Haitian Photojournalist Marc-Yves Regis To Visit C.H. Booth Library

Haitian-born Marc Yves Regis, photographer and writer, will visit the C.H. Booth Library, Wednesday, August 11, at 7 pm, to share photographs from his recent trip to Haiti and to speak about current relief efforts, as well as projects he is sponsoring. Mr Regis fled Haiti as a teenager, for a better life.

An award-winning photographer, Mr Regis has traveled to the Bahamas, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, England, France, Haiti, St Lucia, and Trinidad and Tobago on special assignment.

While writing a book about Haitian braceros working in the Dominican Republic’s sugar cane plantations, Mr Regis noticed the lives of field workers deteriorating further. So, in 2004, he co-founded Arm2Arm, a nonprofit organization that sponsors a yearly medical mission to the plantations known as bateyes. For the past five years, Mr Regis has accompanied a medical team that sets up makeshift clinics in some of the bateyes and provides medicine and medical care for the poor.

In 2008, he started a weeklong camp for the children in bateyes. When he visited Haiti a week after the earthquake earlier this year, he noticed that children had little else to do but wander and wait while their parents stood in line for rice.

His plan is to do what he hads done in the Dominican Republic the past two years — use donations to pay locals to help run a weeklong camp where children are fed meals and given an opportunity to do what too few children there are able to do — be children. His hope is that by paying people who live there to help, they will take ownership of the camp and continue it long after he and other volunteers have gone.

Mr Regis is the author of three books: Haiti Through My Eyes, a selection of poetry about Haiti; Deadly Road to Democracy, a first-person account of Haiti’s violent struggle for democracy; and Two Good Feet, a photographic documentary of physically challenged Haitian children. He recently finished his latest book, When Freedom Comes, a photographic documentation about the lives of Haitian braceros, or field hands, in the highly restrictive sugarcane plantations in the Dominican Republic.

Registration for the event is online at chboothlibrary.org, or by calling the library at 203-426-4533. Refreshments will be served.