WEYERS CAVE — Megan Samples and Mike Aronoff didn’t know what to expect when they checked the solar oven they’d placed in a field near Blue Ridge Community College on a mid-December afternoon. The sun was out, but a cold wind blew, and the temperatures were below freezing.After two hours, the SunOven should have heated up to 400 degrees, but in the Shenandoah Valley in mid-December? Not likely.
Haiti, of course, would be a different story, and that’s where the SunOven is headed. There’s no shortage of sun — and warm temperatures — in Haiti.
Samples, Aronoff and the rest of BRCC’s Students for Free Enterprise will take the oven to the island of La Gonave next month to train an entrepreneur and help get his baking business going. Haiti Outreach Foundation will provide supplies and support the project.
While they are on La Gonave, the group also will continue a successful trend in helping Haitian families raise rabbits for sale.
In a country where jobs are precious, creating a sustainable home business is a powerful enterprise. Already SIFE, along with Haiti Outreach Foundation, has helped establish a rabbit cooperative supporting a number of families in Zabricot. In January, the group will use funds students have raised to purchase rabbits for a similar operation in Signeau.
“We are currently arranging for the rabbits to be purchased and transported from the Zabricot Cooperative on LaGonave — which will add to the sustainability of that cooperative as well,” said Rebecca Evans, the SIFE advisor. “We’re excited. The demand for rabbits is incredible and the opportunity these entrepreneurial farm ventures offer the poor is life changing.”
In Staunton, a new partnership with Haiti is budding.
In the gymnasium at Stuart Hall School in early December, several hundred middle and upper school students scurried through the doors to designated spots along the walls. There they packed up bags of small gifts — toys, barrettes, party favors — and bagged them up for new friends, half for girls, half for boys. Then they wrote letters and students taking French classes translated them into that language.
They were making gifts for boys and girls in Haiti.
Stuart Hall, along with five area Episcopal churches in Staunton, Waynesboro and Bath County, work in partnership with the teachers and students of St. Marc’s School in Cerca La Source, a remote village in the Haiti’s Central Plateau not from the border with the Dominican Republic.
The gathering of churches and Stuart Hall is called the Haiti Collaborative. Step by step, project by project, fundraiser by fundraiser, the collaborative has committed to helping St. Marc’s School.
The partnership could result in funding a five-classroom school, help with teachers’ salaries, provide a daily meal. It is remarkable how little money would take to meet most of these goals — $1,540 per classroom, $38 a month for a teachers’ salary, $46 a month for the head teacher. Feeding the 150 registered students a daily meal of rice and beans is among the most costly commitment, $1,600 a month for food, labor and equipment.
Only having started regular conversations and study since June, the Haiti Collaborative members have not committed to any specific level of help, a step they will make as the partnership develops..
But even as those decisions are being made, the church congregations and vestries are gathering funds for St. Marc’s School, and the gift packages have been sent.
Pere Walin Descamp, the priest who oversees the school project in Cerca La Source, sent an early thank-you note. Descamp visited Trinity Episcopal in April, sparking much of the interest in partnership.
“On behalf of all the parents, students and the staff of St Marc’s school/church in Cerca La Source, I just want to thank you so deeply for this your kindness to the school kids more especially. I am very sure that they will enjoy these wonderful gifts,” he wrote in an e-mail.
Benefits of the relationship run deep and wide. Kelly McFarland, a senior at Stuart Hall, helped lead the school project. It is a natural fit with her interest in community involvement.
“It really makes a difference when one person gets involved,” she said.
“The students here are so willing to help out. It’s so satisfying.”
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As part of the Haiti Collaborative, the upper school began raising money this fall to buy gifts for the children of St. Marc’s. It was to be a symbol of their friendship. By hosting a “dress down” day, during which the students could wear jeans and T-shirts for a small donation of $2, and other contributions, the students collected $320.
McFarland said most of the students were hooked as soon as they heard the facts of Haiti, how little money its residents make and how seldom children get regular meals.
“They go right into, ‘I want to help. How can I help?’”
The congregation of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Staunton has sponsored several children through Chemen Lavi, a nonprofit founded in part by Patrick Eugene, a James Madison University student from Saltedere, Haiti.
“People were leaving shoes at the door of the church,” said Earlette Anderson, who added the project started after Eugene spoke to the congregation about the needs in Haiti.
“That’s what God wants you do, to share your blessings with others,” she said. “And that’s what we do.”
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Permission to republish granted by Cindy Corell
Email her at ccorell@newsleader.com
Link to the Daily NewsLeader, Staunton, Virginia: http://www.newsleader.com/….
