By Ruby Thomas, Record Staff Writer
BARDSTOWN, Ky. — In the mountains of Acul Samedi, a rural town in northeast Haiti, a handful of townspeople now have a source of light in their homes thanks to the parishioners of the Basilica of St. Joseph Proto-Cathedral in Nelson County, Ky.
In February, five St. Joseph parishioners traveled to Acul Samedi, taking 100 solar lanterns to the town where residents live without electricity.
The lanterns are made by a company called MPOWERD. According to its website, the lanterns were designed to provide “clean and safe solar lights to people in developing countries.” They are made of plastic and are inflated by blowing air into them. They use LED bulbs and, when left to be charged by the sun for seven hours, the lanterns can provide up to 12 hours of light.
They are capable of lighting an entire house in Haiti. The lanterns have an average life of about two years. Each of the 100 households that received the lanterns has about seven members, so the lanterns will provide lighting to about 700 people.
Parishioners of St. Joseph have accompanied the people of St. Francis Xavier Church in Acul Samedi for more than three decades. The parishes have a “twinning” relationship.
St. Joseph’s primary focus in Acul Same-di is to fund St. Francis Xavier’s parish school, but parishioners also take any opportunity to make other contributions, such as the lanterns, that can help improve the quality of life for residents, said Joe Zarantonello, coordinator of the “St. Joseph Haiti Project,” during a recent interview.
St. Joseph raises about $24,000 each year to operate the parish school and help the parish with other needs, said Zarantonello. Most of the money, he said, is used to pay the 12 teachers on staff. The funds come from parishioners and donations from businesses and other individuals in the Bards-town area.
Zarantonello, who has made 20 trips to Haiti since the year 2000, noted that St. Francis Xavier’s school was already established when the twinning relationship began. Help from St. Joseph has allowed it to grow, he said. The school serves between 300 and 400 elementary and middle school students.
Zarantonello noted that this parish-to-parish relationship is a “partnership” and it’s important to let the Haitian pastor — Father Jutshley Florelus — and his parishioners make decisions.
“We’re accompanying them. They know what’s best because they live there, but were committed to helping them,” he said.
One of St. Joseph’s goals in Haiti is to place solar panels on the school and church buildings. Father Florelus and his people decided it was more urgent to replace the roof on the church, so that will be the next project, said Zarantonello.
He hopes the project to install solar panels will be accomplished in the next two years, he said, noting that the church has one solar panel already.
For now, since there’s no electricity at the school, the classrooms at St. Francis Xavier are basic, containing desks and chairs and a chalk board. There aren’t many books and many of the lessons are taught orally. The school day ends at 11:30 a.m., when the classrooms get too hot for the children, Zarantonello said.
Parishioners have learned to make do without electricity at the church, using a diesel operated generator to power a few musical instruments for worship on Sundays.
When the parishes’ relationship began in 1986, St. Joseph School started a fundraiser, too. The fundraiser was originally called “Pennies for Heaven,” and is now known as “Make Change for Haiti.” School children are invited to save pennies throughout the year and bring them to school during the Advent season. Then the contributions, close to $9,000 last year, are sent to aid St. Francis Xavier Church as well.
Lauren Sprigg traveled to Haiti in February with the group. She’s a college sophomore, but said she still remembers saving her pennies as a student at St. Joseph School. This was her third trip to Haiti, but her first visit to Acul Samedi to meet the people of St. Francis Xavier, she said.
Seeing where her pennies have been going all those years “impacted” her, she said. “It puts things into perspective.”
She was accompanied on the trip by Ellen Sprigg, her mother, Zarantonello and Brian Bond and his wife Shawn Bond, a teacher at St. Joseph School who now coordinates “Make Change for Haiti.”
“We’ve always loved being a part of it,” said Ellen Sprigg of the donations for Haiti. All three of her children attended St. Joseph School and she serves as a youth minister at the church.
Shawn Bond said that before this trip, she didn’t know a lot about Haiti, besides the basics she taught to her students about the country, such as the poverty rate. Returning from a trip there has “made a world of a difference. To be able to give my personal take on what I experienced has brought it home for the students,” she said.
St. Joseph also had a short-term relationship from 2010-2015 with another parish in Haiti, St. Jude Church in Port-Au-Prince. That effort raised $15,000 to start a recycling plant, which has become a source of livelihood for many residents in that city, said Zarantonello.
“It’s important for people in the U.S. to have a window on the world, so we know other cultures and we’re not afraid of them,” said Zarantonello.
This is what he hopes the trips and the relationship with the people in Haiti will accomplish.
“The body of Christ doesn’t recognize passports,” he said, recalling how moved he was to see parishioners at St. Francis Xavier join hands and say The Lord’s Prayer in their native Creole.
