ARTICLE - HAITIANS NEED HELP COMPLETING DEGREES

HAITIANS NEED HELP COMPLETING DEGREES
(Montreal Gazette) - By Anne Sutherland

Students require education funding

When the earthquake in Haiti levelled Handy LeRoy's university in January 2010, it also derailed his plans to become a social worker.

In the months after the devastation, LeRoy worked as a group leader and investigator, combing through the earthquake rubble and trying to soothe the fractured lives in the aftermath.

"There was a great need for some organization and I was also working with a group to prevent violence against women in addition to all the heartache that had happened," LeRoy said.

He still wanted to achieve his goal of teaching and training social workers, and was thrilled when he was chosen to come to Quebec to study.

Thanks to co-operation between the Université d'État d'Haiti and Université de Montréal, LeRoy and 14 other students were chosen to continue their studies here last fall and were supposed to return to Haiti to finish up.

But their university has not been rebuilt and there is nothing to return to if these students want to work toward a degree that could help them help the people of Haiti.

Unfortunately, money for bursaries has run out and Université de Montréal is trying to raise enough to fund these students to the completion of their degrees.

"To start, these students had bursaries from the Canadian Bureau for International Education, but those cannot be renewed," said Laurence Daneault of the École de service social, the social services department of the U de M.

In order to qualify for a student visa for next term, the students must show they have enough money to pay tuition and living expenses. The same visa requirements do not allow the students to work anywhere other than at the university, seriously curtailing their ability to earn money to go to school.

"We have profited from the education here and hope to bring the fruits of that back to Haiti, where we are aware there is great need," LeRoy said.

Twelve of the students have two more years of school to obtain a master's degree and three have only one year left.

Each student needs $12,000 a year, so the overall fundraising goal to provide bursaries is $324,000. The U of M has already raised $50,000, Daneault said.