Less than two years after Haiti's catastrophic earthquake, the Salesian Timkatec 2 School graduated a record 71 students. What's more, these hardworking young people are now equipped with the skills needed to help rebuild their devastated country.

Efforts are currently underway to raise the $16,000 needed to provide each trade school graduate with a $225 tool kit required to begin work. With the proper equipment, they can play an important role in the reconstruction process.

This encouraging situation is just the latest of many accomplishments at Timkatec over the past year. Others include:

• The opening of Timkatec 3 as a Girls School for 186 day students and overnight shelter for 40 children.

• A new addition to Timkatec 2 which was fully funded through a charity auction.

• An increase in student population from 430 before the earthquake and 320 after, to 505 last year, and increasing to over 600 this upcoming school year.

Fr. Joseph Simon, director of Timkatec, expressed his gratitude to donors and friends who helped make these amazing achievements possible in such a relatively short amount of time. "Sometimes you may think that you have done little, but what you call little is huge … you allow people to sleep, to walk, to laugh because you send them their daily bread and the bread of knowledge. I thank you on their behalf and on my own."