Update on Rebuilding St. Vincent's

Hello, everyone! Here is an update from Mike about the continuing effort to rebuild St. Vincent's.

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Please spread the word that the design effort for the new St. Vincent's School has begun ! Yesterday, the bishop signed contracts for the Massada group to begin to work with Fr. Leon, his staff, and their partners to design the new St Vincent's School. The planning will begin soon in Haiti and the US.

 Fr. Leon will start with his staff , and I will jump start with the partners groups in the US - hopefully with a conference call next week or the following week. The design work will fall into 4 working groups:

1. The prosthetics shop - a working group is set up for this design work, and full funding is already in place The school and dormitories The administration and clinical space.
2. The guest house - we hope to have as a 3rd foor over part or all of the admin / clinic space 
3. The designated Site 1 for the planning process is the old site of the school ( the larger site) which will house the school, dormitories, and the P & O shop.
4. Site 2 (where they are currently functioning) , will house clinical space, administration , and the guest house. 

We will be wanting to develop working groups in the US that will work on design ideas for 2, 3, and 4 above, along with their Haitian counterparts. These US groups and their counterparts in Haiti will relate to Msaada through a single person for each project area. The leadership of the different groups will be determined soon, but people should think about what group they would like to be a part of.

I will help with jump starting these 4 groups along with Fr. Leon and the Msaada people so they will understand how the process will move forward in the most efficient manner possible.

Once we have this initial important phase of design work done, we will then move to a phase where we will actually have preliminary designs, drawings , and costs. We can then go to donors for funding the construction efforts. We can also begin to look at procurement of the equipment for the inside of the new space.

It should be mentioned that this whole design process is being funded through the Rev. Bill Squires' group, based on a request from Fr Leon in late November. It could not have been done without their investment.

Thanks for all of your support and prayers. The country is showing signs of progress and it is good that we are actually seeing progress at St Vincent's and elsewhere in the diocese.

Have a good weekend,

Mike