CNS STORY: Salesians rebuild Haitian ministries for the 21st century

A boy walks with a meal outside a Salesian-run camp for earthquake survivors in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The Salesians, which sponsor the largest network of Catholic education in the country, are rethinking their programs following the Jan. 12 earthquake. (CNS/Tom Tracy)

By Tom Tracy
Catholic News Service

PETIONVILLE, Haiti (CNS) -- Carius Wilguen stands outside Don Bosco Church in the center of Petionville in the hills above the capital of Port-au-Prince, watching the chaotic marketplace where people without jobs buy only the bare minimum and children, with no school to attend, play amid the crowds.

"Life is upside down now," said Wilguen, 16, who is interested in entering the seminary with the Salesian order. Salesians run the church named for the order's found, St. John Bosco, several schools and numerous other ministries around the Haitian capital. "What do I do with my time now? Nothing. I volunteer a little with the kids here.

"After the earthquake, I passed three days wearing my school uniform, never eating and scared. I lost contact with some of my friends," he said.

Wilguen is looking for a return to normalcy, but he recognizes that the life he knew before may never be back.

In the region around Port-au-Prince, nearly two months after the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake, there are minor signs of a return to normalcy despite the huge piles of rubble that remain largely untouched. Street vendors sell products, artists work the periphery of squalid tent camps pushing their creations and barbers function in the open air.

But a new "normal" is emerging. It includes people scrambling for work, struggling to find enough food to eat and realizing that they will be living under plastic tarps and threadbare sheets for months to come because there is no grand plan for how to address their housing needs.

In the weeks after the quake, the discussions among aid agencies focused on moving masses of homeless people into better tent cities outside the capital. The strategy changed in late February as the agency workers realized that people are better able to cope with their losses by staying close to familiar neighborhoods and networks of family and friends.

The Salesians, too, are rethinking their work in Haiti.

The sponsor of the largest network of Catholic education in a country where only 43 percent of youngsters make it to the fifth grade, the Salesian order of priests, sisters and brothers is itself recovering. Its members have spent nearly two months digging out from the rubble and working to restore order to a vast system of parishes, schools and vocational training programs.

"Right now there is a deficit of tents throughout the world because of this situation in Haiti," said Father Mark Hyde, who runs the Salesians' development office in New Rochelle, N.Y. A positive-thinking priest who has a cheerful word and a smile for the youngsters he greets, Father Hyde is dealing with the greatest single catastrophe ever to face the Salesian missions.

He said the order is willing to rebuild programs and institutions where it makes sense. But there are other instances where programs have outlived their usefulness or are no longer in the best locations and may be retooled or closed altogether.

The vocational and technical schools that teach sewing, air conditioning repair, woodworking and welding -- useful gateways to jobs -- likely will be rebuilt. An art school probably will not.

"We are rethinking according to the times," Father Hyde explained. "What would Don Bosco do? He was always changing."

At the top of the list is security. The Salesians are rebuilding the walls around their project sites and parishes with the help of the Italian military. Father Hyde estimated it will cost $5 million to $7 million just to rebuild the walls in the neighborhoods in which the Salesians work.

The rebuilding effort received a boost from Salesian missions around the world. In India, one of the poorest of the Salesian mission schools sold its prize bull to raise funds for the Haiti earthquake response. In Africa some of the poorest of the order's missions found ways to raise thousands of dollars for earthquake recovery, according to Father Hyde.

But the Salesians know it will be years before their ministries are back to normal.

"It is time to do things with a different mentality," said Salesian Father Victor Augustin, headmaster of a Salesian-run high school in Petionville. "We are no longer in the 19th century and we should see things in the 21st century."

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