By Ron Smith
October 16, 2025
 
(SANTA BARBARA, Calif.) Westmont Cross Country and Track and Field's assistant coach Lindsey Connolly will be honored at Homecoming ceremonies on Saturday, October 18 with Westmont's Global Service Award. Connolly is being recognized for her work establishing an elementary school in Mirebalais, Haiti, as co-founder of Destined for Grace.
 
While a student at Westmont, Connolly earned NAIA All-American honors competing in the 3,000 meter race walk at the 2007 National Championship. She was also honored as an NAIA and GSAC Scholar-Athlete.
 
Upon completing her degree in biology at the end of the fall semester in 2007, Connolly was named an assistant coach for the Westmont cross country and track and field teams and has served in that role ever since. In 2019, Connolly was honored as the Indoor West Region Assistant Coach of the Year by the U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association.
 
After graduating from Westmont, Connolly returned home to Carpinteria, where she and her childhood friend, Rebecca Smith – who had just completed her undergraduate degree from California Lutheran, began to discuss the future.
"We were talking about what we wanted to do with the rest of our lives and what that might look like," recalled Connolly. "We thought it would be great if we were our own bosses, we didn't have to sit behind a desk all day, and whatever we were doing was helping somebody else."
 
Smith had previously travelled to Haiti. After talking about that trip, the two friends decided to start a non-profit in that country.
"We googled all the Haitian non-profits we could find and emailed probably 100 of them," said Connolly. "We thought we would probably start an orphanage that would include a garden, so we needed space. That is what we communicated in the email.  We got a response from one person – Jacky Poeau."
 
Poeau advised them that the kind of space they would need for a garden was not available in Port-au-Prince -the country's capital and most populous city. He suggested that they consider locating in Mirebalais, a city approximately 60 kilometers (37 miles) from Port-au-Prince, which was Poeau's hometown.
 
Connolly and Smith made a trip to Haiti and met up with Poeau who took them to a Mirebalais.
 
"He had told a bunch of people that we were coming and that we were going to look at this property. So, we went to the property to look at it, and there's 200 people. We basically had a town hall with them and just said, 'This is who we are. This is what we're thinking.'"
 
While still in Haiti, Connolly and Smith had second thoughts. After expressing their concerns about starting an orphanage to Poeau, he pointed out that most of the children in Mirebalais had parents. Starting an orphanage would mean bringing children in from other regions.
Poeau suggested that the need of children in Mirebalais was for education because their parents couldn't afford to send them to school.
 
"It doesn't matter if it is a public or private school, parents have to pay for their children to go to school," explained Connolly. "In a country where the average income is less than a dollar a day, a year of school costs from $300 to $600, depending on the school. Most parents can't afford it.
 
"Starting a school seemed much more feasible to us than an orphanage. So, we refocused and decided that is what we were going to do.
 
"We really liked the property that we saw and so we started raising money to buy it. After purchasing the property, we had begun making plans to build on it when Haiti had a really big earthquake in January of 2010.
 
"After the earthquake, all of Haiti's resources went to Port-au-Prince and building costs went crazy. So, we again had to rethink about how we were going to start this school."
 
Connolly and Smith were able to locate another property, just half a mile away, that had previously been used as a school. The organization that started the school, however, ran out of funding and the school had effectively closed.
 
"We talked to the property owner and set up a five-year lease with him," said Connolly. "That meant we could start the school and eventually move over to our property. We hired a consultant who helped us hire a good principal and then teachers."
 
The principal and all of the teachers at the school are Haitian, which provides jobs to local residents.
 
The school opened with kindergarten through fourth grade, then added fifth grade the following year and sixth grade the year after that. In Haiti, primary education ends with sixth grade.
 
"In Haiti, you go to school when you can afford it, and then when you can't, you don't," explained Connolly. "So, the age range for the grades was very wide and most of the children had only been able to attend through the fourth grade at best.
 
"Once we got to sixth grade, we considered doing secondary education. However, it entails a lot more and you have to have multiple teachers per grade. Instead, we decided to focus on doing the primary education and make sure that we do that really well before we expanded. We also wanted to make sure that the school was sustainable, especially based on what happened with the previous organization.
 
"At the end of four and one-half years, we were at a point where we could start building on our property. We started and got it completed at the end of our five-year contract. So, we were able to move over to our new building.
 
The completion of the school also meant the start of the garden and the opportunity to provide food for the children's lunches and meals for their families.
 
"At that time, Rebecca and I were going back and forth between here and Haiti pretty frequently. Then, we hired a project manager, Janvier Menaham, who makes sure things run well. We communicate with him weekly, if not daily.
 
"In addition to running the school, we do a lot of community outreach too," said Connolly. "We built a water well on our property to use for our school. When we found that that community wanted to use it, we built another one outside of our school property from them to use. Janvier helps with those kinds of projects, arranging for all the workers and making sure that it gets done.
 
"On World Water Day, we do this big program at our school. The whole community comes and each grade does a little presentation on things like the importance of clean water or proper hygiene. Janvier organizes all of that."
 
At Meneham's suggestion, the school added two pre-kindergarten years, opening the school to children as young as four years old.
 
