A Bit of HAFF History

This is Lila Clark, HAFF's founder and field director from founding through 1993. She and her husband Ruben were the first missionaries to the northern Central Plateau, Pignon area in the mid 1940's. When they arrived, they found 300 believers already organized into 8 groups. These people had experienced a life changing encounter with "the Great One", had a French Bible and had been praying for 12 years for a teacher. Ruben and Lila worked with the churches until 1951 when Ruben died. Lila continued to work with the Missionary Church Association in the area from 1952 till 1959.

Lila continued to visit the Plateau as often as she could get Haitian governmental permission to travel there. In the early 1970's Lila got a call from the Haitian Consulate in Los Angeles. They asked her to start a secondary technical school on the Plateau. At that time, she gathered her Christian Educator friends together and formed HAFF. The first class of 70 6th graders started meeting under trees in 1981 or 1982. The first classroom building was completed in 1983. By the time I got to HAFF in 1986, there were 6 classroom buildings, a garage and 3 shop buildings, only 3 of them with roofs and doors. There were 4 houses and one being built and a storage building.

Now there are 7 classroom buildings and the same 4 shop buildings. But there is also a school kitchen and now a gazebo. There is also a generator house. Out by the main gate, there is an administration building and fenced separately there is a clinic and another house. There are now 7 houses on the property and a dormatory for visitors. There is still one storage building and a pump house.

There are 2 photos below. One is of the first classroom building and one of the classes standing after flag raising with the head master and one of the teachers. The second is of the original site plan for HAFF. If you right click on any of the photos in this blog, a menu will pop up and you can choose to open the photo in a separate window. That will make it larger so you can see it better. I'll be posting more history later. Enjoy.