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    Photo Dennis and Sue (Montano) Petruzzi

    May 25, 2017

    Helping Haitians Help Haitians

    In 1996, Dennis and Sue (Montano) Petruzzi ‘70 touched down at the Port-au-Prince International Airport for the first time. They experienced Haitian life at the Hospice St. Joseph center. They memorized the streets of the Christ Roi neighborhood in Port-au-Prince. They witnessed the immense poverty—and immense beauty—found in the western half of Hispaniola.


    This was the service-immersion trip that would forever change their faith—and their lives.


    Following their first immersion trip in 1996, Dennis and Sue thoroughly committed themselves to the Outreach to Haiti organization sponsored by their local Diocese of Norwich, CT. Assuming responsibility for Hospice St. Joseph, Outreach to Haiti now provides a myriad of services to residents in the poorest country in the Americas. Volunteers provide regular medical and dental care; scholarships for elementary, secondary, and post-secondary students; and supplemental nutrition assistance for expectant mothers and children, among other services.


    Dennis, who was an accounting major at Le Moyne, focuses on the accounting and financial management of the organization. Sue, who was a mathematics major, manages the education program, connecting sponsors with the students they support. She also helps bridge the gap between American and Haitian culture by selling Haitian arts and crafts through the diocesan “Haiti’s Back Porch” shop. Both perform central responsibilities for the organization’s development:  writing grants, fundraising, and providing managerial assistance. Regularly traveling to Port-au-Prince, they continue to provide service-immersion opportunities for parishioners in the Diocese of Norwich.


    “The goal of Outreach to Haiti is to enable the people whom the organization serves to lift themselves out of poverty,” says Dennis. “We believe education to be the primary means of providing opportunity.”


    They know, however, that providing an education is more that just supplying pencils and paper— it involves caring for the whole person, one student at a time. “We believe that providing access to healthcare and nutritional support increases the chances of children completing their education and better enables adults to provide for their families,” says Dennis.  “When we first visited Haiti in 1996, the ministry provided scholarships for mostly primary school students and some secondary. Now the ministry provides 40 university and vocational school scholarships. We have students in medicine, engineering, business, agronomy, automotive mechanics, and other fields critical to Haiti’s development.”


    “It’s a small start, but we’re beginning to see some of our university graduates get jobs— this is always cause for celebration,” says Sue. “So many people want to give the poor 'things,' but Outreach strives to show people that the path to lifting up our sisters and brothers is to first, listen to them, and then to work with them to provide the tools necessary to enable their vision to become a reality.”


    When the 2010 earthquake demolished Hospice St. Joseph and a majority of Port-au-Prince, Dennis and Sue were on the ground within weeks, picking up the pieces of the community they had spent the past two decades building. While the damage of the earthquake devastated the Haitian people, not all of the work Dennis and Sue put forth into Outreach to Haiti was lost. Building from their strong foundation in the United States, Dennis and Sue’s dedication and careful managerial work for Outreach to Haiti mobilized volunteers and twinned parishes to send emergency relief to the Christ Roi quarter and surrounding areas.


    While Dennis and Sue still regularly send aid, now especially critical in light of Hurricane Matthew’s most recent destruction, they strive to do more than just give. “Charity is the easy part,” says Sue. “Fighting for justice, honoring the dignity of others by allowing them to choose how to effect their own destiny, not doing for people what they can do for themselves— these are concepts that I have learned through the years.”


    “We take the view that we do what can be done one person at a time and try to make a difference in the lives of the people who come through our gate,” says Dennis. “We can’t worry about changing the entire country.”

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