For the past five years, the Sisters of St. Joseph in the United States and Canada have collaborated with Mission Haiti to help rebuild the lives of the Haitian people after the devastation of the 2010 earthquake. Our program has focused on Annunciation School in Leogane, Haiti and the education of girls.

During this Lenten season, we are making our Haiti Lenten Calendar available for your use (download below). This Lenten calendar focuses on what is accomplished when girls are given the opportunity to attend school. The immediate results are obvious:  ten girls receive an education that prepared them for the future. The larger picture shows that the education of girls benefits the areas of health, medical care, being raised out of poverty, civic leadership and public service.

While this effort to educate benefits the children in Haiti, it also offers each of us an opportunity to grow in God’s compassion and love and to connect with a country where the majority of its people live in dire circumstances of poverty. In spite of this, the girls at Annunciation School have the fortunate opportunity to attend school where they love reading, dancing and learning. The Lenten calendar offers a way to learn of the critical need to educate girls, both globally and in Haiti.  It features some bleak statistics about global poverty effecting women and the positive impact education makes in a girl’s life. 

Each day, you will be presented with a fact about global poverty.  Some days, you will be asked to complete an action based on the daily fact.  Some of the actions will be prayer based and others will ask you to make a donation to the Haiti Project based on the daily fact.  As you follow the calendar during these days of Lent, be inspired by what your contribution makes possible:

• The ten girls presently enrolled in Annunciation School are in the fifth and sixth grades.
• Teachers have received scholarships to move toward teacher certification.
• The secondary school destroyed in the 2010 earthquake is now (finally) complete.

At the end of Lent, you can make your donation to Mission Haiti by clicking here or send a check payable to:  Sisters of St. Joseph of NW PA – Haiti Project and write “Haiti Project” in the memo section of the check.  Donations from the use of the Lenten calendar can be sent to:

Sisters of St. Joseph of NW PA
Haiti Project
5031 West Ridge Road
Erie, PA  16506 

Thank you in advance for using the Haiti Lenten Calendar.  We hope your Lenten journey this year brings you into deeper relationship with those around you and with God.

Haiti Lenten Calendar