Haiti’s high mountains, once green and lush, are nearly bald because people cut the trees to use as charcoal. Without flora to hold the precious topsoil, rain washes it from the hillsides making agricultural endeavors nearly impossible and further polluting creeks and rivers where most people get their drinking water.
It adds up to make Haiti the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Among the thousands of organizations that want to help are hundreds of people from the Shenandoah Valley.
Projects range in size from a shoe drive by members of Staunton’s Ebenezer Baptist Church — 400 pairs of shoes designated for Haiti — to a collaborative effort known as Haiti Outreach Foundation Inc., which began in 2007 through St. Francis Catholic Church and continues to grow.
Dr. Linda Kofeldt who was instrumental in getting the foundation started said she was amazed at how many people in the Valley have projects in Haiti.
“I know there are a lot of people all over the country helping there, but I can tell you, person-for-person, head-for-head, there are more people in this Valley helping out,” she said.
“If you throw a stone, you’re going to hit three people who have been to Haiti.”
Patrick Eugene is not surprised so many people in the area travel to the tiny nation, only an hour’s flight from Miami.
He came to the U.S. from Haiti in 2006 to study computer science, starting out at Blue Ridge Communty College and now studying as a senior at James Madison University. In early December, he began teaching Haitian Creole to more than a dozen local people who visit partner schools or communities in Haiti.
“One reason so many go is because Haiti is so close,” Eugene said. “If they prefer, they can go to Haiti on a Friday and come back on Sunday or Monday.”
Eugene’s parents encouraged each of their five children to take any opportunity for higher education.
“They always are pushing us,” he said. “They say, ‘If you can get access, push yourself. And I want you to come back to help people here.’”
He met a handful of his students before the Haitian Creole class started, and Eugene had a question for them:
“I never met anybody who has been to Haiti who doesn’t say, ‘I love the people there.’”
“Why?”
One of his students, the Rev. Roger Bowen has been going to Haiti for 27 years, partnering Episcopal schools with schools in Haiti. The payoff, he said, is tremendous, because in spite of their poverty and need, the people in the countryside exude a spirit of resilience and deep faith, a spirit that inspires visitors.
“I go sometimes for selfish reasons,” Bowen said. “But it wears off, so I have to go back.”
For almost everyone who travels to Haiti, the first trip is rife with unforgettable sights, smells and sounds.
Lacey Derrow’s expectations weren’t that high, but arriving in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere for the first time last spring still shocked her. She and other Blue Ridge Community College students went with Students for Free Enterprise to help people in a village on the island of La Gonave establish a rabbit cooperative.
“I expected to not shower much, more or less get a wake-up call,” she said. “But when we came out of the staircase of the plane, we saw cops chasing someone down the street. There were burning piles of garbage, big holes in the streets. Going out to La Gonave, someone was bailing water out the back of the boat.”
Quickly, showering moved even further down Derrow’s list of priorities.
All the reading and study he could manage wasn’t enough to prepare the Rev. Rob Sherrard for Haiti. He first went in 1984 to establish a partnership with an Episcopal parish near Leogane.
“When we got to the airport in Port-au-Prince — at that time it was a complete mess, chaos,” he said. “If I could have crawled back up into my mother’s arms and be rocked a little bit, I’d have appreciated that.”
Dr. Dennis Hatter of Stuarts Draft describes vivid sights and sounds from the clinics he has hosted on the trip he has taken nearly every year since 2000.
With a day’s notice, hundreds of Haitians flood to the small brick building he uses in Poulay. Some carry old Coke bottles with corncob stoppers in case they’re lucky enough to carry liquid medicine home with them.
Old gardeners wait hours for a cortisone shot for arthritic shoulders and elbows. The medication almost immediately relieves the pain, and like veteran athletes, the patients wiggle their shoulders with joy.
“They will dance around afterward, moving their arms back and forth,” Hatter said. “It will hold them for a while.”
On a recent trip, two young girls brought in an infant. When he examined the child, the medical problem wasn’t evident.
“I asked the translator, what do they want? What’s wrong with the baby?
“She said, ‘They want you to take it. They want to give away the baby.”
As Megan Samples, who will go to Haiti with the SIFE group for the first time next month, says, “Haiti is a basket case when it comes to needs.”
Permission to republish granted by Cindy Corell
Email her at ccorell@newsleader.com
Link to the Daily NewsLeader, Staunton, Virginia: http://www.newsleader.com/
Patrick Eugene studies computer science at James Madison University, but teaching comes naturally. His father teaches math and history in the family’s native country, Haiti. His parents asked each of their five children to get as much education as possible — then come home.
Haiti needs them.
