Dear Friends and Colleagues,

We hope you are enjoying a happy and fruitful holiday season – a perfect time to reflect on the past year while looking ahead to the next. You may recall that, at this time last year, the Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families and Schools launched an initiative called Elevating Haitian Education (EHE). In doing so, we decided to channel our resources and redirect our annual holiday art drive into something even larger and more fundamental: directly supporting the educational prospects of children from Haiti's extremely poverty-stricken La Montagne region.

Over the past 12 months, our friends have continually impressed and inspired us with their generous contributions toward this end. That generosity has provided another year of education for 51 Haitian students who could not have otherwise afforded it. It has primed EHE to support even larger Haitian-led efforts in the future. And it has reinforced our belief that people care enough about others – whether they live 20 or 2000 miles away – to assist those who see education as their path to a better life. With the season of giving now upon us, we invite you to join CYFS in continuing to support La Montagne's educational endeavors. Though progress has already been made, Haiti's immense need demands that we remain committed to improving education as part of a larger effort to achieve sustainable progress for the children of La Montagne. You can learn more about that need – and help address it – by visiting cyfs.unl.edu/haiti.

We wish you a very blessed holiday season and sincerely hope you will choose to personify its spirit by brightening the educational prospects of a Haitian child.

My very best regards,



Sue Sheridan
Founder, Elevating Haitian Education

Learn about the conditions of Haiti's educational system through the eyes of Susan Sheridan, who visited the country
for two weeks in late 2011.

Classrooms missing roofs and walls. Children lacking access to basic education. Teachers using tarp as chalkboards.

And, amidst it all, the indomitable spirit of people working to improve each other's lives.

CYFS Director Susan Sheridan encountered these dual realities during a mission to La Montagne (mawn-TYN'), Haiti, a beautiful but historically poor mountainside community devastated by a 2010 earthquake.

Read more and donate at cyfs.unl.edu/haiti

cyfs.unl.edu/haiti