Then and Now: Alums Reflect on VHP's 501(c)(3) Status and How the Organization Has Evolved

June 11, 2012 VHP members Laury Senecal ’23, Bryan Hawkins ’23, Yiqing Fan ’22, Joshua Gbodi ’23, Annika Rowland ’20, Shuri Oshiro ’22, Duc Dang ’23, Reynaldo Valenzuela ’23, Sonia Gollerkeri ’21, Brynna Gleeson ’20, and Eilif Ronning ’20

Claudia Sanchez, 2011 Alumna (Co-President 2010-11)

It seems like changes are happening all at the same time for VHP. After a year away from the project, and following a very involved career in it, it is a very odd feeling to go back and see the project in action without you. I always expected VHP to do great things after my class graduated, because -let’s face it- the project was already doing great things despite us! Yet, as you leave a position of leadership you always wonder who will take care of what; and you worry, much like a parent, about whether the new members will remember to do this or that.We all left VHP with a heavy heart. Having the chance to come back for the April sale this year was a privilege as exciting as it was trying: I was eager to see my friends again, but I was also intrigued at what the project would look like after a year without us. With a project like ours, there’s always room for improvement and there is always a new thing to learn. There always seems to be a detail that escapes us yet we somehow learn the trick one or two years later; and all of this comes naturally.So, imagine coming back to a project that had learned a hefty amount of new tricks and you never got to see how they did it? It was magical! I walked in expecting to find old friends and a similar dynamic. But thank goodness I didn’t! As I left VHP last year, I knew that it was missing the beautiful friendly dynamic I had enjoyed my first couple of years. Dynamics and interactions are not something you can manufacture, but there was some missing element there. I will not say what this element is because it is a mystery to me as well – but I will say that the new team found it and infused the project with the life I remembered. The VHP has been blessed with an engaged, dedicated, and incredibly talented group of freshmen. Not only that, but the current leadership is so involved and so loving, I felt like they were miles away from what I had accomplished there. This is an honor to admit. Walking in and meeting all of these committed people, seeing the great family energy, and meeting with the love of old friends - it was a very pleasant experience.I say that all changes are happening at once because just a few weeks after I witnessed the rebirth of this VHP dynamic, the project got its 501(c)3 status. It’s almost like they knew just what was missing and rewarded us for it.Congratulations, VHP! I expect to be there next April again, ready to be amazed at the next great thing you (and I also mean “we”) accomplish.

Raluca Besliu, 2011 Alumna (VP for Outreach 2010-11)

Hearing the VHP got the status that we had been dreaming about for some time already was fantastic news for me. The VHP has come a long way, since I first joined it as a freshman in 2007. At that time, the VHP was mainly focused on finishing up and supporting the school that it had been building in Chermaitre since 2001. By the time I left the VHP in 2011, the ever changing organization had not only gained a growing membership in the U.S., comprising both Vassar students as well as members of the local Poughkeepsie and wider community, but it had significantly expanded its goals as well. The VHP had become a full-scale development organization, focused on ensuring sustainability for the village of Chermaitre, by ensuring access to clean and safe drinking water for the community, reforesting the surrounding hills, while continuing to support the school.

In 2011, the VHP started more amply pursuing one of its U.S.-oriented goals, raising awareness about Haitian art and artists as well as promoting a different image of Haiti, one that does not exclusively cover the negative aspects the country is currently undergoing, but highlighting the positive ones, which are often overlooked by the media and NGOs. The VHP achieved this goal, by organizing more art sales and other events outside Vassar and Poughkeepsie and reaching communities that it had never been to before. It continued this goal in 2012 as well. Obtaining the not-for-profit organization status opens new opportunities for the VHP to enhance this previously mentioned awareness raising goal, by partnering with organizations, which might had previously been less inclined to do so, but also to develop new goals, all in the effort to help the people of Chermaitre and Haiti lead a better life!

Emily Strasser, 2010 Alumna

It was their heart that got me. I still remember—it was duringorientation week my freshman year. My registration for the “beginschool adventure” (or whatever they called it that year) had been lostand instead of going hiking, I was assigned to the Vassar HaitiProject. I was pretty disappointed that instead of spending the daywith the trees in the sunshine, I would be inside stretchingpaintings. But I left that room at the end of the day completelysmitten with the project, drawn to the incredible passion, love, andgenerosity of Lila and Andrew and the amazing students and communitymembers they had gathered around them. VHP became my Vassar family,and what I experience when I visited Haiti in 2008 only solidified mybelief in our work.Six years later, I love that I still receive enthusiastic emails fromLila (complete with colored fonts and lots of exclamation points)announcing the success of sales and our newly minted 501c3 status. Tome, the status doesn’t change a thing about what I encountered in thatroom six years ago, about what I encounter every time I enter a saleor reunite with project members. But not everyone in the world islucky enough to see how all this happens from the inside, so I amthrilled that our official status will legitimize our work in the eyesof the world—it will make all that heart reach just a bit farther.