Joyce Crone, a teacher from St. Mary's high school, is selling T-shirts for Haiti, where she plans to travel to this summer and help other teachers.
February 04, 2010 By Liz Monteiro, Record staff
CAMBRIDGE — Joyce Crone plans to send a T-shirt to Ellen DeGeneres, Celine Dion and Michaëlle Jean.
“My hope is that this really catches on like wildfire,’’ said the 48-year-old Cambridge woman who is selling T-shirts for Haiti. All the money collected will support the Three Angels School and the Sisters of Charity Hospital in Port-au-Prince.
Crone hopes by sending the T-shirts to popular cultural icons with heart and people with position, others will become aware of her mission and buy a shirt.
“I want to give exposure to this. People will see it and buy it,’’ she said as she was planning on putting a shirt in the mail for Ellen today.
“I could do what a lot of people do and give money. It’s noble and necessary to give. But I had to do more. I had to act,’’ said Crone, who’s spent $2,000 of her own money to buy fair trade, cotton and bamboo T-shirts.
As someone who’s visited Haiti three times and plans to return this summer, she said she felt a deep connection to the Haitians.
“I couldn’t stand seeing bodies scooped up like they didn’t matter. I just thought all these people have names and they are real people. It broke my heart,’’ said Crone, who was saddened to hear that the school she visited in Haiti lost three of its 13 teachers in the horrific earthquake that hit the island nation last month.
She decided to use a Haitian design with an angel blowing on a trumpet with the title Lespwa, meaning hope in Haitian Creole. The designs are carved into recycled steel oil drums sold in Haiti.
Crone first went to Haiti in 2005 with five other women to hold sick and dying babies in the Sisters of Charity Hospital in Port-au-Prince.
And like most people who travel to Haiti, the experience was life-altering and keeps bringing her back to the island nation.
“The rhythm of Haiti gets under your skin,’’ she said. “Once you go, it becomes part of you.’’
Crone said she was awestruck by the Haitian people and their remarkable sense of pride and dignity despite the poverty they live in.
As someone who hails from Six Nations, she said she feels a similar plight between the forgotten people of Haiti and First Nations.
“The eyes and ears are on Haiti now but, before the earthquake, there was no electricity, people were dying before and there was poverty before,’’ she said.
Crone returned to Haiti in 2007 to assist in the hospital and then in the summer of 2008 she went again but this time to help train Haitian teachers.
As an educator with 25 years experience plus leadership knowledge with running the special education department at St. Mary’s High School, she, along with two other local teachers, were pumped to share Canadian instructional methods with teachers in Haiti.
“I wanted to be a teacher since I was in Grade 2. This comes natural to me,’’ said Crone on her decision to help teachers in Haiti. “It’s something that is my forte and my passion and I knew it would be far-reaching.’’
An initial donation from Barrday Inc., an industrial textile company in Cambridge helped cover the teachers’ airfares.
Crone said teachers at the Three Angels School in Haiti used rudimentary measures such as a slate and a blackboard to teach their students.
There were 350 children from kindergarten to Grade 6 in one portable, she said.
Crone began devising curriculum and put a teacher training team together called TLC — Teaching and Learning with Compassion.
“They (Haitian teachers) didn’t know they could use humour in the classroom or discipline students without doing it physically,’’ she said.
Crone also took classroom supplies to Haiti including old textbooks, pencils, pens and paper.
Along with two other St. Mary’s teachers — Shannon Penney and Christine Devine — she will go to Haiti for two weeks in July. But this time in addition to training teachers, they could be painting walls, constructing a classroom or “whatever needs to be done,’’ she said.
If you’re interested in getting a shirt, contact Crone at jcrone1051@rogers.com or 519-621-6139.
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