Jeremie, Haiti

Photographer: Gary George

Year of Submission: 2016 (Educators Edition) 

In 2013, Chancely started feeding and teaching children in Jeremie, his hometown in south-west Haiti. Three years later, he gives classes and meals to around 2,000 children each month. Born and raised in Sou Platon, one of Jeremie’s poorest neighbourhoods, Chancely began by handing out half a bag of rice to hungry children. Today, he buys the food he distributes with money collected in the United States and passed to him weekly by an American living in Haiti. His students, all under 12, are from the town’s poorest families – those who can’t even afford to pay for the books, uniforms and materials needed to go to public school. Whenever he has any spare time, Chancely studies. Now in his mid-twenties, the coming school year will be his last in high school. In his classes, held twice a week on open lots or makeshift classrooms in temporary venues, he passes on what he has learned to his students.