Reuseable bags help school in Haiti

 By Tanya Connor
The Catholic Free Press

WORCESTER – Religious and lay women from the social justice committee of Our Lady of Providence Parish are raising money for their sister school in Haiti with reusable shopping bags they made.
Committee members made 86 bags to solicit donations for St. Anne School in Les Cayes, said the chairwoman, Sister Rena Mae Gagnon, a Little Franciscan of Mary.
They offered the bags for a suggested donation of $20 each after Masses last weekend. She reported Monday that they’d raised $1,800, including money from earlier donations. Some people gave more than $20 and some didn’t take a bag, she said. She said there were 26 bags left, and people can get one for a donation after Masses next weekend.
The money is to be sent to the school in Haiti, probably through the Sisters of St. Anne, the congregation that runs it, said committee member Sister Michele Jacques. A Sister of St. Anne herself, she directs one of the Sisters’ local ministries – the Marie Anne Center, located at Our Lady of Providence Parish’s St. Bernard Church. Sister Rena Mae also serves there. The center provides educational and spiritual opportunities for people here.
The parish started twinning with St. Anne School in 2006, through what was then the Worcester Diocese’s Haitian Apostolate, Sister Rena Mae said. Sister Michele said the twinning continues with the help of the Sisters of St. Anne.
The bags, initially considered for an Earth Day project, became a way of remembering people in Haiti as the first anniversary of a 7.2 magnitude earthquake in the Les Cayes area approached. (Many people in the diocese are familiar with the 2010 earthquake that devastated the Port-au-Prince area, killing 19-year-old Britney Gengel from St. John Parish.)
Sister Rena Mae and Sister Michele told the story of the bags this way.
A couple years ago, social justice committee member Mary Haberstroh suggested making cloth shopping bags for Earth Day. Committee members decided to offer the bags to parishioners for a donation for St. Anne School, to be used for whatever was needed there.
A flier for the project shows photos of children, a religious sister and earthquake devastation. It says the Sisters of St. Anne in Haiti “continue to make the work of our foundress, Blessed Marie-Anne Blondin, fruitful.” A year after the August 14 earthquake there is still a great need for computers, printers, photocopiers, books and school bags and food for students, the flier says.
This year the bag fund-raiser replaced the social justice committee’s annual “sandal project” for Haiti. For that project, parishioners were asked for monetary donations to send the school, so shoes could be purchased in Haiti for students.
“We had asked what they needed,” when inaugurating the sandal project, Sister Michele said. The school principal said, “Money for shoes.” (In Haiti, students often walk a long distance to school.)
For this year’s fund-raiser, Sister Rena Mae and Sister Hilda Chasse, also a Little Franciscan of Mary, had other committee members – Sister Michele, Ms. Haberstroh and Susan Lubianez – come to their house in Worcester to help make the bags with fabric and thread donated for the sisters’ various projects. Sister Rena Mae said she thought each bag took about an hour to make. Then the pandemic hit and they had to stop meeting. In January 2022, they continued the project, finishing this spring.
“We’re working for the earth,” said Sister Rena Mae. “We were in line, certainly, with (Pope Francis’ encyclical) Laudato Si’ and the care for the earth.” People can use the cloth bags instead of plastic ones, she said.
But instead of seeking donations for the bags around Earth Day in April, when other requests for money are being made, the committee waited until the earthquake anniversary was approaching.
“We were very lucky – all of our Sisters were in Port-au-Prince at a celebration” for the feast of the Assumption last August, so none of them were in Les Cayes when the earthquake hit, Sister Michele said.
The Sisters of St. Anne who staff St. Anne School and other schools in the Les Cayes Diocese are Haitians, she said. She said St. Anne’s sustained significant damage, but was not destroyed as some other schools were.
Sister Michele said she told parishioners at Masses the last weekend of July about visiting those schools in 2009, because she was very affected by post-hurricane devastation she saw then. Schools had reopened, although some hadn’t regained electricity. The devastation from last year’s earthquake was much worse, she said.
Sister Rena Mae said there was great interaction between committee members and other parishioners after the Masses at which Sister Michele spoke. She said the pastor, Father Jonathan J. Slavinskas, has been very supportive of the fund-raiser.
The bag fund-raiser took a lot of work, and in the future the committee plans to return to the sandal project instead, Sister Rena Mae said.

Editor’s note: Those wanting to make monetary donations through the parish website, olpworcester.org, can “click to support Haiti” and fill in their information under “The Sandal Project” heading. Checks payable to Our Lady of Providence Parish, with Haiti on the memo line, can be mailed to 236 Lincoln St., Worcester, MA 01605.