In December of 2013, over 80 people, including most of the staff of Haiti Outreach, attended a leadership course sponsored by the non-profit organization Develop Haiti. The course, entitled “Leadership Training For A Bold Future”, took place in the town of Hinche, which is about 15 miles south of where Haiti Outreach is based in Pignon.
Participants came away saying that they have attended many courses and conferences, but this was the first one that was truly valuable to them. Others said they gained some very powerful insights from the course, and that it is a course they wished everyone in Haiti would take.
The six-day program is designed to create a new context for leadership and brings out the transformational power hidden inside every team. The goal is for participants to realize their full potential for personal leadership and use that to change lives and transform their communities and organizations.
In addition to Haiti Outreach, attendees represented groups like DINEPA, the government’s division of Public Works responsible for potable water and sanitation, a judicial court office from the city of Grande Riviere, representatives of the Wesleyan Hospital on the island of La Gonave, among others.
As a result of the course, most participants declared themselves to be leaders committed to producing breakthrough results in their lives and work. We have seen our staff taking additional responsibility for our organization and working together more as a team. The DINEPA team from the Central Plateau of Haiti declared that they are committed to making sure every person in the Central Plateau is within one kilometer of a clean water source, which would be an amazing accomplishment! The team from the Grande Riviere court system stated their commitment to eliminate the backlog of court cases and keep to the principle that all cases involving arrests would come before the courts within 48 hours. Although that is the law, it is not the current practice given the backlog.
The participants of this leadership course gained valuable insights into how they can help Haiti become stronger and more developed through personal leadership. Haiti Outreach is proud to have been a part of this training and to look to a bold future of Haiti as a developed country, with a fair and lawful judicial system, accessible, community managed, clean water for all Haitians, and more!
