On Friday 22nd January the management and employees from the Kentz office in Clonmel, Ireland, along with family and friends, took some time out from their busy schedules to enjoy the worldwide smash hit musical “We Will Rock You”. The show is based on songs made famous by the 1980s and 1990s band Queen. The event was staged at the O2 Arena in Dublin.

The 25 attendees were entertained by a number of Queen’s greatest hits, including “I Want It All”, “Don’t Stop Me Now”, “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “We Will Rock You”. Fans, young and old, danced along to the timeless tunes belted out by the very talented cast members.

The night didn’t end there, as everyone moved on to the hot spots of Dublin’s Temple Bar and danced into the wee hours. A great night was had by all and everyone is eagerly awaiting the Social Club’s next outing.

As always in any disaster-affected area, it’s the average man, woman or child who pay the biggest price. Seeing the rows and rows of tents or quickly erected wooden frames covered with plastic soon made me realise this is their worst nightmare.

The area around Port-au-Prince was very close to the epicentre so many of the schools were destroyed. Digicel came up with a plan to build temporary classrooms so they could get the children back learning as quickly as possible. This project is different from Sri Lanka and a whole new approach was needed as the children are afraid to be in brick or concrete structures, in case another earthquake occurs. It is easy to rebuild a structure but to rebuild a child’s confidence and help them through the trauma is a totally different matter.

A clever idea has been developed using converted sea shipping containers as classrooms, affording a quick, easy and safe solution to getting the children back to school. As you can see from the picture, the structures are not only very simple, they are also open, allowing for a quick escape if needs be. They are weather-proof, and most importantly they are quick and easy to erect.

The first school that was given a temporary classroom was Ecole san Gerrard, which is situated next to Saint Gerrard’s Church, close to the Digicel office. As you can see from the before and after pictures, the rubble was cleared and the area was marked out. The concrete plinths were then poured and the first two containers arrived on 11th March.

The Ministry of Education came to inspect the site and approved the first classrooms on 24th March. It will be a huge learning curve for those building the classrooms but we know from experience that soon it will become a production line and we will have the kids learning again in no time.

We opened the prototype school after a frantic seven days of early starts and late finishes. As you can see from the pictures, the children and Fr. Abella of Saint Gerrard’s School are delighted.

The classroom was designed to make the best use of the shipping containers which form each side of it and are covered with a high roof to allow the air to flow around easily. The floor area covers 50m², which allows for 1m² per child as required by the Ministry of Education. The classroom was fitted out with desks and a blackboard. We had roughly 30 boys and girls seated in the classroom and they were all very comfortable with plenty of space.

Over the next few days we will take a step back and look at ways of improving the design to make assembly much easier and quicker and we will also fix any teething problems.

The next stage is to build another four classrooms to the same design on the surrounding site which will give a school capacity for 250 pupils.

Looking forward from Saint Gerrard’s School, we have another 49 schools to get cleared of all the rubble and surveyed. Then the work can commence. It’s going to be a mammoth task considering that we need to locate 900 containers to complete the work but our friends at Digicel will be working furiously behind the scenes to secure them.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the staff, drivers and security guards at Digicel and the people from Kier Construction, who have supported me or have been involved in the construction of the first classroom.

I would also like to take this opportunity to reiterate what Noel Kelly said in the Special Haiti Relief Fund Edition of @Kentz and thank everyone who has contributed in any way. Every donation, no matter how big or small, helps. I would encourage all of you to dig deep, as you always do in these situations, to brainstorm and come up with some good fundraising ideas. Thank you.

Mark Ford