About the School

The Evangelical Missionary Project of Pardieu School was established in 1998. It sits on the land where my forefather used to grow and milled sugar cane to produce sugar syrup, then sold to merchant who transferred it to alcohol. It was where my siblings and I spent our summer during our young life. After college, I left Haiti for the United States. When my father passed, the land was left to the family with the option to sell.

My name is Marie Philomene Etienne Joseph. In 1994, I received a strong calling that was inspired by a nine years old Haitian boy who came in my classroom in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with no prior schooling. The calling was to go back in Haiti to my forefather's farm to alphabetize. It took me four years to finally decide to answer to that call. Then in August of 1998, I returned to Haiti for a visit and while there, I learned that the local children were not attending school. There were many factors; the distance, unpredictable weather and the expenses of attending school made it difficult for families who did not have the funds to pay.

I immediately saw the need for a school to be local in order for children to attend. My siblings and my family made it our mission to help the children and families of Pardieu. We will open a "Learning Center" instead of selling the land.

Then we began with the kindergarten class in October of 1998 with 29 students in a house on the farm that my mother had just built. Each year a grade was added. Starting in 1999, I began spending my summers in Haiti to begin with the construction of the school building.

Finally in 2011, I left my teaching position in Cambridge, Massachusetts to move forward with the project. Then, with the financial support of my siblings and family, we built the school. To this day, my husband and I share our time with our family in the US and at our school in Haiti.