At the onset of June, construction continues at the Dignité School with the four-day achievement of building foundations. Laborers had been setting field stones for the foundation walls, arranged to benefit from steel reinforcement and reduce dependency on concrete. The laborers, working for the Port-au-Prince based BECEI contractors, underwent on-site construction training held by Architecture for Humanity in collaboration with Build Change. Thirty local workers trained over three days–and many of them are now employed on Dignité. While stone-faced walls are specified for the school, work to date is strictly functional and will be below grade.

As of June 2, the crew is working on filling in the foundation with gravel to be compacted for the floor slab to be poured and working on the foundation slab of the retaining wall. Architecture for Humanity’s construction outreach crew–Pierre Ulrick, Stanley Joseph, Jacques Nixon and Marie Elizabeth Nicolas–has been critical in Dignité’s construction progress as well as maximizing opportunities for employment and training there.