So what was accomplished? (edited post)

I am so thankful for the partners that I finally found to turn this vision into a reality. SOOO very thankful. As I said last time, working with trustworthy Christians who I know and respect has made a world of difference. It’s partly because they already know and respect me, but also because I fell upon a unique group of people who believe in my vision, who put forth excellence in all that they do. Previous relationship makes a huge difference. Of course that is natural, but I am still unsettled by how “un-natural” it feels to me the way so many people/professionals are unwilling to trust and help a perfect stranger with a good vision and good intentions. My dad told me many times, but it took me a long time to understand that when I approach someone with a great idea in Haiti, the first thing that they are wondering is “what is this guy trying to take from me?” The second question they ask is “how can I use this to my advantage?” It doesn’t matter what the project is. Those two questions almost always pass through the person’s mind.

A few weeks ago an American pastor, who used to run a Haitian adoption agency/orphanage, stayed in my home for a week. We had a lot of time to talk about his experiences in Haiti and our dreams and visions for Haiti. He told me a very unfortunate story of how he had to shut down the orphanage after being taken advantage of so many times. Why would people take advantage of a man who is helping fatherless children find families? Well, when they asked themselves the two questions that I mentioned earlier they determined that this pastor must be making a fortune by “selling” these children to American families. (If you are wondering how they can assume such a thing, look up the term “restavek” or “restavec” on Google and do a little reading). They also determined that they could capitalize on this supposed child-trafficking by stealing from him and/or requiring an unlawful “tax” for processing the children’s papers. Little did they know that this pastor was being forced to pay out of his own pocket because his ministry was running out of money. It was not uncommon for this already expensive process to become 10x more expensive than it should have been, all because of greedy, heartless men and women in power. All this because in a culture where everyone is used to doing whatever it takes to survive, people seem to have have little capacity to believe in purely good intentions. Not even from a little angel like me.

It was particularly difficult for me to adjust to this. But like I said several times already, this team from my church changed everything. I shared my vision and they took it and ran with it. Suddenly I don’t feel like the only one in the world that cares. I noted in the last week or two that the project is still moving slow, but this time its because the team cares about it and wants to do everything possible to make it a success. They have a strong desire to accomplish the goals of this project with excellence. There is a world of difference between how things are going now and how things went last year when I was working on a project through the Ministry of Education (government). In the M. of E. they only did the work because it was handed down to them from their boss. When I realized that they didn’t care enough to do the project well, I myself withdrew, because I was unwilling to put my name on yet another mediocre government project that makes them feel like they actually did their job. I would hate to help them make that mistake.

Now that I have a team, I find myself being more able to stick to what I am good at and entrusting other details to members of the team. This project forced me to do some things that I am not really hardwired to do. I’d say that for any project I am best used as a good set of eyes. Whether you need someone to see and envision the future, learn from the past, or to look over something current to find its strengths and faults and suggest improvements, I’m a great man for the job. These things I do very well, yet I did very little of that this summer. Those skills were only useful in the first month of research when I had to re-evaluate the need and adjust my plan to suit it. But more recently, I have been required to get down into the specific details. In the past couple weeks, while writing and translating the project/grant proposal, I was reminded that I don’t write grant proposals. At least not without getting a headache. I may have been forced to in past projects in Haiti because of lack of support, but truthfully I’m just not that kind of thinker.

When it comes to communicating, me and details aren’t very good friends. Its a strange thing. If you ask me questions, I can explain to you the details, because I’ve thought them over. But even if I can envision the whole thing in my head, I have trouble putting the minute details down concisely and clearly on paper. It’s as if I write with my head in the clouds. (Its strange that I can write concise political memos really well, but this skill still escapes me–probably because memos benefit more from my skill of evaluating a situation). What I do communicate well is vision and ideas. My proposal reflected that very well, and now a couple of my teammates who are more experienced and skilled in the domain of grant-writing are taking the vision, now clearly outlined and explained, and working with me to write a real proposal out of it. Then my evaluation skills will be handy again.

As I said, things slowed down again, but this time for a different reason. So chances are, I won’t be around for the initial meetings with the grant-givers and our potential speakers, but now I have full confidence in our team to handle that and many other things when I am gone. My project has truly become ours. It’s a really good feeling when you are able to share something as important as this. But now that I have about two weeks left, I have been thinking… “what have I really done here that is of value?” The only thing that I can say is that I dreamed and I persisted… I dreamed and I persisted through a difficult and unfamiliar terrain, and after rolling away many stones, I finally found fertile soil in which to plant my vision. Slowly, but this time very surely, it is growing. As you saw from my former posts, I had hoped to leave with a lot more tangible results. But after looking at the terrain, and seeing this idea in the hands of capable and passionate people, I believe that I can truly say that my mission was accomplished. At least a very important part of it. I have many years ahead of me to work with this same team. I’m confident that we will see the rest of the vision come to pass in the near future. Then again, I am a hyper-optimistic idealist…

Ahh… Much Better

Things have gotten much better since we established a team in my church to move the project forward. We have similar schedules, so it is much easier for us to meet together and even talk on the regular without planning (I see many of them every day). It’s also much better because they already know and respect me. One man, a doctor, was unable to make an important planning meeting on Saturday. Any minute now he will be coming to my house to find out what he missed. I would have never asked him to do that, especially after working with other busy people in Port-au-Prince. I half-way expected to have to chase him down, but the pre-established relationship changes things completely.

We have the resources available to create a great internship program through professionals in the church alone, but in order to tap all of those resources, there is some preliminary work that would be required by the church’s association of professionals, which is still being developed. We have chosen, rather, to keep our focus on organizing a conference to get the issues out in the open, and developing and providing resources to students to help them find alternative routes toward their career goals. We hope to provide internships through our more obvious resources, but it will not be highly publicized. You could call it a pilot for the original pilot program that I was developing. That means that my original plan has become a long term goal.

