A teacher from Orange County has used her skills to open a school in the Dominican Republic for children from Haiti, where education is often second to just surviving.

Former Orange County Public Schools teacher Gylla Macgregor is preparing to return to Azua, Dominican Republic, where she and her friend Marcule Pierre helped open a school last year.

Without the school, many of the Haitian students wouldn’t be able to receive an education, Macgregor said.

Although primary school enrollment had surged in the previous decade, hurricanes, earthquakes, COVID-19, violence and the resulting separation of parents from children, have kept most children out of school for months at a time, according to UNICEF. In addition, most schools in Haiti are private institutions.

"They live in utter poverty,” she said. “They live in tin shacks and do the jobs not even the Dominicans want to do." 

Macgregor realized it was her calling to help the Haitian children of Azua after she went on a teaching-missionary trip there with her grandparents seven years ago. The Dominican Republic shares a border with Haiti.

She said her students recently faced an added challenge after the 7.2 magnitude earthquake in Haiti. 

“We were not affected by the earthquake at all in Azua, but we did get two tropical storms, and just seeing how the families were affected by that with the flooding in their homes. I can’t even imagine what they’re going through in Haiti,” Macgregor said

The death toll from the storms is estimated at more than 2,200. 

Pierre, her teaching partner and friend, left the Dominican Republican in order to check on the children at his orphanage in Haiti. He said some of the children were found dead following the storms.

“Wow, I’m sad," Pierre told Macgregor via video chat. "I see many people with no power, no food, nothing.”

"[Marcule would text me] there are people just lying down on their beds, not getting any medical care, because it’s just so overwhelming," said Macgregor, who communicates with Pierre every day over the phone.

Macgregor returned home in mid-August to spend time with her family and purchase school supplies for the children, but both plan to return to Azua for the next school year, which begins in mid-September.

The pair has started to raise money in order to help their students in Azua and also the children in Haiti. 

The referenced third-party online fundraisers are not managed by Spectrum News 13.