New Partnerships, New Friendships

Today was a good day of discussions and partnership formations here in Cap-Haitien. We met with officials from the Public University of the North at Cap-Haitien (president, two deans, business administrator) as well as the Director of the Ministry of Education (pictured with me to the right).

An outcome of the meeting were two partnership agreements: one between WLU and the Ministry of Education (MENFP) and the other between WLU and UPNCH. The focus of our partnership with MENFP will be on educational leadership capacity-building. We will be putting in an application to host a "fact-finding" and "vision-casting" conference in Cap-Haitien, perhaps in May. Justin Metelus (Director, MENFP) will be the host and coordinator.

The partnership between WLU and UNPCH will have a number of areas of collaboration including the development of an English Language Institute and support (research, technology, pedagogy) for university professors.

We just finished meeting with the brother of the Haitian Consul General (Toronto). He lives in Montreal six months of the year and in Cap the remaining months. He was very helpful in giving us ideas for hotels, health care, banking, and transportation.

We wrap up the day with an evening meeting with the Director of an NGO here (Rayjon) which has a focus on nutrition, health care, and education.  We leave at 7:30 tomorrow morning for a flight back to Port au Prince - then a meeting with the education officials at the Cdn embassy and a meeting with the state university of Haiti. More details to come on these meetings. For now, mission accomplished in Cap-Haitien.