In order to provide for the long-term sustainability of the school, a stable source of financial support needed to be found. Since the goal was to provide an affordable educational opportunity, expecting parents to fund the school wasn't possible.
 
"We were advised, however, that parents needed to be making an investment in their children's education in order for them to value what they were receiving," said Connolly. "So, when we were first starting, we met with all of the parents of our registered students and we said, 'We're going to expect some investment from you. What is reasonable for you?'"
 
The result of the meeting set the cost of tuition at one dollar per month for each student.
 
"Or if they can't afford that, then they can volunteer at the school," added Connolly. "Initially, I thought they would volunteer because they didn't want to pay the dollar. However, at first, they all wanted to just give the money and not volunteer.
"As the school started getting established, and we were doing more in the community, the parents started to get more involved. They were still paying their dollar a month, but they formed a parent committee and they would come and clean up at the school, or they would help with the community events that we did. So, it was a really neat thing to see them get more involved."
The financial support for the school comes in two forms – donations and the operation of two thrift stores, also named, 'Destined for Grace.'
 
"All of the money we receive from individual donors goes to Haiti," said Connolly. "People can sponsor a student and we ask for $125 a year to do so. That covers about a fourth of the cost."
 
The rest of the revenue to support the school comes from the thrift stores located in Goleta, California.
 
"After we pay our expenses and our employees at the thrift stores, the profit goes to Haiti," said Connolly.
 
Early on, while raising money to buy the property in Mirebalais, Connolly and Smith held rummage sales at Carpinteria Middle School. Eventually, they rented out a shared space in Carpinteria and established the first Destined for Grace Thrift Store. Through the years, the thrift stores have moved around. Today, there are two stores in Goleta, located directly across the street from one another near the intersection of Hollister and Fairview Avenues.
 
The financial stability of the school was complemented with the stability of the teachers and staff.
 
"About 80% of our teachers have been with us since the first day that we had school," reported Connolly. "Developing relationships and getting to know the teachers, and seeing them invested in the school and the organization has been great."
 
Another point of satisfaction for Connolly is seeing graduates come back and help the school.
 
"After our students are done with sixth grade, we make sure that they have a secondary education institution to go to and that they can afford it," explained Connolly. "If they need help, then we'll help them pay for their secondary education. It's been really great to see a lot of our graduates come back for World Water Day and be involved, or to come and work with our soccer team or help with their games. The students who have graduated are still invested in the school and want to give back to it after they've left."
 
Beginning in 2024, Destined for Grace faced its greatest challenge yet with another overthrow of the Haitian government.
 
"That's when things really started to get bad," said Connolly. "There were gangs controlling Port-au-Prince, and they weren't allowing supplies like gasoline to come into the country. They set up roadblocks and wouldn't let people out of the city. They set fires everywhere.
 
"For a while, all of the gang activity was centered in Port-au-Prince. There is one main road from the city to the central plateau where the school is located. Occasionally, someone down the road would call a family member to warn that the gangs were coming and we would pause the school so people could stay home. That only happened a few times and we felt fortunate that we could still function day to day.
 
"Then in April of this year, the gangs moved into Mirebalais and didn't leave. They burned business and churches. Everyone that could, fled from the city. They are still holding Mirebalais hostage, and people have not come back.
 
"We have seen some drone video and the school, for the most part, is fine. We did see that the gangs took the pump to our well."
 
"Right now, the school is not functioning. We had to stop the school year about two months earlier than we normally would have.
 
"Since April, our efforts have shifted to providing necessities to the families that we are in contact with. Janvier and our teachers are providing food packets. A lot of our families are out in the countryside and so we were buying tarps and shade for them. It is all being done through the network of our staff."
 
"A lot of our families are in the same general area outside of Mirebalais, so we have started looking for a space that we can rent temporarily so we can begin teaching again.
 
"Our hope is that this is just a temporary thing, and that with this new location we can provide some consistency for our students, a place for them to gather and receive some education. They miss their friends and their school community.
 
"Just recently, we found a couple of possibilities. We are in the process of deciding which location is going to be best."
 
Asked what people can do to help, Connolly responded. "Prayer is going to do the most good because what we are doing can't change the political situation in Haiti. I don't see many things that can, other than God intervening.
 
"If people want to help financially, they can go to our website (destinedforgrace.com) and find my contact information and Rebecca's. They can reach out to us. They can also come into our thrift stores and shop, make donations, or come in and talk with us because we're there most days."
 
Responding to a question about what receiving the Global Service Award means to her, Connolly replied, "It has been a point of reflection for me. I know that what we're doing has an impact on people. I see that in the people that we work with in Haiti.
 
"However, a lot of everyday life is going to the store and doing customer service. It's easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. So, this was a nice way for me to look back on everything that we have done."
 
Connolly and Smith's story is of two people who wanted to make a difference in the world, finding direction by sending out 100 emails, then funding it through rummage sales and thrift stores. It is also a story of resiliency and the ability to pivot - finding a way to bring the blessing of a school to a community, even though there are complications like earthquakes and coups. Perhaps most of all, their story speaks to the ability of normal people to bring extraordinary blessing to others through a long-term commitment to everyday activities.