Day Five!
Another amazing day in Ayiti! This morning we woke up nice n'early to cook the family breakfast. We made fried plantains, ham and cheese omlettes, buttered toast, bacon, and sliced mango, papaya, pineapple, watermelon, bananas, and strawberries. It was quite the treat to all sit down to eat together - one big happy family! Afterwards we went to the new SOPUDEP site and put in some work! We have almost finished moving this massive pile of gravel into one of the rooms, and it has become the goal of the week to finish it! After grabbing a quick lunch we drove over to MOJUB, a woman's rights school and microloan program. We got to hear Rosaline (the leader) speak about the organization as whole, which was orginially started as a school for women to become self sustaining and literate. Many of the women don't have husbands and have several kids to care for, so it has been very important to them to develop a program that teaches them trade, buisiness, and how to be finanicially independant. The women would bring their kids to MOJUB everyday because they didn't have anyone else to care for them so after a while Rosaline decided to open a school for the children as well. The school now services 426 children of the women and they attend school for free as MOJUB is funded by outside organizations and the women who are a part of it. Another big part of MOJUB is FASA, which is a microloan program that allows the women to grow their buisiness out of a collective pot of money as most banks will not fund their small buisinesses (which include making soap, tayloring, and selling fruit and other supplies). Our UCLA group brought some of the money we have raised from the year to donate to their organization. Hearing the women speak with such determination and hope to improve their own situation and give their children opportunities they had never had was such an eye-opening experience for all of us and we hope to return next year with even more money, and maybe even plans to help start an orphanage out of the school that a lot of the women wanted to start. We are now back at Rea's and though quite full from another delicious meal about to start a game of "football" (or soccer as we call it!) Much love to everyone at home following our journey, its been an amazing for all of us.
