photos - various - part 4

Reginald had a birthday party last week at Epi dor. He is now 15-years-old. Reginald is the boy with the white t-shirt sitting at the head of the table. Everyone is happy that the Epi Dor building survived the earthquake intact.

The "Leaning Wall of Pisa" is now done and straight! It took a lot of work but it looks good. The guys are looking forward to painting it this week.

The municipal office on Delmas 31 is busy every day. This is where the office for the "carte electorale" (voter id cards). A large crowd of people forms in front every morning to apply for this card. Hopefully more offices are set up across the city to deal with the large demand.

Police are often called to handle crowd control.

While waiting in traffic I saw this man with his "fresco wagon". A fresco is shaved ice with a juice poured over it. Notice on the cart it is printed "Eb 4 vs 16". When I got home I noticed the bible reference to Hebrews 4:16 in the photo. I looked it up in the Bible and it says....."Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need." What a message for the people of Haiti and for all of us on this "fresco wagon"! Please continue to keep the people of Haiti in prayer.

photos - various - part 5

The world is represented here in Haiti. This wall marks where the Presbyterian Church in Korea - Happy Now (Happy Neighbors of the World) is located. It is amazing how many new missions have come to Haiti since the earthquake.

The hot sun is causing tarps and tents to become brittle and rip in the many refuge camps. At the Lycee in Croix des Bouquets there was a large tarp distribution led by the Red Cross. These are some of the fortunate people to get new tarps for their shelters.

These new tarps will help to provide some protection from the rains.

At Carrefour Marassa one day we noticed road construction going on. Work crews were patching this section of road. Difficult work while traffic goes around!

Key to earthquake proof construction will be strong supports. Rebar is a necessity in building these supports.

photos - various - part 6

This man enjoys his "moose hat"! He was enjoying walking down the street talking to all the people commenting on his hat style. This photo is for people in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan and Moosonee, Ontario!

All over the city people are demolishing broken buildings. The rubble removal process is a marathon and not a sprint. Pray for encouragement for the people of Port-au-Prince as they slowly dig out the city from the rubble.

Large buildings that collasped pancaked down onto lower floors trapping and killing people beneath. Now that rubble is being removed the human remains are appearing.

*** Warning - GRAPHIC photos ahead - If you don't want to see them scroll past them ***

At the building pictured above is a "Bone Cross" with a doll on it. This building is located on the corner of Delmas 40B and Delmas. For the last week people have walked by noticing the human bone cross. This is a symbol created by the workers at this building site to all the thousands of lives (both children and adult) that were lost in the rubble and whose bodies were not able to be retrieved and properly buried.

At the Hopital Trinite - Medecins Sans Frontiers Trauma Hospital site on Delmas 19 workers are finishing off the final clearing of the site. These 2 human skulls were found in the rubble and were placed on rebar sticking up from the ground as a testimony to the unknown who died at the hospital during the earthquake. Pray for all families who have lost loved ones to the earthquake.

VIDEO - CHRISTINE'S STORY - EDUCATION

Unicef has a video about the schooling situation in Haiti, specifically a story about the life of one child, Christine. Her story is a symbol of the struggle of all the poor children living in Haiti striving to get an education in the midst of poverty and earthquake damage. To watch the video follow the link to:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ww49kS0n5YY

ARTICLE - EDUCATION - CHRISTINE'S STORY

CHRISTINE'S STORY: ESCAPING POVERTY THROUGH EDUCATION IN POST-EARTHQUAKE HAITI
(ReliefWeb) - United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) - By Jill Van den Brule

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, 31 August 2010 – Christine, 14, lives in a camp for displaced people near the international airport here in the Haitian capital. "The only thing I know is that I know nothing," says this energetic girl, who cites Socrates as her motivation for going to school.

"A person without education is a life without examination," she says, paraphrasing the ancient philosopher. "You have to study and study to be a big philosopher, a great intellectual."

And Christine has done just that, even though she was out of school for three months following the earthquake that struck Haiti in January, destroying her home and displacing her family.

Siblings not in school
Christine's tattered notebooks, filled with detailed anatomy sketches, are a testament to her desire to become a doctor.

"I want to see with my own eyes what's in the body and understand how my heart beats," she says. "Like the Haitian singer named Jean-Jean Roosevelt says, if we give the world to women, the world would be marvelous, because girls have hearts."

And Christine's heart goes out to her siblings, who are not in school.