In his classroom in Staunton, however, Eugene does not employ computers or any technology, just a textbook, a small whiteboard and a room filled with students of all ages eager to learn Haitian Creole. They each have ties to Haiti, most of them service-oriented.
Haiti needs them, too.
Across the Shenandoah Valley, dozens of organizations are helping in Haiti. Most of the groups are churches, but there are also civic groups, schools and colleges.
In this series, we tell the stories of a handful of those groups, how Haiti beckoned them to her shores and why they continue to return.
Haiti needs them, but in many ways, they have grown to need Haiti as well.
It’s no small thing, going to Haiti. Anti-malaria pills and inoculations against typhoid and hepatitis are advised, and it’s not uncommon to learn a violent uprising will postpone a planned journey. Every few years, the U.S. State Department advises against travel because of political turmoil.
However in spite of the challenges, Americans go to help establish businesses, treat patients and dig wells. They usually are drawn because someone they know has gone or because there is so much to do.
About the size of Maryland, Haiti makes up the western third of the island of Hispaniola, and it is the very description of destitute.Most of its 9 million people live in dire poverty, making less than $2 a day if they’re lucky enough to find work, and maybe eating one meal a day.
Parents sometimes send children as young as 6 to live with families in the cities in hopes they will be given sufficient food and housing. About 225,000 of these child servants, known as restaveks, perform household duties in urban homes, and in many cases, are beaten and sexually abused.
(to be continued Thursday, January 14, 2009)
This documentary goes into great detail to show us how the ‘Corporation, being a legal entity’, qualifies as an individual and has been given living privileges which go under scrutiny of a mock psychiatrist and are diagnosed as being psychopath. Listed below are the six signs of a complete psychopath:
• Callous unconcern for the feelings of others.
• Reckless disregard for the safety of others.
• Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships
• Deceitfulness; repeated lying and conning others for profit
• Capacity to experience quilt
• Failure to conform to social norm with respect to lawful behaviors.
The case study that really caught my eye was the ‘Investigators-News Reporters’ TV show aired by FOX TV. Two of their former employees were supposed to report the facts as they found it. The show had really cool smoke effects etc. and was supposed to be really impressive. Until, FOX decided to not report the revealed facts. A company named Monsanto was promoting a chemical Posilac in a commercial and stated that there would be “lost income opportunity” if you didn’t give this drug to your cows. The drug was harmful causing unnecessary pain, suffering and distress for the cows. The cow’s uterus becomes infected and the infected puss drips into the milk taken from them. The milk then makes its way to the grocery store shelves with hidden bacteria in it. “Reckless disregard for the safety of others” people didn’t know about it because Monsato paid off the lawyers to keep it hush hush.
The employees were fired from FOX TV because they wouldn’t do the show. The lawyers from Monsanto had met with FOX TV and on purpose changed the words to make it not look so bad. The employees sued FOX TV and were awarded a lot of money. But, again the rich Corporate found a loophole and said that falsifying reports was not a crime. How can that not be a crime? “Deceitfulness; repeated lying and conning others for profit” they on purpose sell this milk knowing it can harm people, and took back the award money.
I am curious about the employees who work at dairy farms. If the drug Posilac is being given to their cows, how many know about it and are keeping it quite. Do they buy and drink the milk? “Capacity to experience guilt” how can they live with themselves?
One of the reformed CEO’s made a statement about knowingly selling a chemical that was going to kill a living organism. He compared it to shooting someone with a gun. This would be a crime. As long as you can see a crime right away, it’s a crime. If you can’t see it right away then who will ever know what really caused their death? “Callous unconcern for the feelings of others” we started with the birth of a corporation and are ending up with death of a corporation.
Finally I would like to have the list for the top 100 Corporations. A list of the laws they have broken. Monsanto, Eli Lilly, Upjohn, & American Cyanamid - would get $500 Million from marketing rbST worldwide. Some of the Companies, here in the U.S. actually look for the most desperate people in need; the ones that have no food, or water, and live overseas to help bless, by building them factories in their country. They use them to keep more of their money over here in the U.S. When they are done with the first batch of desperate people, they dump them and find more. “Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships” If they signed up with the ‘Social Responsibility’ website and made a pledge to change something they were doing wrong to the environment within their company. Did they follow through with their pledge? Or are they still breaking the law? I would like to see their sales volume and how much they spend on advertising. “Failure to conform to social norm with respect to lawful behaviors” do they pass the test?
Windows mobile offers Excel, Microsoft Word, Powerpoint Presentation
Apps: Purchase apps through Windows Marketplace for Mobile. Have them your way and pay by credit card or charge it to your mobile bill. Try them out if you don’t them you can return it within 24 hours.
