Architecture for Humanity, Bezos Family Foundation together with Global Nomads Group have collaborated to get young people helping with rebuilding Haiti's schools. There intention is to get American & Canadian high school students involved with fundraising and awareness raising.
What happens is that every dollar raised by the students, it will be matched in a grant form by AFH, Bezos and GNG. Schools in Haiti wishing to be part of this grant scheme apply to be registered in the program.
In order to forge relationships with students in Haiti, Global Nomads Group set up video web conferencing to enable the schools in the US and Canada to connect to the schools involved with the Student Rebuild Program in Haiti.
Us volunteers at AFH got a chance to sit in on one of Global Nomad Group''s video web conferences. It was between three schools in the US, and one school in Canada with the Haitian girls school called Ellie Dubois.
It was extremely exciting to witness this happening. Though teenagers being teenagers, they didn't seem all that enthused. However, after talking to the girls here, they actually really enjoy this and find these conferences interesting and useful.
In this partnership, we at AFH help design and build for the schools in Haiti. Ecole Ellie Dubois is one of the Student Rebuild grant schools.
The topic on the agenda during the video web conference was 'education,' and questions were open to the students in Haiti, US & Canada to ask each other anything related to that broader topic.
Questions such as what is your favourite subject and why to what did you think of people in Haiti. Of course the earthquake came into conversation alot and questions about how they have survived, what they felt going through such an ordeal and how they feel now were also hot topics.
I really think more of this type of partnership should be implemented in High Schools or even at Primary level. With great advances in technology and the ease of the connectivity through the internet, this makes for a great opportunity for cultural exchange. It is also a great way of fostering relationship in terms of support.
