WE Day

View online at winnipegfreepress.com/publications Thursday, October 25, 2018 Winnipeg Free Press Special Feature WE.org Thank you to our generous Co-Chairs for their support in empowering young people from over 450 WE Schools across Manitoba to change the world through service. The movement continues at WE Day Manitoba! Hartley T. Richardson President and CEO, James Richardson & Sons, Ltd. WE Day Global Co-Chair & WE Day Manitoba Co-Chair Mark Chipman Executive Chairman, True North Sports & Entertainment WE Day Manitoba Co-Chair Bob Silver President, Western Glove Works, Ltd. WE Day Manitoba Co-Chair A special thank you to our National Co-Chairs Elio Luongo CEO and Senior Partner, KPMG Canada Bill Thomas Chairman, KPMG International Andrew Williams CEO, DHL Express Canada Jeffrey Latimer Owner, Jeffrey Latimer Entertainment David C. Onley Ontario Lieutenant Governor, 2007-2014 Perry Bellegarde National Chief, Assembly of First Nations Jennifer Tory Chief Administrative Officer, RBC Nelly Furtado Singer, songwriter, producer and WE ambassador Darren Entwistle President and CEO, TELUS By Wanda O'Brien It's 8 p.m. on a Tuesday and the sky is already completely dark—the kind of inky blackness that prevents you from seeing your hand in front of your face. For the next 11 hours, Haitians living in rural communities without access to gridlines—about 40 per cent of the population— exist in total darkness, unless they create their own light. at is the situation in Marialapa, a community of 1,500 people located a three-hour walk away from the closest town, which, until recently, was the nearest source of communal light. ere are no hydro poles; and, before October 2017, zero electricity to run lights, let alone luxury items like refrigerators or washing machines. e lack of light also meant activities that should be non-negotiable— like completing the day's homework—were tricky to tackle. Grade 11 student Franco used to arrive home at 4 p.m., after a three-hour walk home from school. ere is no high school in Marialapa. He would change out of his uniform before moving the animals from one grassy area to another. Exhausted, he'd take a nap, and then wake up to study, using the light from a kerosene lamp or, more recently, a tiny solar-powered mini-lamp, provided by WE in 2013 through Unite to Light, a program founded by American Gisela Voss in memory of her son Luke. In 2014, WE built the new primary school in Marialapa. In the fall of 2017, it became WE's first solar-powered campus in Haiti. e solar electricity powers light bulbs in every classroom and on the wraparound porches. ere's even enough power to charge electronics; for the first time, the school is talking about adding an audiovisual program. For now, it's completely changed the way students study. Every evening, the light from the primary school illuminates the community, and beckons avid learners to its brightness. Franco sits on the school steps beside his best friend and four of his 13 siblings. ey're chatting, having finished their homework for the evening. Franco's parents, Jean Claude and Suzette Marcellus, walked over to the school moments earlier to walk home with their kids—a new family ritual. Studying wasn't as successful before. Franco further explains, "It's lifted up the whole vision for the community. It's set a new image for us. All the areas around are going, 'Oh my god! Oh my god! Look at that great community in Marialapa with the amazing school!'" "What the lights in the classroom allow us to do is come together to study. It lets us work together so we can understand much better," he says. High school students gather at the primary school to do their homework together in the evening, classrooms transformed into a community centre come study space. You need only look at Franco's recent report card to understand the transformation. Before he had a well-lit study space he scored 52 per cent in social science. Now he averages 80 per cent. e bright new buildings have boosted student aspirations. Franco's goal is to be an agronomist. He recognizes that he will leave home to further his studies, but plans on returning to use his knowledge to better his community. WE works with rural populations in Haiti to create opportunity in the countryside, so people aren't forced to move to the capital of Port-au-Prince in search of work. e development of the school, and lighting it, is one step in that direction. e area surrounding the school is now a busy promenade in the evening, where groups of friends gather to study, easily checked on by their parents, who also come to chat. Recently there was a movie night, the solar providing enough electricity for a screening—the first time a movie has