27022: Hermantin(news)New role for voice of islanders (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

Miami Herald


Posted on Sun, Dec. 25, 2005


THE CARIBBEAN COMMUNITY
New role for voice of islanders
After seven years, Marvin Dejean, an advocate for South Florida's Caribbean 
Americans, is leaving Minority Development & Empowerment for a position with a 
St. Croix-based media company.
BY DARRAN SIMON
dsimon@MiamiHerald.com

They were just dreamers nearly a decade ago.

Holed up in an office, they stayed up into the night, writing grant proposals, 
working to find money to start programs to help their community.

Other days, they withdrew cash from their own bank accounts to pay their small 
staff at their new agency, Minority Development & Empowerment (MDEI), a 
nonprofit angling to start social programs to help needy Caribbeans in South 
Florida. ''All of us were just barely broke, but we really believed in what we 
did,'' recalled Marvin Dejean, MDEI's vice president of business development 
who is credited with raising close to $1 million for the agency.

Stacks of rejected grant applications later, Minority Development is now 
roughly a $3 million agency that has helped some 10,000 Caribbeans in Broward 
County.

With its success sealed, Dejean takes over next month as director of public 
relations for Innovative Communication Corp., a telecommunications and media 
company headquartered in St. Croix, V.I.

As the agency celebrates its 10th anniversary, Caribbeans flood its office in a 
Fort Lauderdale strip mall, seeking healthcare services, prenatal care, 
immigration guidance, and free income tax assistance with maneuvering 
government bureaucracy.

''It's been an emotional marriage, and a commitment for the last seven years,'' 
said Dejean, who has done everything at the agency from public relations to 
sweeping floors and answering phones. ``I didn't have a job; I had a passion.''

He will work out of Innovative Communication's West Palm Beach office. His new 
post involves traveling to the Caribbean, where the company owns the Virgin 
Island Daily News, a Pulitzer Prize-winning paper, and two TV stations.

TOUGH TO REPLACE

MDEI's founder, Francois Leconte, a former journalist who fled Haiti, wishes 
his friend the best.

''We had that 8 to 5 where we had our own responsibilities. After 5, we were 
friends,'' said Leconte, who asked Dejean to be the best man at his wedding.

He will try to fill the position with someone with the fundraising experience 
Dejean brought, said Leconte, MDEI's CEO and president. Edna LaRoche, host of 
The New Haitian Generation, a show on Broward Education Communications Network, 
will become a consultant and take on some of Dejean's duties.

Dejean was born in New York and grew up in a Port-au-Prince suburb. There he 
learned French and listened to classical music after Sunday dinners.

Dejean met Leconte when MDEI was operating out of the back of a church. Using 
savings, Leconte had started MDEI a few years earlier as an HIV/AIDS outreach 
program for the Haitian community in Broward.

He wanted Dejean to join him. But corporate America was his world, Dejean 
thought. Besides, MDEI was a new agency with a skeleton staff. Dejean hadn't 
thought about working with the Haitian community.

But he bought in when he saw the building Leconte purchased in Fort Lauderdale.

''It spoke volumes of what he was trying to do,'' Dejean said.

PRAISED BY POLICE

Leconte sat him down, telling Dejean that he needed to give back to the Haitian 
community.

Dejean worked with Fort Lauderdale police to hire Haitian-American officers and 
employees. He helped facilitate police town-hall meetings in Creole and 
English.

Fort Lauderdale Police Chief Bruce G. Roberts recently honored Dejean for his 
work. ''Everyone knew Marvin was a voice for the Caribbean community, 
especially the Haitian community,'' said Junia Jeantilus-Robinson, community 
relations specialist with the Fort Lauderdale police who works with the 
Haitian-American community.

A MAJOR SUCCESS

MDEI has expanded to West Palm Beach, where it has an office that offers a 
breast cancer program and an after-school program to improve FCAT skills.

The agency now has 50 full-time employees and 25 to 30 part-time workers in 
Broward and Palm Beach counties.

Dejean laughed as he recalled Leconte's advice at the time.

At first, Leconte could only afford to pay him enough to cover his bills. 
''Don't think about going to the movies or anything extraneous,'' Dejean 
recalled Leconte saying.

In the beginning, they didn't know much about running a nonprofit and there 
weren't many agencies reaching out Caribbeans, Dejean said.

''People were waiting for us to fail,'' he said. ``We never gave them any 
credence.''

ABOUT MARVIN DEJEAN
• Name: Marvin Dejean

• Place of birth: Born in New York City to Haitian parents, raised in 
Petion-ville, a Port-au-Prince suburb, traveled the world before moving to 
Miami in 1990.

• Education: Bachelor of Arts in sociology and psychology from the University 
of Miami in 1993.

• Last position: Vice president of business development at Minority Development 
and Empowerment Inc.

• New position: Director of public relations for Innovative Communication Corp.

• Role model: Lyonette Vincent, Dejean's mother.






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