By James Melchiorre

An hour later, you arrive at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in the town of Montrouis.

My colleagues Dean Wiltshire, Michael McGuinnes, William Jarrett, and I visited Haiti as part of our video series Anglican Communion Stories, in which we show the work of the Church around the world.

In Haiti, it’s not that simple, of course, because any documentation of life comes in the context of the catastrophic earthquake of January 2010, the outbreak of deadly cholera, and political chaos. 

Not to mention Haiti’s historic challenges as the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

St. Paul’s is a good place to see what we have come to recognize as the twin pillars of the Anglican Communion: local parishes serving the spiritual, physical, and social needs of the people, and partnerships with other congregations around the world.

St. Paul’s Church is more than a place for worship. Its school in Montrouis educates 315 students between the ages of three and fifteen. Children learn in four languages: Creole, French, English, and Spanish. Students must take advancement exams in the sixth and ninth grade. More than 90 percent pass.

Fifteen minutes away, up a rocky road, past the banks of a river where women wash clothes and dry them on the rocks, is the village of Bois Blanc. Donkeys and mopeds are the preferred transportation, and there are no community services beyond a cemetery and a water pump.

Here, under a breadfruit tree, stands St. Marc’s School, a mission of St. Paul’s, with ninety students receiving classroom instruction, and lunch, prepared each day by the women of the congregation.

St. Paul’s operates one other facility, a medical clinic that is open four days a week.

Since the earthquake, St. Paul’s and its priest-in-charge, Father Jacques Deravil, have received contributions from Trinity Wall Street. Trinity happens to be my employer, but, in this case, the connection is incidental. Any parish in the Anglican Communion can help support the 80,000 students of the Episcopal schools of Haiti.

In fact, any individual person can.

Consider that $385 annually covers tuition, books, and uniforms for an elementary school child in Haiti.

To me, Montrouis is a place of hope, even though I’m cautious of going to Haiti as a privileged North American and sounding irrationally optimistic.

In Port-au-Prince, the intensity of Haiti’s pain is most evident. Many buildings still lie amidst rubble. Hundreds of thousands live in tents, stiflingly hot by day and swamped by mud when it rains. Holes in sidewalks are often deep enough to swallow up a large dog.

But next to the destroyed Holy Trinity Cathedral, a killing ground on January 12 when the fall of Episcopal school buildings left more than 200 dead, and which I photographed in April 2010 as an empty lot, there are temporary buildings with 900 students in classrooms.

The Episcopal Diocese of Haiti, with the aid of the churches of the Anglican Communion, is breathtakingly efficient, especially considering, a few blocks away, Haiti’s Presidential Palace remains collapsed and neglected. Haiti needs many things — at the top of the list are education and responsible political leadership and, frankly, not in that order.

And, for significant change to come, you can add clean water, business investment, microcredit opportunities, sustainable agriculture, gender equality, and the return of Haiti’s “diaspora,” its most educated citizens who live in Europe, Canada, and the United States.

So there’s no “quick fix” with a “feel-good” moment when the rest of us turn our attention elsewhere. Completing the process could take more years than many of us personally have left. 

But the Anglican Communion will endure. One-half of its model — the local church serving people in all their needs — is already happening in the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti. 

The other half of the model — partnership with Anglican and Episcopal parishes throughout the world — well, that’s up to us.

James Melchiorre is Senior Video Producer for Trinity Wall Street.