Her 15-year-old brother, Jean Renee, has been out of school since just before the quake, when he was forced to drop out. His mother could not afford to pay the school fees and had to make the difficult choice of sending just one of her three children to classes. Now Jean Renee goes to a family friend's garage each day to work as a mechanic's apprentice.

"If I cannot send him to school, I want him to at least learn a trade and stay out of trouble," says his mother.

Meanwhile, Christine's sister Afenyoose, 9, longs to go to school but cannot because it is simply too expensive.

'My mother is my life'
Christine attends one of the few public schools in the country where fees are relatively affordable. But most of Haiti's schools are private, creating a major barrier to education.

"I feel very, very sad that I go to school and my little sister doesn't," says Christine. "I try to teach her what I've learned every evening when I come home from school."

Even for Christine, however, there are barriers to education. For example, teacher absenteeism is a reality in Haiti, because many teachers do not have the resources to get to their jobs.

"I sometimes don't want to go to school because our teachers are not there," says Christine. "My mother says, 'Go to school, there may be teachers who will be in the classroom.' She always gives me the strength.... My mother is my life."

In the displacement camp, Christine's mother sells second-hand tennis shoes that she gets on consignment. She meticulously cleans them with a toothbrush. This is how she supports her family and pays her daughter's school fees. Her objective is to get out of the camp and give her children a better life.

"My mother wasn't able to study. This is why she wants us to go school, so we don't go through the same difficulties she did," says Christine.

Rebuilding schools
The earthquake that shook Haiti destroyed or damaged some 4,000 schools. UNICEF's priority in education has been to re-establish these schools as quickly as possible.

In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, temporary learning spaces were set up in large tents with water and sanitation facilities adapted to children's needs. These temporary tents are being transformed into semi-permanent structures.

"I went to see my school after the quake," Christine recalls. "The primary school next to our school had collapsed on top of my school, crushing a part of my classroom and the head teacher's office. Now we are in learning in a tent, and it's very hot."

It's clear that education is Christine's lifeline – as it could be for all of Haiti's children.

"I want the government to rebuild our schools, because there are children who will come after us," she says. "Without education, there is no life, because education elevates man to the dignity of his well-being."

ARTICLE - WORLD EDUCATION REPORT

REPORT: POOR COUNTRIES FACE EDUCATION CRISIS
(AP) - By JASON STRAZIUSO

NAIROBI, Kenya — Somalia and Haiti are the two worst countries in which to be a school child at a time when $4.6 billion has been cut from education budgets worldwide, a new report released Monday said.

Chronic under-investment in education means that 69 million children are out of school around the world, said the report released by the Global Campaign for Education.

The report — "Back to School?" — said poor countries are "teetering on the brink of an education crisis."

Of the five countries at the bottom of the list, four are in Africa, and three of those are in East Africa. The ranking rated Somalia, Eritrea, Haiti, Comoros and Ethiopia at the bottom five based on access to basic education, teacher-student ratio, and educational provisions for girls.

Even Kenya, considered successful compared to its East African neighbors, had to delay free education to 9.7 million children over the last year due to budgetary constraints, the report said.

The report was produced by Education International, Plan International, Oxfam, Save the Children and VSO.

World leaders meet at U.N. headquarters in New York this week to discuss the Millennium Development Goals.

One of goals was for universal primary education, and the world's school children have seen much progress over the last decade. The U.N. says the number of children not in school has dropped from 106 million in 1999 to 69 million in 2008.

Sub-Saharan Africa has seen its classrooms fill over the last decade, though the continent still accounts for almost half of the total of unenrolled children. In 1999, 58 percent of African children were enrolled in primary school. By 2008 the figure was 76 percent.

The Global Campaign for Education is calling on leaders meeting this week to make education funding a priority so that the target of universal access to primary education is met by 2015.

"If education budgets are not protected from the ravages of the financial crisis all that progress could be jeopardized and generations will be condemned to poverty," Gordon Brown, Britain's former prime minister, said in the report.

"For years the international community has acknowledged the fundamental role education plays in development," he said. "Today it must back these words with renewed action."

The U.N. children's agency said in new research ahead of the U.N. summit that providing services to the world's poorest children is not only the right thing to do, but also more cost-effective than the current policy of mainly helping what it called the "less poor" in more-accessible areas.

UNICEF said its research shows that spending $1 million helping children age 5 and younger in the most remote and disadvantaged areas would prevent 60 percent more deaths then the current approach, what it called "a stunningly higher return on investment."

