August-September 2016 Bright and beautiful, youth-education partners go forward

Sticking Up For Children's youth-education partners in Haiti and New Orleans continue to grace us with their determined progress. Maryse and I visited Haiti between September 20 and 27 and saw beautiful steps forward by the Ecole Pour les Enfants and College Canapé-Vert in Port-au-Prince and Ecole Youpi Youpi in Cayes jacmel.

What accomplishments staff and students continue to make despite very limited means!

We're also delighted by the participation of children and parents in our latest Music & Arts Day at the Ashé Cultural Arts Center in New Orleans, September 17, and by the program offered for this Autumn by the Kuumba Institute for its weekly students.

College Canapé-Vert has graduated more than 20,000 students since it was begun by Madame Marie-Marthe Balin Franck-Paul in 1974. Mme. Paul continued her school during the second Duvalier regime and even as she served as Mayor of Port-au-Prince between 1986 and 1989. She and her sister, Miche Balin Dejean, began a publishing-house during a subsequent embargo against Haiti through buying their own printing-press. Currently she authors a four-language

textbook that's distributed to students across Haiti in annual runs of 110,000 copies.

Here she is in Le Nouvelliste's 80th-brithday profile of her in April 2016. Click on image to read the profile by Claude Bernard Sérant.

College Canapé-Vert had to be rebuilt after the January 12, 2010 earthquake devastated much of Port-au-Prince. Four stories now are complete, with a rainwater reservoir that provides the

College with potable water. More than 300 students attend the school, Monday to Friday,

and additional classes and book-making groups meet on Saturdays.

College Canapé-Vert offers classes in Dance, Music, and plastic Arts to its students. Here

are five-year-old students performing in the College's newly opened auditorium last July.

CCV has recently opened a Salle Multi-Media. Last Satuday, Sept. 24, Jonathand Saintine, a teacher at Ecole Pour les Enfants (EPE), the companion school to Foyer Espoir Pour les Enfants,

crossed Port-au-Prince on via tap-tap truck-taxi so that he could advise CCV's new IT person about 3D printing, Today, October 1, marks the first collaboeration between EPE and CCV in

making 3D-printed objets d'art. Haitians do what they need to do!

Here's one blackboard, loaded with lessons in French, at College Canapé-Vert.

Ecole Pour les Enfants (EPE), the school that's companion to the Foyer Espoir Pour les Enfants orphanage (FEPE) in Port-au-Prince, teaches more than 150 students. It's done so since August

WITHOUT ELECTRICITY. (The "power company" is not providing service in EPE'S part of the Delmas district.)

Admirers of FEPE orphans' art may remember Oliver and his fine work with postcards and drumsticks-as-art. Here he is among his class of teen-aged peers at EPE.

Here is Oliver's teacher beside a blackboard that relates in French the beginnings of Microsoft computers, circa 1975.

Here, right to left from their persepective, are Nadine Bourciquot, Principal of EPE, with Claudine Aimé and Jonathand Saintine, two of the teachers trained in 3D printing by eNBLE at Healing Hands of Haiti last May and June.

Here are younger students at EPE, having the mid-day meal that the school provides.

On Sunday, Sept. 25, we wound south from Port-au-Prince to Jacmel and Cayes Jacmel on Haiti's south coast. Jean Hervé Paul, a teacher of Philosophy at College Canapé-Vert and a musician and Maryse's cousin, drove us in his 1993 Land Cruiser through mountain-and-ocean views that again caused our mouths to open in "Oh!" and "Wow!"

We visited Ecole Youpi Youpi in went to Haiti's south coast to visit Ecole Youpi Youpi. The school's Principal, Marie-Lynn Pastour, and her husband, Lupson, the person responsible for Youpi Youpi buildings' construction and expansion, showed us how their Ecole has grown.

Nine rooms now, beyond the five of January 2014. Nine Grades now, beyond six of 2014. 109 students now, beyond the 64 of 2014.

Here are Youpi Youpi students in September 2016, beginning school-day in their country locale.

Here are Lupson and Marie-Lynn beside one of the Youpi Youpi classrooms' blackboards.

You'll note that this blackboard is also loaded with lessons.

Another gratifying advance from Maryse's and my recent trip to Haiti is the establishment of plans for simulcast interaction between students at College Canape-Vert, EPE/FEPE, and Youpi

Youpi with students at the Kuumba Institute in the Ashé Cultural Arts Center of New Orleans.

Frederick "Hollywood" Delahoussahye and Kesha McKay, co-directors of Kuumba, are bringing

their students a focus on one African nation each Saturday this Autumn and Winter.

You may remember how intently Kuumba students learned about 3D printing from James Catalano and Adrienne Trahan in their workshop last July.

Now students will be able to engage in such workshops and in performances of dance, poetry, ...

simultaneously and across thousands of miles.

Back in the Ashé's Big Room, September 17, we had our first Music & Arts Day of the Autumn season. It was an especially lively ball.

Children and parents and our good, old staple of artists-of-any-age painted as master drummer

Fanfan Louis and young accompanists delivered rhythms. Here are Fanfan and 2-year-old Zach Schaeffer and 4-year-old Maxwell Yuratich.

This Music & Arts Day was again gladdened by the presence of Sticking Up For Children co-founders Cyril and Gaynielle Neville. Here they are with a pair of ProMark Giant-Sticks-as-Art that Cyril finished on that Day.

Thanks to partnerships with New Orleans' community-radio station WWOZ and the AdinkraNOLA school, the September 17, 2016 Music & Arts Day had a especially big turn-out.

As you might expect, too, we had a lot of international representation and a "tree-mendous" number of beautiful drumsticks-as-art.

The next Music & Arts Day is October 15 at the Ashé, 1724 Oretha Castle Haley Blvd. in New Orleans!

Our fourth annual Festiva and its Concert, Dinner, and Dance happens Thursday, December 8.

The Dance offer one of the most rhythms-making bands on the planet, Cyril Neville and the Family Groove. The Concert presents five of New Orleans most interesting and treasured drummers--Johnny Vidacovich, Alfred Roberts, Fanfan Louis of Haiti, Alexey Marti of Cuba, and Simon Lott--with five of the most outstanding horn-players based in New Orleans--Roger Lewis

and Kirk Joseph of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Donald Harrison, Evan Christopher, and Mario Abney. I get to produce this prodigious combination of musicians. The structure will be: each drummer chooses a rhythm embodying the concept of "New Orleans Music and the World" and a piece of about 10 minutes length is built from that basis with the other drummers and horn-players.

The food should be great, too! Thank you for your support! Look for nice surprises as regards additional SUFC events, to be announced over the next two weeks!