Who we are
A school rebuilt after the earthquake. A promise that outlasted it.
Haiti Scholarships grew out of disaster-relief work in Léogâne. When the rebuilding was done, the volunteers kept a quieter promise: to keep the children in the school they had helped raise.
How it began
From BonaResponds to a classroom that stayed open.
After the 2010 earthquake, volunteers from BonaResponds, the relief group founded at St. Bonaventure University after Hurricane Katrina, traveled to Léogâne to help rebuild a school.
Putting up walls was the easy part. Keeping students inside them was harder: in Haiti, school costs money, and the families could not pay. So a small group of those volunteers built a scholarship program to cover the fees, and Haiti Scholarships was born.
Today it is a 501(c)(3) charity run almost entirely by volunteers, with one paid staff member on the ground in Haiti.
What we do, in one line
“We pay the school fees that keep Haitian students in class, and we keep paying as long as they keep showing up and passing.
Haiti Scholarships
Board of directors
A working board of volunteers, most of whom found their way to Haiti through the same relief work.
Julie Faughnan
Retired from IBM after 30 years and worked as a procurement consultant for the University of California Health Systems. Her connection to Haiti began through her son Greg’s volunteer work in Léogâne. Married to Don for 37 years, she counts her three sons as her biggest accomplishment.
Greg Faughnan
First went to Haiti through St. Bonaventure University and BonaResponds, helping rebuild a school in Léogâne. A graduate of St. Bonaventure and SUNY Upstate Medical University, he now works as a family medicine physician in Syracuse, New York.
Jerry Godbout
Introduced to disaster-relief volunteering by Jim Mahar and BonaResponds after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. He holds a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Florida and a Ph.D. from Michigan State, and teaches chemistry.
Jim Mahar
Founder and leader of BonaResponds, the volunteer organization started after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. An associate professor of finance at St. Bonaventure University, with a Ph.D. from Penn State and an MBA from the University of Rochester.
John Thomas
An Egyptian immigrant to the United States who, in his words, benefited greatly from the opportunities of education. He graduated from Boston College in 2012 and works as a strategy analyst at Bank of America.
On the ground
Berlyne Bien-Aimé
Berlyne is the organization’s only paid employee, and she lives in Léogâne with her husband Guito and son Moony. She has worked as a translator for All Hands Volunteers, Duke University, and Oxford University, and teaches with GOALS Haiti.
She is the reason every gift is accountable: she knows the students, visits the schools, and tracks attendance and grades through the year.
Put a student in school
$30 is one more month a child stays learning.
Your gift pays tuition straight to the school. It is tax-deductible, and it is the difference between a student in class and a student sent home.