Our Story

The school was inaugurated right after the January 2010 earthquake. We sheltered 494 people in our yard including 65 children. In order to help these children who could not return to their schools, I started to gather them keep them busy until school resumed. In the meantime, I found out that most of them had never attended school.

With the help of some volunteers, we had Bible stories, drawings and teaching the little ones from Monday through Friday. On Saturdays we had English classes in the morning and cooking classes in the afternoon for the older ones, boys and girls, up to 18 years old.

When the Haitian Government announced that school would resume in April, I called a meeting with the parents in the camp to find out who would return to their previous schools, and at the same time invited those who were not be able to because their schools were destroyed and the ones who never attended schools buildings collapsed in the earthquake to come and register to go to our new school.

At the time I had no name for the school since it was not my intention to open a school. But when I saw the large number of children who could neither read nor write, and the dire economic situation they were living in, I said to myself, "God will provide" and I named the school: "La Providence" On the 4th of April 2010 I had 53 children in my yard ready to start school. I built 12 benches with money received from the First Wesleyan Church of Jersey City. We had nothing: no classrooms, no professionally trained teachers, no adequate school materials, only the obligation and desire to help these needy children learn to read and write.

I had to provide everything to most of them, clothes, shoes, food, hygiene kits. I also gave something to the volunteers. I am not rich but I felt deep inside the urge and the necessity to help these children who are in majority orphans.

Word of mouth is a powerful thing. The news about the school spread quickly through the neighborhood and more children came. I remember two little girls who came by themselves to register in the school.

They had no parents but they wanted to go to school. By the second week of April 2010 we had over 100 children and closed the session in August with 123. In October 2010 we started the school year with 212 children. This October we enrolled 300 children.

We now have two sections. We have 104 preschoolers and 185 in the primary school. In June 2012, 9 students took the official exam for the Certificate of Primary Education (CEP). 8 of them are now admitted in secondary school.


I would like to see La Providence become a school of reference in the neighborhood with an appropriate building, regular classrooms, a playground, adequate teaching materials, professional teachers, a place where a child can come as a preschooler and leave with a good education, ready to face the challenges of life and be useful to his country and to his church. After the 3rd cycle of primary school I would like to offer to my children vocational training in sewing, cooking, computer, art, etc.