HOYAS: Give a book, empower a Haitian girl.

Hoyas Without Borders is an initiative started by Partners for Haitian Children, in alliance with the Latin American Student Association at Georgetown University. The main purpose of the activity was for Georgetown students to connect with the girls in the orphanage, Mission Patriotique Chretienne, in a meaningful way, while supporting the construction of the development of a library. We believe in the power of books to encourage the imagination of children and trust that this project can motivate the girls to improve their educational performance.

This initiative consists of three stages. The first was reaching out to the Georgetown community and finding enough donors to sponsor a book for each of the girls in the orphanage. The Georgetown community was very responsive to the initiative. Thus, we successfully found enough Georgetown students and staff to partner with each orphan girl. The organizers did their best to partner two people with similar personalities, in order to strengthen the connection between them. Each participant received an email with a carefully elaborated profile of the girl he or she would sponsor, which included a picture and a short background of the girls’ lives, personalities, dreams and aspirations.

During the second stage, on the 15^th of October 2014, Georgetown students gathered to write and decorated letters and to choose the books they wanted to choose as a gift. The organizers were very impressed with the level of thought and dedication that the Georgetown students put into the activity. All the letters were beautifully written and decorated. The messages were honest, deep and inspiring, with the intension of encouraging the girls to remain strong despite their difficulties and to use education as a tool to build a better future. It was clear that the donors read the profiles in detail and empathized deeply with the girl they would sponsor. Furthermore, all the books that were chosen had motivational messages and had often positively marked the donors in their childhoods. The organizers met with the donors that were not able to attend on October 15, but still wanted to support the initiative, on a different schedule.

Today, we are happy to say that we successfully reached our goal of fundraising a total of $1,114.25. Most of the books have arrived, and as soon as we finish matching the books and the letters together, we will make sure that they get to Haiti safely. Once again we are so grateful for all the support and dedication of all of those who sponsored the initiative. The girls will be delighted with their new books!

Sincerely,

Partners for Haitian Children