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Tammy and Anthony DiPenti hold Tammy and Tony at the mission in Haiti. / PROVIDED

Jill I. Solimini reports:

The statistics are grim. Ten percent of Haiti’s children die before age 1. Fifty percent don’t live to see the age of 15. Each day, 400 children die.

Anthony and Tammy DiPenti of Mason have made it their mission to bring to light the plight of the people of this country – the poorest in the Western Hemisphere.

Their introduction to the Haitian people began 21/2 years ago when a friend invited Anthony to join a mission trip. The timing was good as the couple’s three daughters – Laura, a nursing student at Galen College and a patient care assistant at West Chester Medical Center; Hannah, a sophomore communications major at the University of Cincinnati; and Cecily, who will be a freshman pre-med major at the University of Kentucky next fall – are nearly grown.

“I really felt a calling,” says Anthony, who works in the health care information technology field. “I knew it was time to start giving back.”

His first trip to Haiti occurred less than a year after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake killed 230,000 people and left another 1.3 million homeless. The scene he encountered when landing in Port au Prince was chaotic – rubble and tent cities dotted the capital. The devastation he encountered in the more rural areas was even more alarming.

“Cholera, typhoid, hepatitis, malaria – they are all rampant,” Anthony says. “But I didn’t let it bother me, because I knew I was there to serve.”

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Posted in: Community, News |

Tags: Tags: anthony dipenti, children, children's international lifeline, church, haiti, la digue mission, mason, mission, religion, tammy dipenti, water

A Mason teacher shared her education techniques and passion for teaching with educators in the poverty-stricken island nation of Haiti last month.

Tammy DiPenti, a third grade teacher at Mason Heights, spent a week in Haiti in late July sharing effective teaching strategies during Children’s International Lifeline’s third annual teaching conference.

DiPenti, the keynote speaker at the conference, created lesson plans and modeled effective teaching strategies with village children as about 50 to 60 local Haitian teachers watched.

“Mason City Schools does an outstanding job training their teachers to be effective educators in the classroom. I wanted to take the training that I received and share it with the teachers in Haiti,” said DiPenti.

DiPenti, who traveled to Haiti with her husband, Anthony, also visited and distributed food and personal hygiene items to widows, orphanages and tent cities.  She also provided teachers with school supplies — materials DiPenti says are scarce in Haiti — she had collected in her classroom over the past year.

“It was a very humbling experience to see the needs,” she said.  “We take so many things for granted in the US; a warm shower, three meals a day, good education, medical care and even a cup of clean water.”

The DiPentis plan to return to Haiti this fall and again next summer for the fourth annual teacher’s conference.

“I just cant wait to go back,” Tammy DiPenti said. “I can’t wait to see the people and the children.”

For more information, visit www.childrenslifeline.com.

Posted in: Schools |

Tags: Tags: anthony dipenti, charity, children's international lifeline, donations, educate, educators, food, haiti, mason heights elementary, students, tammy dipenti, teachers, third annual teaching conference