This past week, we welcomed our good friend Alan to Be Like Brit! Alan, as many of you know, was responsible for all of the plumbing work at BLB during the construction phase of building Brit's Orphanage. Alan donated thousands of hours and endless supplies of materials to ensure that our water supply and our water quality were the best they could be! Alan has returned to Be Like Brit many times as a member of the infamous group, Team Toro. He's largely responsible for the playground that group built for our children last March and he's also the man responsible for bringing more than 1000 gallons of water to the local community, as we share our supply with neighbors on an almost daily basis!

As you can see, Alan's also made a few friends here at Be Like Brit over the last few years!

Alan was here this past week working hard on Gama's new house - helping him install plumbing and working hard on the well there! Alan has installed a solar powered water pump at Gama's house, and so not only do we give water out at Be Like Brit, but now Gama is able to provide water to the community just a bit higher up the mountain, behind us! This is great, as it not only provides water to more people, but it also alleviates the burden on our own supply. Access to clean drinking water in Haiti is a privilege, not a right, and so this work goes far beyond the seeming simplicity of it all! We can't thank Alan enough for all he's done for Be Like Brit and for the people of Haiti over the years! He's a true hero!

While we did not host a Britsionary group this past week, it was business as usual with the children at Be Like Brit. We were overwhelmed with the number of photos people submitted to Amanda on January 21, 2015 - Brit's 25th Birthday! So many of you went "Blue for Brit" and the donations rolled in, too! We can't thank you enough!

When Amanda wasn't busy posting photos of all of you in your Britney Blue, she has been hard at work heading up the educational programming here at BLB. We asked Amanda to give us an update this week, as we've had lots going on in her department! Here's what she had to say:
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Since the beginning of the school year back in September, our teaching staff has been working very hard with the children at BLB to support each child individually in their education.  As you would find in any family or in any classroom, some of our children need more support than others.  Our staff does an amazing job of providing that support for our children, no matter what grade level.  Often in Haiti, that means a lot of repetition.  However, we are beginning to see our staff utilizing other methods of reaching with the children.  Many more hands-on activities can be seen either one-on-one or in the class as a whole!  This is one of the things I have been trying to work on with our teachers, finding a way to have children discover things instead of using rote memorization. 

We have received our first round of report cards, which contained 2 terms worth of marks.  I assumed we would receive them after each term, as I had to complete report cards for my students at the end of each term.  But assuming things you learned when growing up in the States is something I have learned that I need to let go of now that I live in Haiti.  So come to find out, the schools didn’t want to send children home with expensive paper after the first term to not have the parent return the report card to the school.  So we waited until December, or even January to find out how our 66 students were fairing in school this year.  When we did finally receive these, we were very happy to see that as we had hoped, our children were doing quite well.  A few need a little more support in certain subject areas, but the overwhelming feeling was that the children at Be Like Brit are doing well and often exceeding the expectation set at school.  Many of our children are top of their class!  Considering the majority of our children have come from homes where they previously didn’t have the opportunity to attend school, this is incredible!

So now that we have the academic area of our education covered, we are bringing in some enrichment.  As you know we have had the wonderful donation of the ABCmouse program by way of Peter Smith at Kid Orange Tech in Boca Raton, Florida.  Through this early learning program, all of our children are getting an early exposure to English.  Many of them have progressed significantly since the start of a regular schedule with the program.  As we are Haiti and Internet isn’t always top-notch, there are have been some days that we were unable to open the room with our 7 touch screen computers and multiple tablets to the children.  They are usually disappointed when this happens, but have come to understand that when there is no Internet, ABCmouse doesn’t work.  However, we are hoping not to have to worry about this problem anymore!  Jonathan has worked very hard at getting a new company to come in and install a better wi-fi system for us.  So far, and I knock on wood as I say this, we have been pretty smooth sailing!  I love being able to say, “yes” whenever the children ask to do something educational!!!  As an educator, it’s music to my ears!  We have also hired a physical education coach to come in and work with our children 4 times a week.  Two of these days are dedicated to the older children who have created 2 volleyball teams, one boys one girls.  The other two days, Coach works with the younger children and teaches them the importance of physical activity.  The children love when they have “sport” almost as much as they love ABCmouse! 

