The nonprofit has an opportunity to tell the story of how the organization adapted to tremendous external changes in the last year.
While Choix is first and foremost an educational institution, we feel a sense of responsibility to our community of students and parents. Over the past year, Haiti has experienced extreme socio-political upheaval and we adapt daily, whether that means pre-purchasing fuel to protect against ongoing fuel crises, maintaining adequate on campus security, ensuring sufficient reserves of food resources, or finding safe routes for our suppliers from Port au Prince.
Some external conditions have resulted in lost school days throughout our school terms, at times even full terms. For instance, we had no choice but to suspend our regular programming when the government mandated closures to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.
During any time when we cannot offer classes, we continue to have a lead our community by example and we adapt: our chief objective continues to be the health and safety of our community. Choix families rely on us to provide students with nutrition and healthcare by our Registered Nurse during the school day. For many students, the meals they receive at Choix are the only nourishment they will consume each day.
We successfully met this objective by pivoting quickly to provide nutrition and health/safety distributions to support Choix families. The distributions were provided on a monthly basis during the period in which our school operations were closed. Each distribution consisted of food, fresh local produce, vitamins, hygiene products, and masks.
To continue to educate our community by providing accessible pandemic prevention methods, Choix staff and our Registered Nurse showed families how to use and share products, addressing any questions they might have at each distribution.