Welcome to ICEP




HAITI : ICEP CAPE HAITIEN PROJECTS 2006 PROJECTS The ICEP Board of Directors in 2006, nominated and elected Dalinda Carpenter as Executive Director. ICEP began to focus on evaluating our progress of the past years and on ways to attain our goals for the future. ICEP Vice President Kerem Durdag took on the challenge of producing an ICEP short video presenting our program. This video is available by request and we hope that it will encourage corporate support for our organization. Video was taken by our representatives in Afghanistan and Haiti showing the children enjoying the playgrounds, provided by ICEP. Watching them at play and the sounds of their happy voices is a real joy. We hope that their joy is contagious and you will help us spread it. Dalinda Carpenter traveled to Haiti for the first time since 1996 in 2006. For her, it marvelous feeling to return, knowing ICEP had something to offer the people of Haiti. She visited schools and clinics and walked though neighborhoods. The people of Haiti were just as friendly and welcoming to her as she remembered from 1996. She also met Edy Joseph, who was hired become our ICEP representative in Haiti. There are many places in Haiti with children looking for a safe place to play, ICEP looks forward to providing them with those places. Just as the children in Port Au Prince have caught the "joy" with our playgrounds, now it is time to spread that "joy" to Cap Haitien. Please visit: http://www.lifeandhopehaiti.org

AFGHANISTAN : ICEP QARABAGH PROJECTS 2006 PROJECTS The Falmouth Middle School in Falmouth, Maine studied world cultures using the book Material World as their focus and allowed ICEP to bring our Children Enriching Children program in to this study. ICEP welcomed the opportunity to share our photographs and President Charles Carpenter enjoyed sharing his adventures in Haiti, Afghanistan, Somalia and Liberia with the students. The Falmouth Middle School students designed a program they called "Give It Up for the Playground." This program asked students to forego buying something they wanted and donate the cost to building a playground in Qarabagh, Afghanistan. ICEP appreciates reporter Steve Minich of television station WMTW for his coverage of the Middle School Students efforts. ICEP would also like to thank the teachers at the school for their efforts on our behalf. Our ICEP representative in Afghanistan (Javed) has photographed the children on this playground and they have caught the OjoyO thanks to Falmouth Middle School Students and Teachers. Our Children Enriching Children program is offered to any school, just contact us.

HAITI : ICEP CAPE HAITIEN PROJECTS 2007 PROJECTS The ICEP focus for 2007 is to build four playgrounds in Haiti. The first playground in Haiti is under construction at the Ft. St. Michel Clinic in Cap Haitian. Dalinda Carpenter will be traveling to Cap in October to visit the site and photograph it. St. Michel is a neighborhood Health Center, brought to ICEP attention by Konbit Sante. Madame Jasmin, a nurse and director of the clinic, welcomed the suggestion of the playground and is excited for the children in this neighbor to have a place to play off the crowded street. Two of our Haitian playgrounds will be build at schools. The Baptist Church of Good Faith, in City Chavel, which is another neighborhood of Cap Haitien, will receive a playground. The other school is a village community school outside the city of Milot. The school near Milot is being built by Lucia Anglade and her family, on the site of their childhood home. Lucia Anglade is now living in New York and is happy to help with education in her Haitien village. Lucia and her brother, Charles, travel back to Milot to supervise the school as often as possible. We were fortunate to meet her in Cap Haitien and visit the school with them. ICEP enjoys partnering with Lucia and her family and providing this school with a playground as soon as possible. ICEP is happy to have our representative Edy Joseph refurbish his childhood playground in his neighborhood as our fourth playground. Edy Joseph joined ICEP as our representative in the fall of 2006. We are very fortunate to have Edy working for us. We have enjoyed working with Edy on our trips to Cap Haitien and we look forward to seeing the playgrounds he is building. Javed will soon be starting the playground at the girl's school in Qarabagh, Afghanistan. He was responsible for the wonderful playground footage in our ICEP video.

AFGHANISTAN : ICEP QARABAGH PROJECTS 2007 PROJECTS Our goal is to build two new playgrounds in Afghanistan in 2007. Javed will soon be starting the playground at the girl's school in Qarabagh, Afghanistan. He was responsible for the wonderful playground footage in our ICEP video.

AFGHANISTAN : ICEP KABUL PROJECTS The Beginnings of the ICEP Mission In 2002, shortly after the American invasion and the overthrow of the Taliban, photographer Charles Carpenter made an initial visit to Afghanistan. He was struck by the miserable conditions facing Afghan children and the disintegration of their schools. ICEP had not yet been established nor had its mission been defined, but Carpenter already saw the need to develop a network of reliable local contacts who could be relied upon for help in the future. A gift of indoor carpeting to cover the bare floors of the school shown in this picture was the first step towards the foundation of ICEP, which was officially registered as a charitable organization in the fall of 2004. With the improvement of security and political conditions during 2004 and the reliability of ICEP's local contacts, Afghanistan was chosen for the initial pilot playground projects. However, Kabul, the capitol city, is located in East Central Afghanistan at an altitude of about 5,900 feet and winters there are severe. It was decided to locate the initial playground projects in Jalalabad, a trading center of some 60,000 people, with a milder winter climate. Our fourth playground project in Afghanistan is planned to be located in Kabul during the spring/summer months of 2005.

AFGHANISTAN : ICEP JALALABAD PROJECTS 2005 PROJECTS By the beginning of March, 2005 a third playground fashioned in Peshawar was installed at a school near Jalalabad. Javed subsequently identified a metal fabricating shop in Jalalabad that can produce playground components, eliminating the need to transport components from Peshawar with substantial savings in costs. 2004 PROJECTS During the last three months of 2004 ICEP began to raise funds, set up banking, communications and courier services, and developed standards for playground construction. Metal working shops are common in developing countries and it was decided to use steel pipe, bars and metal sheet for permanence, welded joints to avoid scrapes and bruises from protruding nuts and bolts, and concrete foundations embedded in the earth for security. A metal working shop in Peshawar, Pakistan was identified as a source for the components of the pilot projects in Jalalabad. Slides, see-saws, swing sets and carousels are standard components of the playgrounds but scope is left for local initiative to add components within the budgeted cost of $1500-$2000. The first two playgrounds were up and running by the end of December, 2004. The components were fabricated in Peshawar, Pakistan under the supervision of our local contact, Javed. They were trucked by him to Jalalabad and installed at two local schools there.

HAITI : ICEP PORT AU PRINCE PROJECTS 2004 PROJECTS Following a series of trips to Haiti and the development of local contacts there, it was our intention to build our first playground in the small village of Prend du Monde. However, after severe floods, mud slides and armed rebellion in the region that plan was derailed, forcing us to stay closer to the capitol city. Below are pictures taken at the school in Port au Prince where the first playground was installed.