Project Report – July 2025
Our project to support the work of Lira Perrier and his team of volunteer teachers to establish and operate a school for disadvantaged children in the Commune of Beaumont in South-Western Haiti was launched at the beginning of March.
Our aim was to raise a sum of €6000 to fund the purchase of schoolbooks for the 6th to 9th Grade students (age 12-16 approx.), the cultivation of a plot of land to provide additional sustenance for teachers and the community, and the payment of fees so that all 4 volunteer teachers could achieve certification, thus putting the school on a more formal footing with the Haitian authorities.
The response of our parishioners was beyond all expectations. By the end of Lent our target had been achieved in full, but donations continued to arrive and, amazingly, having now transferred all the money originally committed to Lira we still have a balance of €4763.03 available after the fund was formally closed at the end of June. We are in dialogue with Lira now to see what further needs there are and what else we can do for the school.
The St. Brigid’s community has truly embraced the late Pope Francis’ exhortation to solidarity with the poor of our world, in the spirit of his Encyclical Fratelli Tutti, ‘stretching out a hand to them, without calculation, without fear…’
On the following pages are some photographs, which illustrate the circumstances in which the school operates and the impact of the support from St. Brigid’s. Haiti is a country deeply wounded by poverty and violence and yet one in which there is much goodness and a spirit of optimism, epitomised in the remote community in Beaumont where people live from day to day and hand to mouth and yet cherish all the same hopes and aspirations that we do here in our vastly more comfortable circumstances.
The St. Brigid’s Project Team
Ellen Devanney
Tony Devlin
Sr. Teresa Healy
Pádraicín Ní Mhurchú
Alice O’Connell
Michael O’Connor
Sr. Helen Ryder.
Letter of Gratitude received from Lisa Perrier
