Teamsters Local 769 Members Assist in Haiti Relief
When the call came in for help, the cause warranted only one answer. “Absolutely.” On New Year’s Eve 2020, Teamsters Local 769 President Josh Zivalich received a call for help and shortly thereafter, members of Local 769 sprang into action to help complete a long journey that began thousands of miles earlier.
The call came from Claude Joseph, founder of the 501(c)(3) Nonprofit appropriately named Those Angels, Inc. The organization was founded in 2014, with the mission to build schools and to support the educational, cultural and social development of Haitian communities in Haiti and in the United States.
The education situation in Haiti is dire, having never fully recovered from one natural disaster before being crippled by the next. Over 90% of the Haitian student population has to pay tuition to attend school and the Haitian public school system only provides space for about 8% of the student population. That’s where Claude and Those Angels decided to step in. Providing busses and other needed equipment to Haiti to improve the damaged infrastructure, Those Angels, Inc. is currently providing free school transportation for 260 children utilizing 10 busses that were donated by the Sacramento City Unified School District in California. In 2015, Those Angels, Inc. also built its first school, Ecole Communautaire Foyer Des Anges (ECOFA) elementary school and today they provide FREE elementary education for 150 children.
Claude is continuing to try to grow the impact of Those Angels and to aid the children of Haiti. The most recent project is to deliver three more busses and an ambulance to the island nation. The journey of this equipment begins on the other side of the US in the San Francisco Bay Area where Teamsters Local 665 picked up the torch and carried it the furthest. Local 665 Secretary-Treasurer Tony Delorio and Recording Secretary Juan Gallo assembled volunteer members that brought the three donated AC Transit buses and an ambulance to Orlando, Florida where they would await passage to a school in Carrefour, Haiti. This is where Teamsters Local 769 members joined the team.
On January 7th, 2021, brothers David Renshaw, Chuck Thome, David Schillinger and Bryan Bezpiaty transported the vehicles from the Orlando area to Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale. During the journey, one of the busses experienced mechanical problems and was forced to turn back. Teamsters Local 385 came to the rescue and Mike McElmury, the Trustee at the helm of our brothers and sisters to the north offered to help Claude find a mechanic. The three remaining vehicles pressed on and arrived that evening. Unfortunately again, it was after the business hours of the destination shipping company but Teamsters never give up. David Schillinger made a call to enlist further aid and that’s when a Teamster employer at the port came to the rescue.
Crowley Liner Services at Port Everglades stepped up and offered to keep the busses overnight, then to provide the personnel that would deliver them to their destination in the morning. When the sun came up, Teamsters Local 769 Vice-President Woodrow Wilson and other drivers at Crowley helped see to it that the vehicles made it to their destination. This truly was a team effort and the cause couldn’t have been more deserving.
“It’s great to be a part of such a phenomenal team effort for such a worthy endeavor.”, said Josh Zivalich. “Many of our members have immigrated from Haiti and still have family there. To be a part of something so beneficial to the children of Haiti and to our connected communities is what being a Teamster is all about.”
For more information on the amazing efforts of Claude and the team he has assembled at Those Angels, Inc. or to donate, visit https://www.thoseangels.org/ .
Those Angels, Inc.
P.O. BOX 71674
Oakland, CA 94612
To read more about the first leg of this amazing journey, and the lengths that Teamsters Local 665 and others went through to get the vehicles to Orlando Florida, click here.
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