Haiti Leve/ Youth Organized & United Together with Haiti (Y.O.U.T.H!)

This initiative is focused on creating dialogues for youth from around the world and across socio-economic and cultural boundaries to engage with each other to support Haitian youth-driven reconstruction efforts in Haiti.

An additional, optional component, is to run the full Global Potential program in a rural village in Central Haiti, partnering with Help Hayti to build schools to accommodate an influx of students displaced from Port-au-Prince by the earthquake, allowing 10 of our most mature students and alumni to spend 6 weeks living in solidarity with an affected (but safe) community, and participating daily in community service and cultural exchange.

The program will uniquely tap into the energy and ideas of Haitian youth in the Diaspora, in Dominican Republic and the United States, giving them an opportunity to contribute and serve, and become empowered in the process. These youth often live in marginalized villages, slums, and inner-city neighborhoods, and may lack options for pursuing their own dreams, for seeing their background as a source of strength, and for helping others to solve their problems rather than be frustrated at their lack of power to help.

Specifically, youth will discuss:

– Building Cross Cultural Understanding – Developing Personal and Community Leadership Skills – Discovering, Sharing, and Developing Solutions for youth to be able to initiate new efforts and guide existing efforts for reconstruction in their local community. – Creating relationships with other youth that will ensure ongoing support and attention

They will also build solidarity among traditionally marginalized communities and find space within which they can create relationships, discuss challenges they each face in their communities and societies, and share solutions and ideas for making things better. By also engaging Dominican youth in DR and New York, GP will go a long way in opening minds and reducing the ignorance and hatred that keeps the long-standing conflict between Haiti and DR flaring.

All program participants will be required to make a 3-year commitment to remain in dialogue, and to continue gathering and diverting resources towards the ongoing reconstruction efforts.