CEI brings together multiple community stakeholders to collaboratively co-create Haiti’s first inclusive school, engaging parents, students, educators, administrators, architects, engineers, and government officials on both local and national levels. By catering the curriculum, staffing, and built- environment to accommodate for children’s different needs and abilities, we challenge the zero-sum g
ame thinking about education and demonstrate the ample benefits of inclusive education for all children – both with and without disabilities. While the Haitian government estimated in 2012 that 1 in every 10 Haitian people was living with a disability, much of the infrastructure was not rebuilt to accommodate this population. The local community wanted to actively address the resulting exclusion of people with disabilities by creating the first-ever fully inclusive primary school to serve as a model for the national educational system. In 2013, Alexon Grochowski, Cornell University undergraduate at the time, took her first trip to Haiti where she was inspired by this vision. She involved a broader circle of people to better understand the ecosystem and take a multifaceted approach to the issue. Looking to offer meaningful support, Alexon built a relationship between the Haitian partners and Cornell University, involving over eighty undergraduate and graduate students from across five different colleges to focus on inclusive education, community-driven design, and sustainable development. The student team has taken six self-organized trips to Haiti, raised over $40,000, and recruited faculty advisors to contribute their expertise and supervise student’s work. Additionally, a US-based partner organization, Friends of CEI, has been established to accept tax-exempt donations under the fiscal sponsorship of the Center for Transformative Action. This community-university collaboration emphasizes co-learning, co-teaching, and co-research. By leveraging Cornell’s resources to help realize CEI’s vision to create a replicable model for inclusive education in Haiti, we are both improving the Haitian educational system and that at Cornell.