Netflix: Manage your Netflix account. Watch movie trailers, purchase movies to watch on you Xbox 360
Pandora: Create your own radio station with the music you like. You control the playlist. Take your music with you.
Guitar Hero III Mobile: Trial version upgrade to full game for one time purchase of $14.99. Or you can get a subscription model - $4.49 per month. Be your favorite character and four authentic guitars. You can earn achievements; grow your own song list monthly.
Designer phones: Designer wallpapers and themes.
Instant messaging: Take it with you instant messaging on Windows phone, PC or your Xbox.
Facebook: upload pictures, videos, update your status, add or confirm friend. Come preloaded on the Windows phones, or you can download it for free.
Email: Keep track of your Yahoo, Hotmail, Outlook Mobile, Windows Live and Gmail etc…
Camera: Transfer photos and videos from phone to PC; email file to a friend, do Facebook and Flicker.
Twitter: Twitter, MySpace, Hi5, social networking just got even easier.
Microsoft My Phone service: Back up your phone’s contents to the My Phone web site for password-protected access and retrieval of your contacts, photos, text messages, and more from any PC with an Internet connection.
MSN Widgets: The new MSN Widgets provides real-time information on weather and stocks.
“The creative is the place where no one else has ever been. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.” — Alan Alda
“The most potent muse of all is our own inner child.”
– Stephen Nachmanovitch
Perseverance according to the Encarta English Dictionary: Perseverance is the determined continuation with something, steady and continued action or belief, usually over a long period and especially despite difficulties or setbacks.
Purpose, determination and with tenacity make your mind made up to bring forth “Continuous effort- not strength or intelligence-is the key to unlocking our potential” Linda Cordes
Perseverance may well be our greatest asset. As we forge ahead on a project, it loses its power over us. Our confidence and abilities grow in concert with your progress on the project, preparing us to tackle the next one too.
We have something special, uniquely our own to offer in this life. And we also have the potential to offer it successfully. However, we don’t always realize our potential. Many of us stifled our development with fears of failure, low self-worth, assumed inadequacies. The past need plaque us no longer.
Help is readily available for us to discover our capacities for success. Abilities stand ready to be tapped; goals and projects await our recognition. Any commitment we make to a task that draws our interest will be reinforced by God’s commitment o our efforts. We have a partner. Our efforts are always doubled when we make them-truly make them.
I will not back away from a project today. I will persevere and find completion. I’ll feel completed.
Now you can have it all!You city slickers can have a little bit of country to play with. You can even invite your neighbors to play and to even help you with your garden.Farmville has a little bit of everything.
Expand with a plantation, or family farm, homestead.
Vehicles: Tractors, harvesters, seeders and even gas. Check out what Washington times says about Farmville.
“FarmVille has become the fastest-growing social game on the Internet since its launch in June. Almost 60 million people are signed up; 21 million play every day. They log on from all over the world, from North America to Europe to Asia. The game started out female-dominated, but now its Facebook fan page is more evenly split, with 59 percent female fans and 41 percent male. Young people love the game: Half of its fans are younger than 25; 76 percent are younger than 35.”
Self –advocate; Be Your Own Best Friend. This is very basic — almost intrinsic to our well-being and self-esteem. It is our birthright to be alive and be conscious. It is on this level that we acknowledge our own value, our own self-worth, our right to exist. Yet, we also have in our power to choose to nullify this birthright and deny being our own best friend and having our own self-interest at heart…..
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However, even with the lowest sense of self-esteem, the principle of basic self-acceptance is a life force which propels you to do something, to grow and to change. Being your own best friend, advocating for yourself, allows you to call for help to a doctor or counselor when you are in the depths of self-despair. It is when addicts finally acknowledge to themselves that they can’t take drugs anymore because they are killing themselves that they seek treatment and succeed…..
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There is a song by Mariah Carey called, “Hero,” which says, “the hero lies in you.” You show you’re a hero when you have a healthy sense of self-esteem. However, building that sense of confidence and self-worth often involves a lot of effort and struggle — as you’ve seen in my previous articles…..
To “live” the six pillars of self-esteem takes work. You’ll sometimes fear you can’t do it because it’s too difficult. You may face periods of rejection from your own ego as well as from your friends, family, colleagues or teachers…..
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“Living consciously may obligate us to confront our fears; it may bring us in contact with unresolved pain. Self-acceptance may require that we make real to ourselves thoughts, feelings and actions that disturb our equilibrium. It may shake up our ‘official’ self-concept. Self-responsibility obliges us to face our ultimate aloneness. It demands we relinquish fantasies of a rescuer. Self-assertiveness entails the courage to be authentic with no guarantees of how others will respond; it means that we risk being ourselves. Living purposefully pulls us out of the passivity into the demanding life of high focus; it requires that we be self-generators. Living with integrity demands that we choose our values and stand by them, whether this is pleasant and whether others share our convictions?”….