ARTICLE - EDUCATIONAL REFORM

A CLEAN SLATE? QUESTIONS SURROUND PLANS FOR EDUCATIONAL REFORM AS HAITI REBUILDS ITS SCHOOLS
(Media Global) - By Leslie Pitterson

.... at the second meeting of the Interim Haitian Recovery Commission, the Haitian government revealed plans to reform its educational system with the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) and committed $500 million towards the country’s schools. The announcement, which comes as thousands of Haitian children prepare to start the new school year, has raised much discussion on how best to reform the country’s educational system.

The IADB’s contribution will provide funding for the first five years of Haiti’s 20 year educational reform plan. With an estimated budget of $4.2 billion, the Haitian government’s goal is to provide universal education from pre-school through university, a goal that Marcelo Cabrol, chief of the Inter-American Development Bank’s Education Division believes is possible.

“The overall vision of the Haitian government is to move towards a publicly financed system of quality education open to all children,” said Cabrol in an interview with MediaGlobal.

According to the United Nations, nearly half of Haiti’s 9 million citizens are under the age of 18. Hanna Jamal of Plan International has worked in Haiti since the earthquake in January. In an interview with MediaGlobal, Jamal said the reopening of schools has provided a bright spot in what has been a dark reality.

“In the schools where Plan is working we have seen that the teachers are happy to be back at work,” said Jamal. “On the whole, education is highly valued among Haitians and teachers are well-respected members of the community who recognize the important role they play within the communities.”

In order to cover both primary and secondary education for all its children, the government will need to rely heavily on public funding. Initial funding from the IADB’s $500 million commitment will go towards rebuilding of the 3,798 schools damaged or destroyed by the quake.

“A $26 million portion of our first $50 million grant—which will soon go to our board for approval–will help Haiti finance a $95 million “back to school” program,” said Cabrol. “About 85 percent of schools in the quake area suffered damages. We estimate that about 60 to 70 percent will be able to reopen this year.”

Beyond the rebuilding, the hope is that with enough funding, Haiti will be able to subsidize tuition costs for every child attending school. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), over a million of Haiti’s children did not attend school before the quake. The country’s per capita income stands at $400 dollars and many parents simply could not afford to provide their children with an education.

Also included in plans for reform is the retraining of over 45,000 Haitian educators and the hiring of over 2,500 new teachers to help implement a new national curriculum. While salaries vary, Cabrol told MediaGlobal that, “the average public school teacher at the elementary level earns US$2,500 per year and teachers at non-public schools make between US$800 and US$1,300 per year.”

According to a report from Haitian Interim Recovery Committee (CIRH) commissioned in April by Haitian President Rene Preval, the payroll for the Ministry of Education stood at $20.5 million USD for the 2009-2010 school year alone. It is unclear what adjustments will be made to the budget with the additional hires in the post-quake reform.

Beyond the challenges of expanding its public education, the biggest dilemma for the government’s plans for reform will be the oversight of privately run schools, which represented 90 percent of Haiti’s educational system before the quake. The IADB says that its funding will be allocated according to the standards set forth by Haiti’s Ministry of Education.

“Public schools would naturally remain publicly run,” said Cabrol. “Any private or non-public school accepting public financing will have to be accredited, train its teachers to new government-set standards, and implement a new national curriculum. These schools will also have to pass inspections to certify their facilities are structurally sound.”

While the Haitian Ministry of Education has put forth plans for the rebuilding and developing a standardized national curriculum, it will be difficult to ensure that the Ministry’s standards are being implemented throughout the various schools on the island. Though she could not speak for all NGO members of the cluster system in Haiti, Jamal said Plan would be working directly with the Ministry to coordinate their assistance to schools.

“All of our interventions, including those in private schools, are approved by the Ministry of Education to ensure that a minimum standard of services are being met across the public and private sectors,” said Jamal. “We also work closely with Ministry of Education officials at district and regional levels to ensure that school inspectors benefit from training and have the capacity to supervise both public and private schools in their zone.”

For now, the funding will be overwhelmingly directed to the process that outgoing UN Humanitarian Chief John Holmes has referred to as ‘building back better.’ Of the $500 million in IADB funding, over $210 million will go toward providing immediate needs like food and water for children’s cafeterias and restoring sanitary facilities in schools.

Discussion around a standardized national curriculum will no doubt be influenced by the country’s elections in November. And though a concrete proposal for the national curriculum has not been set forth, the CIRH has stated its wish to “ensure the promotion of the values of our heritage through a cultural education syllabus in schools.”

It remains unclear, however, if the voices from both Haiti’s public and private education sectors will be included in the talks ahead.