New nonprofit will bring 12 Eagle County students to the Bahamas to do service work

A group of Eagle County students will go to the Bahamas this summer on an inaugural service trip to support Haitian refugees.

During the weeklong trip in June, 12 students from Vail Ski and Snowboard Academy will help within a community in the Bahamas’ Abaco Islands called The Farm. The students will help build homes and a church, spend time with students in the community and work on other service-oriented projects.

“We’re so privileged here that being able to go and help out a less privileged community is an opportunity I wouldn’t want to miss,” said Andrew Forstl, an 11^th grader at Vail Ski and Snowboard Academy.

The project is organized through a new nonprofit called the Vail Humanity Initiative, which was started by Sam Bennett, a teacher at Vail Ski and Snowboard Academy.

“It’s important to teach young folks that they can solve global problems,” he said.

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Since the 1970s, many Haitian migrants have moved to the Bahamas to do agricultural work, where they have encountered discrimination and stigma. In September 2019, Category 5 Hurricane Dorian hit the Bahamas, leveling homes, destroying infrastructure and leaving an estimated 70,000 people homeless. Following the hurricane, hundreds of Haitians were deported from the Bahamas.

The Bahamas does not have birthright citizenship. Under the country’s constitution, Bahamian-born people whose parents are not Bahamian are not citizens. Born to Haitian parents, over 150 children living in The Farm community are “stateless,” meaning that they are not citizens of any country, including the Bahamas, where they were born.

“They don’t have homes, they don’t have citizenship, and they’re not respected by most Bahamians,” said Priscilla Bennett, Sam Bennett’s daughter and a student at Vail Ski and Snowboard Academy.

“Many of them have lost work, don’t have available work,” Sam Bennett said.

The Vail Humanity Initiative’s trip is organized through a partnership with Austin Serving Abaco, a nonprofit organization founded by a family from Houston, Texas, in 2013 to provide aid to Haitian refugees and native Bahamians.

Austin Serving Abaco has provided educational funds, books, clothing and shoes to around 150 children. The organization also helps sponsor Bahamian-born children’s path to citizenship, as children born in the Bahamas to non-Bahamian parents can apply for citizenship in the year following their 18^th birthday.

Sam Bennett met the family that started Austin Serving Abaco last summer and immediately saw an opportunity for his students to support the organization’s work.

“I have these wonderful students, and I like to teach them to solve global challenges, and so I said, ‘I’d like to work with you,'” Sam Bennett recalled.

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Ahead of the service trip, the 12 students involved are charged with championing initiatives related to the project. Two students are putting together an all-school engagement effort, including fundraising and education about the Bahamas and Haitian refugees.

“I think for people up here, the best thing we can do is bring awareness to it, get more people involved … and provide perspective of the crisis they’re going through, and trying to get people here to want to get involved,” Forstl said.

Next year, Sam Bennett hopes to bring some of the students from the Bahamas to Eagle County to be hosted in homestays, attend school and participate in athletics.

“This idea is new, but getting broader community support to help solve this problem would be a goal, as well,” Sam Bennett said.