SANFORD – Imagine what life would be like without shoes.
Sanford-Springvale YMCA preschoolers are getting an early lesson in community service and cultural awareness as they participate in a collaborative effort to collect shoes for underserved children in Haiti and Guatemala.

The initiative stems from conditions members of the Kennebunk Rotary Club saw while completing volunteer work installing water purification systems and providing boots, shoes, sneakers and sandals to men, women and children in Guatemala. Wearing shoes that are too old or small, or, in many cases, no shoes at all, has led to the spread of disease and infection through the cuts, blisters and burns on their feet.

Norm Labbe, superintendent of the Kennebunk, Kennebunkport and Wells Water District and an 8-year member of the Kennebunk Rotary Club, has traveled to the same village in Guatemala six times in the past two years. When he leaves for his next trip in April, he’ll be taking eight Kennebunk High School students with him – and the shoes collected by the preschoolers – to help with an effort by the nonprofit group Partners in Development to provide clean drinking water, housing, medical clinics and footwear to the people in the developing country.

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A year ago the earth shook in Haiti. The initial earthquake and its aftershocks killed hundreds of thousands and left over a million people homeless. Today, much of country is still as the quake left it.

Three Ipswich residents are playing a role in and have an insider’s view of Haiti’s long road from relief to reconstruction. All three share similar impressions of the problems Haiti faces. The picture is a mixture of frustration and optimism.

Frustration in persistent and widespread corruption.

Hope in temporary churches that sprang up after the quake, among the first structures to be resurrected from the rubble and, just in the last couple of months, hope in the new homes under construction and the shrinking of massive tent cities.

Tristan Hunt, who graduated from Notre Dame in 2010, recently returned from the island and will return in February. Gale Hull, President and co- founder of Ipswich-based Partners in Development, is currently in Haiti. And Coco McCabe, a writer for Oxfam America, was in Haiti the week after the earthquake Jan. 12, 2010, and has made three trips since.

Hunt, who is taking a year off before entering Columbia University Medical School, went to the beleaguered island in July to help re-establish Hospital Sainte Croix in Leogane, 18 miles west of Port au Prince. The town was the epicenter of the quake and suffered extensive damage. He was part of a team representing Notre Dame and World Wide Village, based in Minneapolis.

Hunt said the biggest problem facing relief teams was getting supplies through customs.

“Corruption is rampant,” he said. “Containers arrive in Haiti and sit there for months.”

Hunt said there were two choices in dealing with the problem: Pay bribes up front or face a maze of paper work presented by the Ministry of Finance. “We had a container arrive Aug. 15 and it was still sitting on the dock when I left,” he said.

Although Haiti is just an hour and a half from Miami, Hunt said it is a different world. “It lacks basic infrastructure of running water and a functioning power grid,” he said. “It is hard to believe that a place filled with such desperation could be that close to the United States.”

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Two New CinemaSalem Grants Awarded

Greetings!

In this holiday season, it’s a pleasure to spotlight the work of two great organizations which are making a difference in the world, the two most recent recipients of CinemaSalem Grants.

As you may know, CinemaSalem Grants are funded by a $.25 donation from each admission ticket sold at the movie theater, and are awarded monthly in amounts up to $1000 to innovative and effective nonprofit organizations. Because the community supports CinemaSalem, we want to make sure that we’re returning the favor.

Partners in Development is an Ipswich-based non-profit which is doing incredibly effective work in Haiti and Guatemala. PID strives to help the extreme poor attain independence and whole life improvement. PID combines a variety of programs to achieve community transformation in places where hope is often lost in the cycle of poverty.

Through child sponsorships, small business loans, housing opportunities and medical care, they aim to transform communities so they can be self-sufficient. You can learn a lot more by checking out www.pidonline.org.

You helped fund Partners in Development’s $1000 grant every time you bought a movie ticket at CinemaSalem, and if you want to get more involved in their important work, we suggest you sponsor a child, which will allow you to dramatically alter a human life, permanently.

Our second recent grant was awarded to the Refugee School Impact program of the Russian Community Association, located in Lynn. As you can imagine, refugee students who come to the United States in middle and high school are at an extreme disadvantage academically and socially.

The mission of the Refugee School Impact initiative is to increase English proficiency, promote academic achievement, and to advance students’ full integration into the public schools and into the community at large. They’re planning to use their $1000 grant to underwrite an experiential education “ropes course” adventure for their students, providing a fun event in nature, while building self-confidence, trust, and team problem-solving skills.

Someone once told be they thought it would be great if people only attended movie theaters who had grant programs. I totally agree, but not because that would mean loads of people would be patronizing CinemaSalem; it would actually be more exciting to see the surrounding theaters and other businesses develop similar mechanisms for improving our communities, just by doing business.

Of course, providing community grants affects the bottom line, which is perhaps why more businesses don’t try it. But our theory is that the people who support CinemaSalem are developing a more subtle understanding of our overall value proposition, and are growing into the sort of loyal and committed core that assures a businesses permanent success. At this point, it’s still a theory, but early returns are promising.

You can help, of course, by making sure your friends and family know about CinemaSalem Grants, and by just coming to the movies here as often as possible!

Speaking of movies, we just learned today that 20th Century Fox is sending us the fun and hilarious Gulliver’s Travels as a 2D (not 3D) print, which will be disappointing if you were looking for the extra dimension, but exhilarating if you want to save a few bucks!

Thanks for supporting CinemaSalem!
Paul Van Ness