school self-sustaining while making it cost-affordable for the attending students. This three-year proposal is just a component of a larger scale, long-term project that will eventually involve a consortium of 10 to 12 organizations, with World Youth Served (WYS) and Shaping Haiti’s Youth’s (SHY) spearheading the effort. The overall goal is to build in Haiti a multi-disciplinary sports complex (soccer, basketball, volleyball, judo, team handball, swimming and tennis) with an adjacent agrarian studies university with options for vocational degrees in woodwork, sewing, arts, and information technology.

All the aforementioned projects are feasible in the short-term, as they are both low in start-up and operational costs. A longer-term project such as the School of Arts and Crafts would help in the long-term in providing food, lodging, education and mental health assistance for the thousands of children that are now orphans of simply traumatized from their personal experience of the 2010 earthquake that claimed the lives of over 300,000 by some estimates, as well as displace almost 100,000 to Haitian cities such as Jeremie.

 

Jeremie (Jeremi in Kreyol) is the capital city of the department of Grand'Anse, in the south west of Haiti, with a population of about 31,000 (2003 census). Although it is almost isolated from the rest of the country, Jeremie benefits from having one of the largest rivers in Haiti, the Grande-Anse River, flowing near the city. The city has an airport, Jeremie Airport (IATA Code: JEE, ICAO Code: MTJE). Today, Jeremie is the state capital residing the furthest from the now dangerous fault lines underneath the Haitian land surface.