ARTICLE - MIKAEL SILVESTRE - BUILD VOCATIONAL SCHOOL

MIKAEL SILVESTRE TO BUILD VOCATIONAL TRAINING CENTER IN HAITI
(Defend Haiti) - By Orlando Aurelien

RENNES, France - The soccer player, Mikael Silvestre, former French international, will inaugurate this month, in Haiti, a vocational training center for carpentry, machinery, and technology, which is intended to help young Haitians after the earthquake.

The Werder Bremen defender (Germany) will meet students from the first promotion (60 teenagers aged 14 to 18, girls and boys) on 14 June in the town of La Croix-des-Bouquets, near Port-au-Prince.

"The goal is to tell them that we need them, that the country needs them, because foreign aid is coming but now we really need to put tools in their hands for the reconstruction of their countries; through training in various trades, " said the player.

Silvestre, supported by UNESCO since 2005, has already established four similar centers in disadvantaged parts of the world under the label "Schools for Hope" in Guinea, Niger, Laos and Senegal.

"I try to restore some of what I received in my childhood because I had the chance to attend school, learned to read, write, and trained at the same time in football; the things that many children around the world can not do," he explained.

The project budget, € 170,000, was attained thanks to his personal contribution, along with former teammates in Arsenal, and Chelsea and an auction, in Rennes, his first club.

"I became interested in the issue of educating children with the birth of my first daughter and then I contacted UNICEF in early 2000. But with them, the action was sporadic. I did act as a spokesperson. Now, with UNESCO, I am invested in projects from start to finish," he says.