Sebastian Velez, fellow SSA member and Harvard University evolutionary biologist, leads an organization serving a community of Haitian-descent sharecroppers along the Dominican Republic-Haiti border. The people of the community served are among the poorest in the Western hemisphere, each family living on less than $2 a day and in the worst misery imaginable: houses made out of sticks and mud, water access from cattle ponds hours away walking distance, children suffering from chronic diseases that should be easily and cheaply treated, rampant illiteracy and lack of opportunities for basic education, high infant mortality, and high fertility rate.

The organization, Children of the Border, has two local staff and volunteers from the U.S. that work to alleviate these ills by fixing an old school building, supporting a teacher, providing transportation and covering the medical expenses of women so that they deliver their babies at a hospital, and defending their human rights. They have saved the lives of many women and babies.  For example, they just recently transported a bleeding pregnant woman to a hospital across the region, where the doctors saved her and her baby from dying. After spending a month on an incubator, the 2.5 lb premature baby is now being cared for by the organization while she stabilizes and is able to return to her family.

All of this work is done from a Humanist perspective, both showing the community and the world what Humanism is all about.

The project runs under the support of organizations such as the American Humanist Association, the Norwegian Humanist Association through its HAMU branch, the Harvard Humanist Chaplaincy, and luminaries such as Harvard professor and two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author E. O. Wilson.

As part of a larger initiative to bring humanist and secular students into the project, the organization is preparing a very busy schedule to coincide with the ’08 winter and ’09 summer student vacations so that interested students can join Harvard students in visiting the project and participate in the work. This would be a trip of full immersion in the Dominican and Haitian cultures, where participants will join the community and our project to improve the lives of the children of the community. While not a trip for the faint of heart, as the situations students will encounter are extremely harsh, it is safe and participants will stay at an inexpensive, but nice hostel in town (www.donachava.com).

Student service trips can be as short as 10 days, or as long as 8 weeks, if they want to fully participate in a Harvard 8 week full-immersion program during the summer.

SSA affiliates can also get involved by donating funds directly to the project, or coordinating fundraising activities with the project. Sebastian also can also visit your campus to speak about the project and/or humanism action and social issues.

Please check out childrenoftheborder.wordpress.com for more information about the Children of the Border project, a blog of recent events, and information on how to get involved. You can also contact Sebastian directly (svelez AT oeb DOT Harvard DOT edu) if you are interested in the winter or summer trips.