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Endless Riches! Mme Franck Paul
Is 90!

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Madame Franck Paul with two illustrious graduates of College
Canapé Vert on the occasion of her 89th birthday, April 2025.

TODAY is the DAY!
Madame MARIE MARTHE BALIN FRANCK
PAUL turns 90!



April 19, 1936 Marie Marthe is born. Fourth child, second daughter of Haiti's Supreme Court Justice Leon Balin, she's prodigious in her quick learning. Age 17, 1953, she begins to teach, by choice, in Haiti's countryside. 1960s, she and Marc Franck Paul have three sons while she continues to teach in Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince.

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Among the Mademoiselles who are Mme. Franck Paul's students then, Port-au-Prince's 1960s, is another superb benefactor of Haiti, Mme. Marie Jo Poux, founder of the F.E.P.E. (Foyer Espoir Pour les Enfants) orphanage and a collaborator with Mme. Franck Paul after the hugely devastating Earthquake of January 12, 2010.

Mme. Franck Paul completes the building of College Canape Vert in 1974, midway uphill from flatland Port-au-Prince and Petionville, and becomes its Principal ... through to now ... graduating more than 20,000 Haitians for University. 

1986 to 1988, she becomes both Mayor of Port-au-Prince and Haiti's Minister of Education. She initiates programs for satellite Schools, their ratio 10 students per teacher, and home gardening. 

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1990s into the 21st century, Miche Balin Déjean, Marie Marthe's sister and elder, returns to Port-au-Prince with
her husband Joseph (once Haiti's Ambassador to Mexico and Great Britain) after 25+ years of exile. The sisters flourish at College Canapé Vert. Miche manages finances. She helps Marie Marthe publish Books and record Songs.

The irrepressible and celebratory problem-solver Madame Roger is protagonist in a series by M.M. Paul, from Editiones Canapé Vert, for young-adult readers.

Among the several Textbooks authored by Madame Franck Paul is one, Mon Livre Unique, that serves as a 243-page instructor to first-year students, distributed
in 110,000 copies across Haiti's 10 Departments, year after year for much of this century. Mathematics, Physical Sciences, Writing, Hygiene, Dance, ... and four Languages (Haitian Kréyol, French, English and Spanish) are among the Subjects for learning and Quizzes in the 25 Modules of Mon Livre Unique. 

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The sisters rebuilt College Canapé Vert after the Earthquake of January 12, 2010 reduced the School to
a square-block of tossed slabs and piles of rubble. 
Marie Marthe continued to record and to publish. 

Here, please hear her song of Christmastime 2012,
"Un volé de la Lune" ("Who Stole The Moon")                      from a Page elsewhere on this Website.

Mme. Franck Paul also wrote in 2012 a biography of 
Toussaint Louverture, the General and statesman who
led Haiti's winning Revolution, for young Adults. Please read and hear it on this Page.

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Miche Balin Déjean lived to complete construction
of the new College Canapé before her passing in March 2015. The College's Auditorium and Performing Arts Center is named for her. 

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Members of College Canapé Vert's Philosophers' Club, February 2025,
in the Miche Balin Déjean Auditorium.

Marie Marthe and her colleagues continue every working-day. Despite COVID, Airport closures and blockading 'Manifestations", CCV has regularly served more than 470 Students each School-Day in this decade.  Mme. Franck Paul have recorded 148 half-hour-long Video Lessons in finishing her 'Lèkol Toupatou' project of making Literacy available to all Haitians. 

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Marie Marthe regularly wins awards. Her peers across Haiti voted her the Prix Rochombe in 2019. She used the Prix's prize-money to tile Stairways within College Canapé Vert.
 

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Last year her frequent collaborator Claude Bernard Sérant débuted his documentary about Mme. Franck Paul's career, 'Une enseignante exceptionnelle'. 

Recognitions have mounted during the decade. 

Mme. Franck Paul always attributes successes to her partners.

Marie Jo Poux, Marie Marthe, and Mireille Chery Antoine in June 2018. 
Snapshot by Don Paul, the Delmas district of Port-au-Prince.

"A teacher never dies," Marie Jo has said in reference to her own carrying on in the example of Marie Marthe--and, I may add, the reference also reflects on students of the FEPE orphanage and its companion School, Ecole Foyer Espoir (EFE), who are already emulating the generosity and dutifulness of Marie Jo.

Students and teachers at College Canapé Vert, active in photos and video sent in Feburary and March of our current year, may offer the most compelling, charming and heartening evidence of Marie Marthe's life's work ... winning her a kind of beloved eternity.

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Please check out our 'Students and Song'--the 'JAMBAR Song" composed by Mme. Franck Paul--Page of this year.

Happiest of Birthdays, Amine (Maryse as a 3-year-old pronounced her Aunt's name of Marie Marthe as "Amine") and may you climb another decade more!

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