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First we decide that our self-esteem and our happiness matter more than short term discomfort or pain. We take baby steps at being more conscious, more accepting, responsible and so on. We notice that we like ourselves more. That inspires us to push on and attempt to go further. We become more truthful to ourselves and others.
“Self-esteem rises. We take on harder assignments. We feel a little tougher, a little more resourceful. It becomes easier to confront discomforting emotions and threatening situations. We feel we have more assets (which will help us) cope. We become more self-assertive. We feel ￂ? Stronger.
“We are building the spiritual equivalent of a muscle. Experiencing ourselves as more powerful, we see difficulties in a more realistic perspective. We may never be entirely free of fear or pain, but they have lessened immeasurably and we are not intimidated by them. Integrity feels less threatening and more natural.”….
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Pillars of Self-esteem: Principle Two - Self-acceptance….
Walt Disney:
Our heritage and ideals, our codes and standards - the things we live by and teach our children - are preserved or diminished by how freely we exchange ideas and feeling…..
I want my children to understand the world, but not just because the world is fascinating and the human mind is curious. I want them to understand it so that they will be positioned to make it a better place. Knowledge is not the same as morality, but we need to understand if we are to avoid past mistakes and move in productive directions. An important part of that understanding is knowing who we are and what we can do… Ultimately, we must synthesize our understandings for ourselves. The performance of understanding that try matters are the ones we carry out as human beings in an imperfect world which we can affect for good or for ill. (Howard Gardner 1999: 180-181)
The seven intelligences documented by Gardner.
Linguistic intelligence involves sensitivity to spoken and written language, the ability to learn languages, and the capacity to use language to accomplish certain goals. This intelligence includes the ability to effectively use language to express oneself rhetorically or poetically; and language as a means to remember information. Writers, poets, lawyers and speakers are among those that Howard Gardner sees as having high linguistic intelligence.
Logical-mathematical intelligence consists of the capacity to analyze problems logically, carry out mathematical operations, and investigate issues scientifically. In Howard Gardner’s words, it entails the ability to detect patterns, reason deductively and think logically. This intelligence is most often associated with scientific and mathematical thinking.
Musical intelligence involves skill in the performance, composition, and appreciation of musical patterns. It encompasses the capacity to recognize and compose musical pitches, tones, and rhythms. According to Howard Gardner musical intelligence runs in an almost structural parallel to linguistic intelligence.
Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence entails the potential of using one’s whole body or parts of the body to solve problems. It is the ability to use mental abilities to coordinate bodily movements. Howard Gardner sees mental and physical activity as related.
Spatial intelligence involves the potential to recognize and use the patterns of wide space and more confined areas.
Interpersonal intelligence is concerned with the capacity to understand the intentions, motivations and desires of other people. It allows people to work effectively with others. Educators, salespeople, religious and political leaders and counsellors all need a well-developed interpersonal intelligence.
Intrapersonal intelligence entails the capacity to understand oneself, to appreciate one’s feelings, fears and motivations. In Howard Gardner’s view it involves having an effective working model of ourselves, and to
Gardner claimed that the seven intelligences rarely operate independently. They are used at the same time and tend to complement each other as people develop skills or solve problems.
Seven kinds of intelligence would allow seven ways to teach, rather than one.
Mindy L. Kornhaber (2001: 276), a researcher involved with Project Zero, has identified a number of reasons why teachers and policymakers in North America have responded positively to Howard Gardner’s presentation of multiple intelligences. Among these are that:
… the theory validates educators’ everyday experience: students think and learn in many different ways. It also provides educators with a conceptual framework for organizing and reflecting on curriculum assessment and pedagogical practices. In turn, this reflection has led many educators to develop new approaches that might better meet the needs of the range of learners in their classrooms.
It has helped a significant number of educators to question their work and to encourage them to look beyond the narrow confines of the dominant discourses of skilling, curriculum, and testing.
Having a positive attitude is one of the keys to success. While surfing the web, I found a list of 10 Commandments for Leadership
“1. People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
2. If you do good, people with accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
3. If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.
4. The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
5. Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.
6. The biggest people with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest people with the smallest ideas.
Think big anyway.
7. People favor underdogs, but follow only topdogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
8. What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
9. People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help them anyway.
10. Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.
It all boils down to having a positive self-image and a secure base of operations. A positive concept of “self” is derived from inner conviction and consistency.”