Greetings,

My name is Avery Jackson and I am a Senior at Valparaiso University and an active member in my university's chapter of Working Across Vocations Everywhere (WAVES), previously known as Engineers Without Borders. WAVES is an international non-profit humanitarian organization established to partner with developing communities worldwide in order to improve their quality of life through the implementation of simple and sustainable engineering, education, and health and safety projects. Efforts, such as the careful selection of materials and teaching locals how to maintain the systems we leave behind, are continuously being made to ensure the sustainability of our work. For more information about this organization, please visit  our website, https://www.valpo.edu/waves/.

In March we began work on a new project called Project Future Leaders, with the orphanage Consolation Center of Haiti (CCH), in Les Cayes, Haiti. The children served by CCH often leave with few if any viable career opportunities. WAVES hopes to help rectify this with the Project Future Leaders project by building a technical training and vocational school directly across from the Consolation Center. This project will be constructed out of shipping containers and will take multiple years to complete. While we are initiating the construction of the technical training and vocational center, we will be training and hiring local Haitians to build this school and to teach in it. The goal of all WAVES projects is to empower the community by enhancing local, technical, managerial, and entrepreneurial skills. WAVES as an organization has maintained a relationship with Edouard Constant, founder of CCH, and we are confident that he and his staff's investment in the Les Cayes community will make this project effective and sustainable. The vocational school will be open to both the children of CCH, the children from a second orphanage Pwoje Espwa as well as the people residing in Les Cayes, meaning that this initiative will be supported by the larger community as well.

A small WAVES group, myself included, will travel for a five-day trip this November. On this trip our team will continue work on the vocational school. We will make arrangements for the arrival of the shipping containers and hire workers for their fabrication scheduled for our next trip over winter break. We will also install plates onto the foundation constructed in March to attach the containers to come January.

We will also begin work on an extensive solar electric project in partnership with the other orphanage we partner with Pwoje Espwa. Through this project we will be helping get Pwoje Espwa off of Haiti's very unreliable electric grid, so that they have consistent power that will be much cheaper and more efficient then their current electric system. 

On this trip we will also be making preparations for our nursing team who will be opening their very first clinics in Haiti in January. The clinics will be open to the community and will provide necessary medical attention to many Haitians. Our team will be partnering with Haitian medical professionals allowing both groups to learn from one another. The Haitian doctors and nurses also help to bridge the cultural gap and ensure that all legal regulations are followed.

Additionally, I will be working with the teachers and students of the two orphanages to introduce tablet technology into the classroom. Over the past several years, I have been working with a WAVES to create educational videos that the students of CCH and Espwa can use to supplement the information that they are learning in school. This educational project will provide the orphanages will be given classroom sets of tablets as well as RACHEL-Pi servers that will allow students to access these videos and other online educational content without needing the internet. 

Going to Haiti will provide me with the opportunity to learn from the communities I will serve. This will be my third trip to Haiti with this organization and I have already learned so much from my two previous trips. I am excited for what I am able to bring to the table as I am not considered a veteran traveler for WAVES. This is truly an wonderful opportunity, but it does come with a price. Any support you would like to contribute, both prayers and financial contributions, are all greatly appreciated. Donations will go towards my travel costs and the projects occurring in Haiti. 

Thank you for your support and have a wonderful day,

Avery Jackson