Wyclef Jean recently revisited Haiti where he intends to develop youth programs for the children in the country. He is said to be creating the Yele Haiti charity and will be offering counseling to young arrested gang members as well as establishing computer labs in schools. Hip-hop star Wyclef Jean was given a hero's welcome in one of Haiti's most destitute slums on Monday, riding the shoulders of his cheering countrymen to the site of a small-business project he helped develop.
On his first trip to Haiti since being named a roving ambassador by President Rene Preval in January, the musician met legislators and accompanied Czech model Petra Nemcova to a school in the neighborhood where he was born.
Jean, who moved to Brooklyn as a young boy, then changed into a pinstriped suit to ask a luncheon crowd of businessmen, the U.N. envoy and nearly every major foreign ambassador for aid.
"We need all your money, we need all y'all's support, but let's put it to programs ... that teach kids how to move the country forward," Jean told dignitaries in the hills above Port-au-Prince.
In the port slum of Cite Soleil, Jean, who had success as a member of the Grammy-winning group The Fugees and as a solo artist, was carried along by a crowd of 1,000 people who yelled his name and danced past bullet-scarred shacks. At one point, Jean bowed his head in silent prayer.
"I asked for benediction upon this place, for all these kids," Jean told The Associated Press.
Nemcova, who founded her own charity after she was injured and her boyfriend killed in a catastrophic Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, joined Jean in visiting an adjacent cooperative sponsored by Jean's charity group, Yele Haiti.
The cooperative restaurant - one of 10 planned for Port-au-Prince - will employ 15 local women when it opens in December, selling meals from about 70 cents to $1.40.
Associated Press
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