Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2004. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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Miami Herald - June 12, 2004
Donna Gehrke-White, dgehrke@herald.com
What you didn't see: Leconte working for free to set up a nonprofit agency for struggling immigrants. He didn't take a paycheck from his Minority Development & Empowerment Inc. for three years.
Today, the agency has grown into a $2 million-a-year operation in Fort Lauderdale. The agency provides a range of services, from job placement to HIV/AIDS education to after-school care.
"He's gone far beyond just focusing on health care services," said Edward Chu, deputy director of the Boston-based Robert Wood Johnson Health Leadership Program that recently named Leconte one of 10 national winners.
On Wednesday, Leconte will be honored in Washington for his efforts in creating the agency, which helps 8,000 to 10,000 people a year, most immigrants from Haiti and the Caribbean. (Susan Reyna, executive director of Mujeres Unidas en Justicia, Educacion y Reforma in Homestead, also will receive an award for starting a "one-stop" program to aid victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse in Miami-Dade's migrant communities.) The award comes with a $120,000 grant.
"What impressed us most about Francois is that he began his work from the trunk of his car and created his agency without taking a salary," Chu said.
"He really cares about his clients, his people -- and it shows," said Cindy Arenberg Seltzer, president and chief executive officer of Children's Services Counsel of Broward County, which funds Leconte's after-school and summer camp programs.
Leconte said he feels compelled to help after being taught by his mother to give to others.
"When we take care of others, we are better off," said Leconte, who turns 40 on July 5 and is married to Nadine Louissaint. He is the father of Ayinde, 8, and Isabelle, 14 months.
But helping doesn't mean giving folks an easy time. Leconte insists on rigorous studies for the 100 or so children who attend the after-school program.
Results: 75 percent are passing the FCAT -- even though most are still learning English.
One boy was so thrilled with his results that he recently shouted at Leconte: "I passed the FCAT!"
"That made me feel a lot better than having a million dollars," Leconte said.
He gives a lot of credit for the agency's success to his 50 full- and part-time employees.
Alphonse Piard, a former Miami-Dade teacher, said he left a secure job to run the agency's self-sufficiency programs because Leconte "has a vision to bring our community to the top level."
Piard teaches immigrants about financial planning. He urges them to overcome their traditional fear of banks and open accounts. Such accounts help establish a credit history, which will help when they want a mortgage or business loan.
"It's the idea of teaching a man to fish instead of giving him fish," Leconte said.
The agency also helps clients file income tax returns.
Leconte knows firsthand the importance of setting goals.
He arrived in the United States in 1989, fleeing Haiti's political unrest. He earned a community-college degree in New York and then came to Miami-Dade, where he attended Florida International University and worked to help find housing for Haitians with HIV or AIDS.
After moving to Broward, he planned to join a social-services agency there -- only to discover none catered to the Haitian community. So he started his own in 1996.
Juvenia Mackensie, the daughter of immigrants, helps coordinate the after-school program. Without the program, she says, the kids under her care, ages 10 to 15, would have no place to go.
"There was nothing like this for me," she said of the program, which includes field trips, a computer lab and homework help. "I went to school and came home -- alone. My parents had to work. I struggled to do homework."
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