If you ask Peter Wampler, he will tell you the students of Haiti are not very different from the students you might find at Grand Valley State University. They write out calculus problems on chalkboards, dream of being engineers and spend their Saturday afternoons studying for big exams.

If you ask Wampler, he will tell you the image of Haiti depicted by the media is not quite the same one he spent the last few years discovering.

“The Haiti I’ve seen has people that are hopeful, people that are ambitious and people that are really amazing,” he said. “I was just impressed with the fact, you know, that it’s not that different than any high school you have here. It’s just that they don’t have a real clear route to get anywhere else from here. “

However, as an associate professor of geology at GVSU, Wampler believes he has the tools to help Haiti heal their land through the Empowering Haiti through Education Fund, which is still in the early stages of it’s creation.

Wampler, alongside GVSU admissions office’s Chris Hendree and students Jared Kohler and Andrew Sisson, spent some time during the month of March traveling to Haiti to talk to students and administrators to try to get a better grasp on how to get students ready for the still-budding scholarship.

“We often hear about stories of students in U.S. that struggle to pay for college but in Haiti, even going to college is not really an option,” Hendree said. “I mean, there’s just no money there at all, there’s no financial aid or anything like that. So providing this opportunity for Haitian students will give those students the skills that they can use to help rebuild their country. “

The Empowering Haiti through Education Fund has two main goals. The first goal of $30,000, which Wampler hopes will be met by January, would make the scholarship permanent, but it will take $250,000 to bring the first Haitian student to GVSU.

“I would like to have some of the Haitians come here and see our students have them get to know the Haitians so they can see a different side of Haiti,” Wampler said. “So, I think it would benefit our students and it would benefit them. It’s almost equally beneficial on both sides. “

Ideally, he said, there would be a contingency of Haitian students every year and when they complete their four-year degree at GVSU – like any other international student might – they would return to Haiti to help the next generation of students. And though skeptics might argue that these students won’t return, Wampler has faith.

“Most of the students we’ve talked to, we asked them personally ‘would you go back if you got this education?’ And almost all of them said yes,” he said. “They said that they really wanted a healthy, strong Haiti that can be there home. And they realize that the only way they can do that is to have help like this and bring that back to Haiti to change Haiti so it’s not stuck in this rut of dysfunction. They know that it’s dysfunctional and not working and they know that it needs to change, and I think they see this as a way that can help them. “

He said he through his visits to Haiti, he has come to understand the promise and ambition of the people there and believes it can be a “place of great beauty and promise if Haitians are empowered with the skills and tools to make it flourish.”

Wampler recalls the day he and his team left a meeting with administrators, when one of the English teachers pulled him aside and told him that he was excited about what they were doing – he wanted to be a better English teacher, he told Wampler, but there was no way he could get the training.

“Before we left, he looked me in the eye and he said, ‘Don’t forget about us. Don’t go away and forget about us.’ I’ll always remember that forever I think,” Wampler said. “Because that’s the thing – a lot of people go there and they do this kind of stuff, but then they forget. And so I’m convinced that I’m not going to forget. “

Visit www.gvsu.edu/Haiti to learn how you can help.

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