Get to Know the Kore Timoun Fellows - Hayley Fallon
Communications and Public Relations
A native of New Hampshire, Hayley earned her Bachelor’s degree in French and Sociology from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. She’s spent the last five years accruing diverse professional experiences and expanding her comfort zone: teaching English in France, working as a ski instructor in the mountains of New England, leading tours of the USA’s west coast for French high school students, and most recently working in the Education Department at the French Cultural Center/Alliance Française of Boston. She is thrilled to be working with the Kore Timoun team.
Why were you interested in working for the Children’s Nutrition Program of Haiti?
Kore Timoun is a solid model for a sustainable public health nonprofit in a developing country. The monitrices know the communities they help and the struggles they face. Many monitrices have been part of the operation for ten to twenty years.
I really dig the community development aspect of the organization: the fact that the approach emphasizes empowerment, not charity, through Haitians helping Haitians. The other great strength of the organization in my eyes is that CNP focuses as much on prevention as it does on treatment of malnutrition. They seem to be mastering the ol’ give a man a fish V. teach a man to fish dynamic.
Hayley helps with health monitoring on a trip with one of our monitrices.
What do you hope to accomplish while you are in Léogâne?
One of my main goals while I’m here is to create new partnerships with NGOs and nonprofits in the area as well as figure out how to strengthen and expand existing partnerships to increase the efficiency of all parties. Building a strong network is so important in a region like Léogâne, where there are several organizations with overlapping objectives and resources.
On a personal level, I’d like to get to a place where I can negotiate fair prices at the city’s Saturday market.
What has surprised you the most about being in Haiti? About Kore Timoun?
I can’t speak for the whole country of course or even the whole of Léogâne, but for now I’ll say I’m surprised by the general volume of everything around us - people play music loud, broadcast soccer games loud, (maybe this is just our neighbors?), ringtones are loud, and then of course there are always roosters *singing*, dogs barking, horns honking - and I thought I’d be used to that last one having lived in Boston!
At Kore Timoun, I’m blown away by the very evident dedication of all my coworkers. It makes sense, as they’re the ones on the ground checking in on and really getting to know the families we’re helping. Still, their commitment is absolutely compelling.
What do you hope to learn from this experience?
My personal goals are to gain experience in the public health field, to learn about nonprofit networks, to figure out how to navigate this new culture, and to help CNP in any way I can. Oh, and speak Kreyòl fluently!
f you were to share one message about Haiti to people in the rest of the world, what would it be?
The people of Haiti are not fundamentally different from any people of any other country. Haiti has a long history of being burned by foreign aid programs that have inhibited the country’s progress
Our Kore Timoun fellows work because of generous donations from people like you. Please consider giving to the Children’s Nutrition Program of Haiti.
