Education changes everything
Salomon Asmath, team manager at Energy Central, a solar panel sales, installation, and maintenance company in Haiti’s capital of Port-au-Prince is a 1998 graduate of Louverture Cleary School with a perfect employment record. He has been continuously employed since graduating from LCS.
Salomon is one of many graduates breaking stereotypes about poverty in Haiti. A snapshot of his resume shows a man who has worked his way from stock keeper at a hardware store to his current position at Energy Central, which he helped start and now co-owns.
His employee badge reads he is from Cité Soleil, a fact that throws his customers off. Cité Soleil is a deeply impoverished area near Port-au-Prince and home to many LCS students. Typically, Cité Soleil is tapped for factory labor at best, while management positions are awarded to people with wealth and strong family connections. Salomon sees this changing thanks to LCS:
Employers want LCS graduates – they know that they can trust them. I have not seen anyone who was poor and did not go to LCS in a management position.
While THP has always known that education empowers individuals and their families, 20 years and hundreds of alumni later, it is now clear that LCS graduates are empowering their nation. THP President Deacon Patrick Moynihan characterizes this change as something physical, like breaking the vacuum seal off a jar. If people living in poverty have literally been kept in cultural isolation, then education, specifically a Louverture Cleary education, is the force breaking that seal to allow for an equal and free flowing exchange throughout all levels of society.
