Spring 2010

Sustainable Public Health   Opportunities for Communities, Inc. (OfC) is collaborating with the School of Public Health and Health Sciences at the University of Massachusetts (UMass) to provide independent study opportunities in sustainable public health development for seven UMass undergraduate Public Health majors.  Under the guidance of Professor Dan Gerber and OfC’s Dr. Ken Mundt (Adjunct Associate Professor), students have formed a team to generate a girls/womens health/empowerment/respect curriculum for Haitian students ages 5-18.  The team – self-named the “Haiti Seven” – also will learn about and conduct fundraising efforts to support their work and to help educate the University and local communities about the educational needs of Haitian students.  The students are generating classroom materials in Haitian Creole, as well as developing a peer educator “train the trainers” program.  The team’s goal is to work with older students and young adults from the Haitian community of Les Cayes to develop trainers that can carry the curriculum to multiple schools.  They hope to pilot test their curriculum at the school for Restavek* children in Les Cayes, Haiti, as early as this summer.

* Restaveks (meaning "staying with") are the indentured servant children of Haiti.  To learn more about Restaveks, visit the Restavec Freedom website ( Jean R. Cadet Restavek Foundation - DonorDrive® ) and purchase a copy of Restavec: From Haitian Slave to Middle-Class American.

Rural Agricultural and Economic Development   Opportunities for Communities, Inc. (OfC) is hosting Swetha Valluri, a University of Massachusetts (UMass) graduate student from the Resource Economics Department in a semester-long internship.  Working under the direction of Professor Sheila Mamman and OfC’s Dr. Ken Mundt (Adjunct Associate Professor), Swetha is developing a plan to conduct a detailed Participatory Rural Appraisal (RPA) in a remote agricultural village at the foot of the mountains in southwest Haiti.  Half a mile from this village, a large tomato processing factory is under construction, promising to change both the economic and agricultural complexion of this village in the years to come.  Swetha and other OfC students hope to generate critical baseline data before these changes occur, so that the impact of the factory and other developments can be documented and understood.