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United Caribbean Trust is committed to assisting
with Haitian education and as such 1/3 of the Child
Sponsorship Programme is dedicated to education.
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What will
your US $30 per month child sponsorship achieve?
The money will be divided
into 3 modules
- The first 1/3rd of the fees will go to the school
to cover school fees, uniform, shoes, books and pencils etc.
- The next 1/3rd will be invested into a Family
Empowerment Programme enabling the family to purchase
livestocks such as goats, chickens, pigs or a cow. This will not
only assist with feeding the family but educate the children in
self sufficiency.
- The last 1/3rd will go towards funding the After
School Club which is being established in ten food
distribution centres throughout Haiti. This will include an afternoon
feeding programme and a child educational, character building
Evangelical teaching programme. We are believing God to introduce
a mother's Bible Study class as the mums come to collect their
children from the After School Club - to God be the Glory.
Haiti Faces Major
Education Challenge
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Less than half
of all Haitians can read and write. Over half of the nation's
children fail to reach the fifth grade. And only one in five
young people reach secondary school
This young boy is smiling,
his life has been transformed by the Child
Sponsorship Program.
You can help educate a
child in Haiti. |
These figures reflect an educational
crisis found throughout the developing world, a situation that leaves
one billion people illiterate, with girls outnumbering boys two
to one among of those who receive no education at all. UNICEF is
spotlighting this crisis in specific regions in the wake of The
State of the World’s Children 1999, the agency’s wide-ranging
examination of challenges to the right of all children to basic
education.
"Haiti's educational system
has utterly failed for as many as half of that nation's children,"
Sheldon Shaeffer, chief of UNICEF's Education Section, said.
"It is a major violation of human rights to consign children,
by denying them education, to lives of poverty and disease."
< Read more >
Compliments of www.unicef.org
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to meet the children of Haiti Our
vision is to raise up Godly leaders in Haiti through health
and education to strengthen their families, communities and
country; bringing relief of poverty and stimulating the economy;
and to preach the Gospel so that lives will be saved and transformed
for the betterment of Haiti.
Imagine me...
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According to UNICEF figures, 58
per cent of Haiti's current educational facilities were not built
originally to serve as schools. Many classrooms are so overcrowded
that only one in four children has a place to sit. And almost two-thirds
of all children abandon primary school before completing the six-year
course.
I n real terms, Mr. Shaeffer stated,
more than one million primary school-age children in Haiti simply
have no access to education. As a result, Haiti has an illiteracy
rate of over 55 per cent, the highest in the Americas. In addition,
the vast majority of schools lack trained teachers and less than
half the children have access to textbooks.
"It is not unusual," the education chief added, "to
find an unqualified first grade teacher who must deal with students
who are six to 16 years old in a class with more than 50 children
-- all clamoring for attention."
Mr. Shaeffer said UNICEF is working with the Haitian Ministry of
Education to improve existing schools and reach children who have
dropped out. But he said school reform in Haiti will require substantial
input from donor nations. A major thrust should be to strengthen
and empower free, public education through improvement of facilities,
provision of adequate materials and radically upgraded teacher training.
A phenomenon in Haiti, common throughout the developing world, is
that children are often forced into alternatives to school, such
as domestic servitude, child labor or life in the streets. It is
estimated that there are 300,000 Haitian children working as domestic
servants, approximately 80 per cent of whom are girls under 14 years
of age. Many of these children are maltreated.
Some 5,000 additional Haitian youngsters
are street children. These include some who have escaped from domestic
servitude and others who have come to the cities seeking opportunities
that did not materialize.
"Education is central to providing these children with ways
to improve their lives," Mr. Shaeffer noted. "Because
so few educational opportunities exist for them, UNICEF has developed
a highly flexible, informal approach to providing basic education
which attempts to respond to the needs of individual children. School
schedules are adjusted to children's availability and the curriculum
offers them the opportunity to acquire basic knowledge along with
personal and professional skills."
Girls should be given an equal place
in Haiti's educational future, Shaeffer asserted. That will mean
finding ways to deal with the economic realities, which force large
numbers of girls into domestic servitude. UNICEF is working to improve
the information base on girls' education, an effort that will help
develop strategies to increase girls' attendance at school and the
quality of girls' education. In addition, UNICEF has supported Haiti’s
Ministry of Education in the recent establishment of a Commission
on Girls’ Education.
Compliments of www.unicef.org
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