Back in December, our Program Committee member, Debbie Pallatto-Fontaine, came down and spend a good deal of the week working on our education program with me and some training with our staff.  During that week we had a major focus on RESPECT.  We decided as a whole that respect is the source from which all other things follow.  One must have respect for self before you can then have respect for others and for the things you have.  We worked together to create a “Respect Pledge” that the staff and children have begun to review each night to discuss the importance of respect.  We know that constant reminders will be the basis of instilling this value in our children.  As we say in the pledge, “Respect is the key to every door you would like to open!”  Doing these things, like emphasizing respect, are what I believe make us stand out.  We are focusing on the child as a whole and taking into consideration what we can teach our 66 children now so that they well be well-respected members of society and hopefully respected leaders in Haiti when they grow up. 

Debbie and I also took the opportunity to visit all 3 schools that our children attend.  I’ve mentioned many times, but I never cease to be amazed at the many differences that you immediately see upon walking into a school in Grand Goave vs. the many schools I’ve visited and worked at in throughout several places in the States.  The one major thing I noticed on that particular visit was simply the number of students in the classroom.  I’m a firm believer that smaller is better in a classroom as you are better able to give the proper attention to each student.  All but 2 of the classrooms we visited had more than 30 students and a handful of them had over 50!  I’ve had 30 children in a classroom and that was a challenge, I can’t possibly imagine 50!  God bless those teachers!  I am happy to report that recently one of the classrooms with 59 students in it has split into two, making the classes more manageable and much more conducive to the needs of the students. 

CHILD SPOTLIGHT: MAGDALINE:

(from Amanda):

I’d like to give you an example of just how your support is making a clear difference in the lives of our children.  One of our children, Magdaline, has been here with us since March of 2013.  Before coming to BLB at the age of 5, she had never been to school.  She was immediately enrolled at MOHI. When I moved down last summer, the first thing I did, which took a while, was educational assessments with each child.  Magdaline did fairly well for a child going into the first grade.  However, I knew if we pushed her a little more and gave her a little more support she would make incredible strides.  When I assessed her in August, she knew by sight identification maybe 10 letters of the alphabet, numbers 1-10 and could tell me her name and where she lived.  Just this past week, I did a re-assessment to see the growth that she has made.  I was amazed.  Magadaline can now identify almost all of the letters in the alphabet.  She can now identify numbers well past 20.  She can identify her birthday and even how old she is, not a common thing to be able to identify in Haiti, many adults do not know when their birthday is and how old they are.  I was even more impressed when I gave Magdaline a simple book to read and she was able to read almost the whole book with no assistance!  This is the difference our education program is making in the lives of our 66 children.  Through many of you who have chosen to be child sponsors allowing our children to attend school and allowing us to provide these enrichment programs for our children is what is making the difference!  I can’t wait to re-assess again and see the continued growth in Magdaline!!!

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After lots of frustration with our former internet service provider, we're thrilled to announce our new relationship with Access Haiti! Access Haiti is a local company and we've had amazing results with them and their team thus far. We're so blessed to have Pastor Scott Johnson of St. John's United Church of Christ from Kenton, OH, and his congregation who continue to sponsor our internet connection - making things like ABCMouse possible - among many, many other things! We're scaling up our capacities in our clinic and hope to have our telemedicine in place and operational before the mid-point of this year! Thank you Scott and St. John's in Kenton!!!

Many of you saw on facebook that Cherylann and her sister Jodi (a Board member at Be Like Brit!) were busy rubbing elbows at the Sundance Film Festival! What an awesome chance to spread the word about the amazing work that BLB is doing in honor of Britney and for the children of Haiti! We were thrilled to learn that Len and Cherylann's book, Heartache and Hope in Haiti, was included in the gift baskets many of the attendees received! We hope this plants seeds for more people to become involved with our efforts at Be Like Brit and even come down to Haiti to volunteer as a Britsionary!

We're busy welcoming our newest Britsionary Group here in Haiti, along with Len's arrival yesterday! The week is sure to be an eventful one, so stay tuned to our updates on Facebook and Twitter! As always, thank you for helping us help the children of Haiti at Be Like Brit!!!