Haiti service trip cancelled

There are a lot of reasons for students to cancel their spring break plans -- but usually a military coup d'etat isn't one of them.\nThe IU Timmy Foundation, a local chapter of the Indianapolis based organization that works to better the lives of children around the world, had planned a medical mission trip to Haiti to take place over spring break, but violent demonstration canceled their trip.\nThe recent political instability and violence in the small Caribbean nation caused the Foundation to cancel its proposed program in Haiti. In the last few weeks, a rebel campaign to overthrow former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide ended in Aristide's resignation and flight to Africa, bringing U.S., French and Canadian peacekeepers into the country.\nThe students, all volunteers who pay their own way, would have worked with clinics and orphanages alongside the Haitian Medical Academy in Cache-Cache, Haiti, north of the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince.\n"We just don't feel comfortable sending our students down there (at this time)," said Jessica Trimble, volunteer activities and missions coordinator for the Timmy Foundation in Indianapolis.\nJohn Dionisios Aliprantis and Aaron Remenschneider, coordinators of the IU Timmy Foundation chapter, said the decision to cancel the trip was a joint one between themselves and the Indianapolis headquarters.\n"Our main contact in Haiti, Dr. Marie Renee, didn't think it was safe (for the students) … the road was blockaded to the Haitian Medical Academy, and the generator was running low, for example," Aliprantis said.\nTheir potential hosts at the Academy would be responsible for taking care of the incoming students -- deciding not to send the students would be one less "thing for them to worry about" at a time of great crisis such as this, Trimble said.\n"I was upset, but not surprised," said freshman Abbey Schachter, who would have gone on the Haitian trip. "But my parents wouldn't let me go anyways (when the instability began in Haiti).\n"It's just sad how they need people the most right now."\nThe Timmy Foundation still wants to continue its work in Haiti. Its program there began in 2000, partly due to student interest in the nation that lies only about 550 miles southeast of Florida, Trimble said.\n"We do need to get American citizens down to Haiti to get the real picture (of the country) that the media doesn't portray," Trimble said.\nSchachter echoed this sentiment, saying she had originally wanted to go to see "what life was really like for people in a Third World country."\n"The poverty in Haiti is at a different level than anywhere else in the (Western) Hemisphere," Aliprantis said. "There's no infrastructure, phones or mail service. Estimates of unemployment are between 70 to 80 percent."\nSome students, Schachter among them, who had planned to go on the Haitian trip will attend another one of the Timmy Foundation programs in either Honduras or the Dominican Republic.\nThe Timmy Foundation does plan to continue working with Haiti -- it has already planned a trip for this October. Remenschneider said the group is adamant about its desire to continue work in the country.\n"There's just no substitute for meeting people firsthand that are living in abject poverty … it's a life-changing experience."\n-- Contact staff writer Charlie Szrom at cszrom@indiana.edu