The tet-a-tet of Just Haiti
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Tet-a-tet is a Haitian phrase meaning "working in partnership."
Many people are making Just Haiti a viable operation. Some are mentioned below (Father Pierre Pascal Pierre, Kim Lamberty, Bernard Nestor, Suzie De Quattro, and Jim De Quattro).
The most important people tet-a-tet for Just Haiti are the coffee farmers of Baradères, Haiti, and their families.
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Father Pierre Pascal Pierre
Father Pascal is director of Développement Communautaire Chrétien Haïtien (Christian Development Program for Haitian Communities) in Les Cayes, Haiti. The DCCH is a division of Caritas International in Haiti that is concerned with developing subsistence agriculture projects.
Just Haiti has been collaborating with Father Pascal since the summer of 2007, but the relationship goes back much farther.
From about 1997 to 2004, Father Pascal was pastor of St. Pierre parish in Baradères. He personally knows many of the coffee growers Just Haiti is working with.
In addition, he and Kim Lamberty of Just Haiti have a longstanding working relationship of trust and respect. During the period when Fr. Pascal was pastor of St. Pierre—the sister parish of St. John the Baptist (SJB) Catholic Community in Silver Spring, Maryland—Kim was directly managing the SJB sister parish program. During this same period, all the other Just Haiti founders developed relationships with Fr. Pascal. The group naturally turned to him once again when they were looking for a partner in Haiti.
Following his pastorship at St. Pierre, Father Pascal left Haiti to study at the Institut Catholique de Paris in France. He received a Master's Degree in Education and is currently completing his doctoral studies. In addition to his DCCH duties, Father Pascal is chaplain and professor at the Catholic University in Les Cayes, and also teaches at the state university in Les Cayes.
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Kim Lamberty
Kim has been developing and managing faith-based justice, peace, cross-cultural, and community service programs for nearly 20 years. She is Executive Director of Episcopal Service Corps, a young adult service and faith formation program of the Episcopal Church. She has worked with Christian Peacemaker Teams in Colombia and Palestine, accompanying rural communities at risk of violence from armed groups, and on the U.S.-Mexico border with groups trying to prevent migrant deaths. She worked in parish ministry for nearly eight years, responsible for developing and managing parish-based justice and service ministries, including the sister parish project in Baraderes, Haiti. She holds a Doctor of Ministry degree, in cross-cultural ministry, from Catholic Theological Union, where she also teaches a course on social and economic justice ministry.
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Bernard Nestor
Bernard was born in Haiti, and moved to the United Sates when he was 18 years old. Although he has never visited the community of Baradères he feels like he has been there and that he knows the people. He knows them through the accounts of those who have traveled there, his recollection of bygone days when he lived in Haiti, and his gut feelings about this community. These all concur in giving him a coherent and living picture of life in that part of the world.
Bernard has been a member of the sister parish committee at Saint John the Baptist Catholic Church in Silver Spring, Md., for over ten years. He appreciates the work that the parish is doing in support of the Baradères community. He also believes that additional steps are needed to buttress the progress already realized. Through Just Haiti he found like-minded people and happily joined with them in taking the initiative to help serve the people of Baradères. Through this coffee project, the people in Baradères become part of the global community, and will be able to improve their lives.
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Suzie De Quattro
Suzie learned about the people of Baradères through the work of the Haiti project at St. John the Baptist Catholic Community in Silver Spring, Md. She was impressed by the work of the sister parish committee in bringing the lives of rural Haiti into her comfortable, suburban life. In 2006 she traveled to Baradères to visit the community and witness the first 12th graders graduate from high school. The pictures of the children she had seen, the stories she had heard, the heat, and the road all took on new meaning for her. As a family therapist and mother of four, Suzie could imagine how Haitian parents would long for a stable and improving life for their children. Supporting education is essential, but she believes it is also necessary to find a sustainable economic basis for life in this beautiful and remote community.
Suzie joined Just Haiti to support the families of Baradères, to help bring economic development to rural Haiti, and to live the gospel message of caring for each other. And she joined because she likes a good cup of coffee in the morning.
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Jim De Quattro
Jim worked for many years as a writer-editor with the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He was born in southern California and lived there until joining the USDA in Maryland in 1976.
This is how he explains why he became involved with helping form Just Haiti.
In January 2003, Jim made his second trip to Baradères as part of a group representing the sister parish project of St. John the Baptist Catholic Community. The last hours of the journey meant lurching slowly along a potholed "road" through the darkness in a pickup truck jammed with eight people and 500 pounds of luggage.
Jim shared the back of the pickup with Reuben, a young Haitian. The mountain air was cool and pleasant. Overhead, a crescent moon sailed past, and clouds glowed in the moonlight. Reuben and Jim traded Creole and English words for stars, sky, moon, clouds. All around were sweet smells of plants and moist earth. Suddenly the thought came to Jim: "You're almost home."
Baradères is a place left behind by progress, largely stuck in the 19th century, the dead end of a potholed road. But dignity, hospitality and hope are everywhere in Baradères. And yes, so is grinding poverty. But how can you not want to help the folks in your home town?
Just Haiti works to alleviate poverty, hunger, violence, illiteracy and disease in Haiti by fostering small-business development, education programs, employment opportunity, infrastructure improvement and environmental quality. Just Haiti is a Section 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charitable organization.
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