Conor Bohan '86, the founding director of the Haitian Education & Leadership Programme, has recently collaborated with Michael Lisman, the coordinator for Central American and Caribbean programmes with the Partnership for the Revitalisation of Education in the Americas on an op-ed piece tying the recent school collapse in Haiti to the greater problems of Haiti's education system.

Conor, a Brown University graduate,  began working as a volunteer in Haiti in 1996 and became interested in the unique history and cultural past of the country. Haiti is the only country to have had a successful slave revolution, and uprising spawned by the French Revollution. He has since founded the highly effective Haitian Education & Leadership Programme (H.E.L.P.), Haiti's largest university scholarship program, that enables bright young Haitian students to escape desperate poverty to become doctors, nurses, accountants, engineers, teachers and computer programmers. The organization began with an act of kindness - Conor helping one student to attend medical school. That student, Isemonde Joseph,  is now a doctor responsible for a Haitian hospital, and the organization is now able to sponsor 100 students for the 2008-09 academic year.

According to Conor, "We have kids who grew up in mud huts who could never go to university and a couple of thousand dollars later, they are working as accountants, as engineers. They're doctors and they're making in one month what their parents make in a year, so there is this very immediate effect." 

Conor's  op-ed is published on The Guardian's website:
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/nov/13/haiti-school-collapse-us-aid<http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001dtWFk-0470ocUm0zg3ckik8hmlhidt1YAdQEUg20hkZAyoXsSD8C-LVmoO5gAU4h939EF93JATh9Ey254Tp7YJ9v0jQS9EgN-H1PsD3YMV8jgZCFNMel37153IJZZGf0FoQL3uSVGGnlnJTfOTwcj7jqkvn--QVxokC6FNSQvfKXtR_zu5PoSqXA0hk1mTawaXMo3QLbikQFnwDKbWxTx7hjGeLTGS6X>

Conor reports, "The tragedy of the school collapse struck close to home for us at HELP. My longtime housekeeper in Haiti, Marie-Louise, lost one of her daughters in the school. Please keep Marie-Louise and Mariella in your thoughts and prayers."

To learn more about the Haitian Education & Leadership Programme, visit http://www.haitianeducation.org/ or contact Conor at cbohan@haitianeducation.org . Donations may be made through Network For Good.