been shown in the area. e parent committee is working to make it a monthly occurrence. "e lights are so important to us," Franco says. "We can see the difference that can come into our community. We can see what's possible." By Jesse Mintz e roots of sibling rivalry were planted one year ago, over dinner. Sitting around a pot of uchumanga fish stew and bread made of yuca, then-12-year-old Frank Shanga Piedra listened as his sister Talia shared her news from the day. eir school in Kanambu, a small village inland from the Napo River in Ecuador's Amazon Rainforest, won first place in WE's Clean Schools Program—and Talia led the way. Just one year separates the brother and sister pair. As Talia recounted how she tended the school garden and taught classmates to keep the bathroom tidy to fend off infections and illness, pride shone on their parents' faces. Frank decided then and there to follow in her footsteps—to lead the school movement and fight the pollution and environmental degradation threatening their community. WE Villages launched the Clean Schools Program in five communities in the Amazon, to encourage students to take action on health, hygiene and protecting the environment. Students learn about environmentalism through workshops and give back to their schools by planting gardens, implementing recycling programs and spreading the word about sanitation—all while developing as leaders. e program culminates in an end-of-year competition where one school is crowned winner. Talia, now in Grade 10, led Kanambu to its first-place finish in the inaugural competition. For those in Kanambu, the program comes at just the right time. e young community's population has ballooned in recent years, growing from a few families to hundreds of people. at growth has brought a lot of good—a road, electricity for the school and clean, piped water. But it's also brought challenges in the form of garbage, waste and pollution. Stray plastic bags and errant trash line the road, testaments to Kanambu's growing pains. e Amazon is known as the lungs of the planet—but with the right plans in place it could be called the Earth's largest composting facility. Nature is extreme here. Rain falls all year in great warm torrents from an endless sky. Trees grow ever taller. And everything, eventually, returns to the earth. Fallen leaves take three days to biodegrade in the damp Amazonian soil. A dropped apple core disappears even more quickly. Plastic is the one thing that refuses to break down, clinging to the land like a blight. School principal Ramon Liqui Machoa remembers the land before the school was founded in 1998. en, it was a pasture on the cusp of the jungle. Today, it's a thriving school, home to over 400 students, a point of pride for the community, and it's becoming the epicenter of a burgeoning green movement. An educator of 10 years, he sees WE's Clean Schools Program as an integral piece in the puzzle to protect the environment, because it gets the entire community actively involved. Just take the example of Frank— he pitched his father, a builder, on his proposal to help solve one of the school's most pressing problems: there were no garbage bins. e closest town started sending garbage collectors to Kanambu, but without bins there was nothing to pick up. Frank wanted to build natural, durable containers out of bamboo for all to use. Father and son cut a swath through the dense jungle to the bamboo grove on Frank's grandfather's land. ey used machetes to chop the stems and hauled them home on their shoulders. ey buried one end of each column in the ground, cutting slits along its length to allow it to bend, and then used sticks and wires to shape them into bins. "It was the first time I've built something with my dad," Frank says, satisfaction creeping into his voice. His classmates started using them right away, putting into practice what they'd learned in the workshops. Frank also made flower planters and vases to contribute to the school garden and beautify the classrooms. As for the competition, Kanambu finished third this year—"we weren't as good as we could have been," reflects Ramon. Still, there's no doubt the competition sparked change. Just look at the clean campus. And there's always next year. Siblings battle for cleanest school How a sibling rivalry helped fuel a school-wide green movement in the Amazon—and an emerging leader. Light it up In Haiti, solar power at a rural school changes the educational landscape, and how residents see their future. Siblings Frank and Talia Shanga Piedra. (Photo courtesy of WE) The school in Marialapa, lit up at night by solar-powered lights. (Photo courtesy of WE)

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