Haitian Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe recently visited MIT to help plan the next stage of the MIT-Haiti Initiative, and to meet with the initiative's leaders and faculty and administrators of the MIT Sloan Executive Education program.
The MIT-Haiti Initiative was designed to address issues of poverty alleviation, economic regeneration, the democratization and modernization of education, as well as continued recovery efforts in the wake of the country’s devastating 2010 earthquake. The collaborative project is an effort to “empower Haitians to fly with their own wings,” Lamothe said at last year's signing ceremony for the initiative.
The multiphase program provides faculty training and curriculum development for teachers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). More recently, MIT Sloan Executive Education has offered management and leadership training to Haitian officials.
“At MIT, we recognize that meaningful growth and recovery in Haiti can be most effective from the inside, and we are working with Prime Minister Lamothe to equip leaders and educators with the tools that help turn innovative ideas into reality,” said Peter Hirst, executive director of executive education at MIT Sloan. “The MIT-Haiti Initiative has already trained more than 100 teachers in STEM subjects and has presented Haitian government officials with world-class leadership education. This collaboration represents our ongoing commitment to effect real change through leadership and education on a global scale.”
In November 2013, three members of Lamothe’s cabinet participated in Transforming Your Leadership Strategy, an intensive course offered by MIT Sloan Executive Education. They brought back to Haiti leadership concepts to apply to issues facing their ministries — including rebuilding Haiti. The two-day course will be offered again on June 17-18 and on Nov. 18-19 in Cambridge, and is open to high-performing executives from around the world.
As part of the next phase of the MIT-Haiti Initiative, later this month MIT's Deborah Ancona, the Seley Distinguished Professor of Management, and Michel DeGraff, an associate professor of linguistics, will travel to Haiti to conduct a workshop. They will deliver leadership training to more than 50 stakeholders in Haiti’s ongoing recovery efforts, including the prime minister and his cabinet ministers, state secretaries, and leaders of the government’s special projects for development.
“On the ground in Haiti and here in Cambridge, our goal is to make MIT’s resources available to many more of Haiti’s government and education leaders,” Hirst said. “We hope to share practical tools and frameworks relevant to many areas of education and management — from STEM, economics, and sustainability to leadership, innovation, and strategy.”
