Lespwa Means Hope- Campaign Evaluation

For my campaign evaluation I focused on an organization that aims to help those less fortunate in Haiti, the name of the group is Lespwa Means Hope. The word "lespwa" in Haitian literally means hope which is how the organization got their name. Lespwa Means Hope was created when four college students at UCF held a dance party with a $5 entrance fee in order to raise money for children in Haiti. The result was a party that raised over $20,000 in one night. After such great success the students felt that they couldn't simply stop there. After the dance party fundraiser in 2006 the students created a charitable organization dedicated towards their cause. This organization was called Lespwa Worldwide, which was aimed towards educating Haitian children. A few years later the earthquake in Haiti hit which left 100,000 people dead in 10 seconds. It was in the wake of this disaster however that Lespwa Worldwide met Mission of Hope. Mission of Hope was a 10 year old Christian organization founded by a couple working to provide relief in Haiti. It was through this synthesis that Lespwa Means Hope was born. Lespwa Means Hope functions as a subsidiary of Mission of Hope and remains true to their mission, aiming to educate 1/5 of every Haitian child. "In short, what began as a tiny school of a few young students and a few willing hearts, has since grown into a 72 acre facility with a school of 2500, a medical clinic and a prosthetics clinic; a 55 acre facility for agricutural development, orphan care and a trade school; a 200 acres facility with a building project of 500 homes; and total operations employing over 250 Haitians, with a mission that relentlessly pursues the best ways possible to bring life transformation to Haiti - with, by, and through Christ and our Haitian friends" (Schurke). This quote displays the amazing accomplishments that the Lespwa organization has accomplished. None of this would be possible however without the dance party back in 2006 that jumpstarted Lespwa Worldwide. I believe that the dance party received so much attention because it had a large amount of support from the Christian community at UCF. The University of Central Florida also has a very large student population of about 50,000; because of this I think that simple word of mouth played a very large role in the event's success. The event had been promoted on MySpace (which was much bigger in 2006) but that was pretty much all the social media used to promote it. This makes the events success even more suprising. One thing is for certain however, had it not been for the success of this dance event, Lespwa Means Hope would likely cease to exist and thousands of Haitian lives would not have been saved as a result.