St. Thomas Episcopal Church turned its Shrove Tuesday pancake supper last year into a Shrove Tuesday crepe party with a band, a Haitian artist working with children, and Haitian artworks and crafts for auction. The goal – to contribute to tuition scholarships for girls and young women in some of the most poverty-stricken parts of Haiti through the Women’s and Girls’ Initiative (WGI), a girls’ empowerment program. Supported in the Shrove Tuesday event by other Episcopal churches in the South Dade area and students from Palmer Trinity School, St. Thomas raised over $9,000 for girls to attend school this fall.
Didi Bertrand-Farmer, a native of Haiti and founder of the WGI, explains that she works “for a world where no girls are invisible or left behind and all girls can exercise their human rights and make choices about their lives.” In Haiti, 80% of the educational system is privately run; only 20% of girls complete high school and among them, only 3% pursue higher education. “At the WGI,” says Bertrand-Farmer, “we focus our attention on the most marginalized and disadvantaged adolescent girls and young women aged 12 to 24, who have been pushed into difficult circumstances by cycles of poverty, gender inequality, abuse, and illness, as well as man-made and natural disasters like the 2011 earthquake and the 2016 hurricane that caused such terrible destruction.” The cost of tuition per year for WGI scholars ranges from $500 to $700 for high school and from $1,000 to $1,500 for a university or graduate school education.
With her family based in Miami, Bertrand-Farmer is a member of St. Thomas Episcopal Church. She travels frequently to Haiti to oversee the WGI’s programing and activities, build school partnerships, and implement the annual summer leadership academy for the girls. Parishioners engaged in the ongoing support of the WGI in Haiti find it exciting and inspiring to work alongside the founder of the organization to support this mission.
