Published on December 13, 2023

Fundraiser for Girls' Education

This fall students Dr. Bacholle’s FRE/WST 331 Perspectives on Women’s Issues class once again designed and carried out a series of fundraisers to support girls’ education in Haiti.

Perspectives on Women’s Issues is a course dedicated to exploring women’s role in history, culture, and politics, with a special focus on contemporary issues, including social advancement, political violence, religion, microfinancing, traditions versus modernity, forced marriage, polygamy, incest, sexual identity, and abortion rights.

In addition to reading, watching and discussing films, novels and other texts, Dr. Bacholle has designed this course to include a learn-by-doing component. Students worked together in groups to make a positive impact in the lives of women and girls. For the past several years, Dr. Bacholle has partnered with a local charity to support the College de Jean Bruny, a girls’ secondary school in Les Palmes, Haiti.

This fall, groups of students created a series of fundraisers on Eastern’s campus. The fundraisers included a running race, a Halloween build-your-bag-of treats, the sales of jibbitz and empowering stickers. These events were popular and successful. Students raised $448, which covers the annual school fees for more than two students.

At the end of the semester, Bacholle commented, “the fundraising activity was effective in bringing the emphasis of what we can do to help, which was mentioned in one of our readings. Furthermore, through this experience, learning about the importance of education and emphasizing how grateful we should be as women in the US to be able to have the opportunity to get educated really puts in perspective how valuable it is."