Peacemaker Award for 2010 Goes to Haiti Plunge
 Photos by Kathy Keeser
Melissa Torres, Sister Eunice Tassone and Nick Raschdorf before the Peacemaker Award was presented. |
Though chosen a few months ago by the Martin Luther King Committee as this year's Peacemaker Award recipient, for the Haiti Plunge it couldn't be timelier recognition after the massive earthquake that hit Haiti a week ago.
"Haiti is an impoverished nation that we sadly know more about now," said Steve Green, who nominated the COTY Center program. "This incredible devastation hit a place that is already so ravaged by poverty and all that goes with it."
Sister Eunice Tassone of the Sisters of St. Joseph, director of development at the Catholic Outreach to Youth Center, accepted the award, along with other community members who have participated in the Haiti Plunge, often several times.
Tassone started the Haiti group and spent many years as the COTY Center's executive director. The youth project now includes adults and college students and offers medical aid, training, educational materials and infrastructure help several times a year.
On Monday, Tassone spoke of the long history of deprivation in Haiti before the earthquake: "When you have zero, what is less than zero?"
The Haiti Plunge works with a cooperative of nine villages in a mountainous area about 50 miles north of the capital of Port-Au-Prince. When the Plunge nearly three decades ago, there were no schools, no business structures. Maryanne Santelli and other members of that first team challenged Tassone to continue to go to Haiti and helped to found the village cooperative. In the following years, teams built schools, dug wells and built sustainable, sturdy structures.
The structures built by the Haiti Plunge are still standing after the quake, though most of the villagers' homes were leveled, Tassone has learned, mainly through e-mail with contacts in Haiti.
"We taught the Haitians to build with rebar, cement, and sand," she said. "People like Nick (Raschdorf) patiently taught them how to do it the right way."
Santelli recalled that first trip and its effect on her. "We didn't know what we were doing, I was about 23, it changed us," she said. "Why I decided to become a foster parent came from my Haiti experience."
Jeff Hermanski, who has been to Haiti eight times, said, "Now it is my friends and family I see pulled from the rubble. Haiti means so much to me. I have a tattoo on my arm, 'Leswa,' which means hope in Creole."Tassone and many other community members will be going to Haiti as part of teams this year, with Alex Daugherty leading a February team and others, like Hermanski, following in March. Even if you cannot be part of a team that travels to Haiti to do service, you can help by sending donations to help Haiti Plunge efforts.
In particular, a donation of $7.50 will purchase a LifeStraw that enables the user to safely drink water. These LifeStraws will be very necessary for survivors of the Haiti earthquake. Send checks payable to COTY/ Haiti/LS for LifeStraw donations; for general earthquake relief, COTY/Haiti EQR. Mail to PO Box 745 North Adams, MA 01247. For more information, contact Tassone at 413-663-3133.
