Q&A with Sister Gloria Ines Gonzalez Ramirez, Changing the Educational Paradigm in Haiti

Gloria Ines González Ramírez, right, a Dominican sister of the Blessed Virgin, seeks to change the educational paradigm in Haiti as the director of a local school and nursery in the semi-rural municipality of Corail. (Courtesy of Gloria Ines Gonzalez Ramirez)

The magnitude 7 earthquake that struck Haiti in January 2010 was a devastation that the Caribbean island could not bear: the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere lost an estimated 300,000 people in its largest natural disaster, and displaced more than 1.3 million people.

The home of Sister Gloria Ines Gonzalez Ramirez and her fellow Dominican Sisters of the Blessed Virgin Mary was part of this ruins.

In rebuilding a new home, Gonzalez said they searched for land that could also be “part of rebuilding Haiti,” with a children’s center and a school for those displaced by the earthquake.

“We were thinking long-term,” said Gonzalez, who is originally from Medellin, Colombia (like her sponsor), and moved to Haiti in 1999. “We believed that this would rebuild the societal fabric above all for children and infants. Especially the vulnerable populations that were affected in the earthquake.”

So far, she said, it has been a success, with the pediatric center, nursery school and school available to all local children in her semi-rural area of ​​Corrail.

The school celebrates the holiday, Flag Day, every May to honor the Haitian Revolution. (Courtesy of Gloria Ines Gonzalez Ramirez)

As a teacher by profession, Gonzalez aims to change the country’s educational paradigm—one that prioritizes care and understanding rather than disciplining children through punishment—through the Maripuspal Missionary Center of Dominican Sisters of the Presentation, a nursery school in her community where she is a principal. (It also runs the local elementary school that students attend after nursery school.)

In a conversation with GSR, Gonzalez shared her philosophy of teaching and the progress she’s seen among her students.

Gonzalez: The nursery started by inviting children outside the area and educating them starting from the age of two.

I remember a doctor telling me, “Look, Sister Gloria, a city her kids saved. We should educate kids between 0 and 5.” At this point, the pediatric center was already addressing the health needs of infants up to the age of 15, but the school focused on ages 2 to 5. There were already several primary schools in the area, and we didn’t want to compete with them when the need had already been met.

GSR: What do you mean when you say you want to change the educational paradigm?

I was teaching at a private school run by the Sacred Heart Brothers, but the earthquake changed my views on education. Even before the earthquake, I saw a lot of frustration and punishment happening in schools, so I thought, ‘If we’re going to start an education center, we need to change the paradigm’.

My biggest challenge was to think of how to change the scheme of education – but not necessarily the system – with patience and concern above all.

In the private school, education was very traditional, with children punished when they misbehaved. I didn’t like it. So, when I started this school, I realized we can’t go on like this. We can’t, because for children, to live in a poor country with a house destroyed by an earthquake and then go to a school that treats you harshly, that only adds to their frustration. But endurance, diligence and patience was a mechanism to teach them differently.

That was my philosophy: educating them with joy, fun, and kindness at the center. Children should laugh and smile, and here they really used to not.

Tell me more about how the projects fit together.

We built our home in 2012 to share the property with our other projects. We moved into the parent house in 2013; In 2015, we built and finished the children’s center, and in 2017, we finished building Mariposal Nursery, which has about 140 students. Then came the nursery, which serves about 65 people and offers a variety of services, including a soup kitchen and social space.

Parents of students at Father Gloria Ines Gonzalez Ramirez School and Nursery in Corrail, Haiti, are required to contribute certain supplies each year, with Gonzalez saying they deliberately not provide their services entirely free of charge. (Courtesy of Gloria Ines Gonzalez Ramirez)

No government agency or institution has contacted us to offer to help or partner with us on these projects. We have just grown up by word of mouth and with the help of the Colombian Bishops’ Conference, which after the earthquake sent pastoral workers to Haiti to assess the number of Colombian religious people dealing with the country’s needs.

Although the congregants bought the land and started the projects, some other Colombian communities in Haiti – thanks to the Conference of Bishops and other benefactors from Medellin – joined forces to create the nursery.

We decided not to make any of our services completely free. We thought that if we did that, we would end up generating more poverty. [Parents are asked to contribute items such as soap, diapers and toothbrushes for lessons on hygiene.]

Haitians, in their poverty, in their happy souls, in their desire for progress, invest in their education because it is not something that can be taken away from them. Here people quarrel over land, and houses, but they never quarrel over education, and that is the best thing a man can leave to his children. This is a poor country, so we aim to reaffirm the dignity of every person we serve.

How did you see that these developments affect children?

When we had the earthquake, it was difficult because I saw a lot of injured children, amputees. Finding out how to help these kids was more important to me than rebuilding our home.

If you can see how much the area around our property has changed since we bought it – it was quite isolated, and now, it is already filled with many small villages. District children come to this center, some from far away.

They arrived skinny and malnourished, so we also feed the kids twice a day: breakfast and a hot plate at noon before going home. So far, none of our children are sick or malnourished. On the contrary, they are actually gaining weight because with Pediatrics we accompany their health.

Students eating dinner at Maripuspal School. Thanks to the food being served to them at Corail School, Haiti, the malnourished students arriving at the school are now healthy. (Courtesy of Gloria Ines Gonzalez Ramirez)

They are happy. They were sad, and it pained me not to see the children smiling. But we are very happy and restless.

Our department supports them with academics, books and supplies. We also host workshops with parents to teach them how to help their children maintain proper sanitary and hygienic practices.

Families are very happy, and we’ve seen a beautiful transformation among the kids: they’re more extroverted, less aggressive, and more developed. she is beautiful.

How do you see the Holy Spirit in your work?

Haiti is a country that thirsts for help, for someone who will cooperate, so my other five sisters and I always try to respect their culture in this ministry. We come to this matter very cautiously: here, you enter into this matter with your mouths closed and your eyes wide open. This is the usual mistake that NGOs make, in dealing with them in the opposite direction, with their mouths open and eyes closed.

We have learned how to give in our poverty. We don’t give money, but we help them learn how to work and empower them. They are our collaborators. We are hiring locals to be our employees so that they can continue these tasks after us.

Our biggest challenge is to continue to innovate and be creative in meeting emerging needs. In a country that is regularly destabilized by social and political crises, the spirit that still encapsulates and guides us is the missionary spirit and the great hope and desire to act as a society because we alone will not be able to achieve it.

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