The team-members came-up with a fantastic line-up of potential speakers for our conference. They know some pretty amazing people (one team member is a journalist for a major radio station, so between he and my dad, we probably had all of the contacts that we needed). On the list we have people with unbelievable success stories, people who are great motivators, and people with a lot of vision who are all capable of giving our teens new focus. By the end of the week, I should have completed an English version of our project proposal for the conference (for grants). A member of the team will help me with the French version next week. We have several places to submit our proposal that will get back to us within a week, so within that week of waiting, we hope to begin contacting our list of superstars.

I think that one of the most important things that I am learning to do this summer is how to “degaje’m” in Haiti. That is Creole for “make due with what you’ve got.” In the U.S. I’m used to regular schedules, timeliness, courtesy calls for canceled meetings. It’s not the same here. Degaje is the most important verb for any Haitian entrepreneur to learn. I’ve always been resourceful and flexible, but “degaje” is on a whole new level. In the U.S. people say to make lemonade out of the lemons that life throws at you. Well, let me tell ya, I’ve got a whole lot of lemonade to sell. At least now, I finally found some sugar.

Things are moving along…

Things are moving slowly, but sure enough, they are moving. In recent days I had a chance to present my ideas before a group of young professionals and talk it over with some people who work with young people and others who I trust for good insight. Standing before the group of young profs on Sunday was an enlightening experience. They shed some light on various obstacles that lie ahead of us. The biggest obstacle, as I had expected, is a question that I will probably hear from just about every potential internship employer: “What’s in it for me?” In Haiti, its a big favor you’re asking when you ask someone to let you into their business. Even when you are well-educated and qualified it is hard to get in unless you know someone inside. And now we want them to open up a door to an under-qualified high school pre-graduate… Wow, when I write it, it sounds even more ambitious than before. We need some really good reasons.

I had no problem finding this kind of program when I researched U.S. organizations. Companies that take in teen interns ask for little or nothing in return, and sometimes pay the underqualified interns out of their own pockets. But here, in order to start such a program, we are going to need some sponsors/grants in order to put something into the interns’ (and probably even the employers’) pockets, and we have to rely on our own personal business contacts and social status to sway some employers. It would be difficult to make this program appealing to a businessman as a complete outsider. Thankfully, three of the four current team members (Delva, Nico, and myself) are pastors in 3 different, semi-affluent (or at least large, in my case) churches. And two of us inherited well-known and well-respected names (thanks daddios). That should be a good springboard to get us started.

Another good question that was raised was “why are we looking only at the professions that require a university education, especially when job market for these professions is thin?” It took me a minute to understand it (in fact I didn’t fully understand until I was driving home talking to my friend/”chauffeur,” J.P. Simpson). At first I thought, well, “their participation in our program can give them an edge after they graduate.” But then I saw that giving an edge to one person doesn’t solve the problem, it just takes the edge from another.

In the car, Simpson talked to me about how things have changed over the years and young people no longer look at bakers, brick-masons, mechanics, tailors, and shoemakers as true professionals. Hardly anyone aspires to these professions these days, yet they require services from a few of them each day. These people make a living on their own. Graduates w/o work experience and w/o connections don’t. I immediately saw this mentality as something that could be worked on through our program. So now the new idea that we are entertaining is how can we work internships within these other professions into the program… I’ll let you know how things develop.

In Case You Missed Me…

In case you missed me while I was in the U.S., (and for the last couple weeks, for that matter) here are a few updates as to what is going on in Haiti.

1.) I am no longer working with the Government with the project that I had in the Education Department. I really hope that I never HAVE to again… really. Not until we have some passionate people in office who actually want to do their work well for the nation. It basically fell apart because of time. Still, as a result, there are many seeds planted for further work in the future. I just hope that I can use those seeds and contacts to work with a group that is a bit more passionate about the project.

2.) Yes I am coming back to finish Undergrad… geez! In fact, i am adding a whole semester to finish my Psych requirements (which I previously dropped).

3.) I am not the president yet, but I will be taking an important Political office on January 6th. That office is “Pastor of Eglise de Dieu des Premiers Chretiens.” Its a pretty important one, especially if you have my dad’s name. I will be ordained on that day.

4.) After several attempts, the youth group is alive and kicking. Some changes in leadership and structure, and some sort of Godly passion which struck our leaders led to that revival. Anyone from the Mission Team who is interested in skipping school with me for a week in February to go to Camp with them, let me know.

5.) Working with the kids at church has been amazing. I love them, they love me. There is no feeling as great as the one you get when a child brightens up with excitement in every possible way by simply seeing you. Even the ones that I do not know. Ahhhh….. I’m really gonna miss that. We are still working with the new model for children’s ministry, but it needs some tweeking. We need some more children’s leaders and teachers (which is one reason I am excited that the youth group is alive and kicking), and we need them to be well informed and well rounded leaders, able to talk to their 8 or so kids about anything in life on a personal level. We hope to make a call and start a class for our current and new monitors.

6.) Our newest project is an expansion for the orphanage. It is the most exciting of all news. It is hard to explain in a few words but imagine this. What if you could completely fulfil James 1:27 and take care of orphans AND widows with one action? What if, in doing so, you give everyone who was once lonely a family? Yes it’s possible, and its about to be done. We are excited.

On another note, anyone who is sending emails or calling, if my responses seem sporadic, it is because our internet and phone connection has not worked since the last hurricane (over a month). I don’t know when that will be fixed.
Keep Praying for Us.
Love you all!
See you Soon.
God Bless You!

(Pastor) Bataille 2.