28188: Hermantin(News)Group struggles to help peers (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>


Posted on Sun, Mar. 26, 2006


HAITIAN STUDENTS
Group struggles to help peers
Haitian college students have united to help others navigate immigration, work 
and education.
BY ESTEPHANIE RESNIK
eresnik@MiamiHerald.com

Ralph Cheriza, president of the Haitian Students Foundation, understands 
firsthand the people he hopes to help: academically motivated students trying 
to navigate a time-consuming maze of immigration cases and complicated work 
permit renewals while seeking higher education.

''Because my work permit was expired, I lost my job,'' said Cheriza, 34. ``I 
don't work, I don't have the money to go and pay for classes, and that's the 
situation for many students.''

He said he had sent the renewal application in on time, but went back and forth 
with immigration for about eight months before finally receiving the new permit 
in August.

Cheriza has taken courses off and on at Palm Beach Community College since 1999 
and has been applying for a green card since 1997. In 2004, to assist peers 
constrained by immigration-related and other financial woes, Cheriza helped 
found the Haitian Students Foundation, a nonprofit organization created by 
students to raise funds and distribute need-based scholarships to other 
students.

''The thing with this organization is that most of us, we've been there,'' 
Cheriza said.

Students with pending immigration cases and work permits can register for 
classes but are ineligible to receive governmental financial aid, he explained.

''We should support those who have a desire to go to school,'' he said.

Cheriza hopes to help students who juggle working full-time and attending 
school full-time and have both their education and jobs interrupted by 
immigration hassles.

''At one point, they cannot take it anymore, and they just drop out,'' he said.

Cheriza works as a family advocate with Hugs for Kids, an organization that 
strives to prevent child abuse, and he hopes to begin classes at Florida 
International University later this year.

Haitian Students Foundation has about 15 members -- students and recent 
graduates from colleges across the state, including the University of Central 
Florida, University of Florida, Valencia Community College, Palm Beach 
Community College, Florida Atlantic University, Broward Community College and 
Barry University.

To help establish the fledgling foundation's credibility, members are not 
allowed to apply for the scholarships and donors are mailed a financial report 
detailing how funds are raised and allocated.

Despite receiving more than $2,000 in pledges for 2005, the Haitian Students 
Foundation only managed to collect $1,000 to split equally between two 
scholarship winners.

Cheriza said HSF is working on setting up a matching funds program with PBCC to 
double the scholarship and is exploring the possibility of a matching funds 
program with other colleges.

Last year's fundraising efforts did not come close to the organization's 
$20,000 goal.

Event coordinator Malie Moreau, a nursing student at Barry University, 
attributes the shortcoming in part to interference by the tumultuous hurricane 
season.

A July fundraising dinner at the Ramada Resort in Sunny Isles Beach had to be 
rescheduled because of a storm, which resulted in decreased attendance.

According to Moreau, the Haitian Students Foundation has also faced a challenge 
in its initial reception by the community.

In addition to paying their dues, $20 for students and $50 for nonstudents, 
members have made personal sacrifices to keep the fledgling foundation going 
and establish its credibility.

''We paid out of pocket for a lot of things,'' Moreau said. Cheriza estimates 
that the members spent more than $2,500 paying the organization's expenses for 
the Sunny Isles dinner and another fundraising dinner held last January in Palm 
Beach.

Cheriza associates the challenges faced by Haitians to the challenges generally 
faced by African Americans and other minority groups.

''There is not enough effort to bring in more minorities to colleges and 
universities,'' Cheriza said. ``I think we need to come up with a strategy 
where we ally ourselves with other minorities who have been affected by those 
policies.''

Micaelle Jean, the foundation's secretary and a graduate of Barry University, 
hopes to see the Haitian Students Foundation serve as a role model for young 
Haitian students confronting prejudice.

''We're hoping that they can feel some sense of pride for us,'' she said. ``See 
what they can achieve, they can have a college education.''

Jean remembers facing discrimination at school when she moved to the United 
States from Haiti as an 11-year-old. ''Whenever I'd be on the bus, kids would 
push me around,'' she said. ``I used to have a very difficult time going to 
school and not being able to speak the language and having kids teasing me and 
calling me names, derogatory names, racial slurs.''

She believes that Haitian children may grow up ashamed of their heritage 
because Haitians are often represented as poor and illiterate in the media. 
''There's never any form of recognition per se of what the Haitian community 
has achieved in South Florida,'' she said.

``Of us bringing our culture, our language, our music and so many other things. 
There's a lot of richness in the Haitian community that society and other 
groups are not aware of.''