CA Set to Mark 5th Anniversary of Haiti Earthquake
Colorado Academy, a pre-K through grade 12 school in southwest Denver, will mark the fifth anniversary of the catastrophic 2010 Haiti earthquake with a school-wide event on January 9 at 9:15 a.m. at 3800 South Pierce Street in Denver, Colorado.
The Archdeacon of Haiti’s Central Plateau, Jean Joseph Jeannot of Haiti will attend the event. Also in attendance will be Denver’s Executive Director of Human Rights Community Partnerships, Derek Okubo, attending on behalf of Mayor Michael Hancock, as well Colorado Academy Head of School Dr. Mike Davis, and Richard and Lisa Harris who are founders of the Road to Hope Foundation and parents of nine children including two adopted from Haiti (five are students at CA).
“We are honored to welcome our Haitian partner, Pere Jeannot, to Colorado at this historic moment, and we thank Colorado Academy and the Denver Mayor’s office for their partnership in global philanthropy and sustainability,” said Rich Harris, Co-founder of The Road To Hope Foundation, and founder The Harris Law Firm.
The event will take place in the CA’s gymnasium with CA’s 950 students. After the 2010 earthquake, Colorado Academy formed a partnership with St. Patrick’s of Nordette, one of the 13 schools overseen by Pere Jeannot. Nordette is a rural village in the mountainous region of the Central Plateau. The school serves more than 100 students from primary grades through high school.CA faculty and students, with members of the Harris family, have traveled to St. Patrick’s multiple times over the past five years, working with Pere Jeannot and the villagers to forge a sustainable partnership between the two communities. CA’s Student Philanthropy Board voted to fund the purchase of goats for the village’s children, CA students have sewn clothing for children in Nordette, and working through the generosity of the Road to Hope Foundation, students at St. Patrick’s now have benches and tables to use during class, and a school building is currently under construction.
Pere Jeannot visited Colorado in November to take part in a fundraising event that will help underwrite construction of the school. That event was hosted by renowned Colorado photographer John Fielder, who traveled with the Harris’ to Nordette to collaborate on the book, Nadia’s Good Deed, with Rachel Harris, photographing the village and its people in nearby Mirebalais.
On January 12, 2010, a 7.3 magnitude earthquake struck Haiti; an estimated 316,000 were killed, over 1.5 millions were displaced, and more than 4,992 schools were destroyed. In the year that followed, tropical storms and a cholera outbreak heightened an already immense humanitarian crisis.
“We are grateful to the Harris family at Colorado Academy and its creation of the Road to Hope Foundation that has provided support for our efforts in Haiti,” says CA’s Head of School Dr. Mike Davis. “This partnership is what allows us to help the children of Nordette and to teach our own students about the complexity of such a crisis that we see in Haiti and other parts of the world – whether it is access to water and food to the importance of educating future generations.”
The Road to Hope Foundation is a Colorado 501c(3) foundation whose mission is a Haiti where children can grow up healthy, free from the trauma of abandonment. Projects are designed to meet the needs outlined by the 1989 UNICEF Bill of Rights’ principles: “Non-discrimination, devotion to the best interests of the child, the right to life, survival and development, and respect for the views of the child.” Donations are tax-deductible.
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