"Haitian Kids Return to School" (article about new elementary school being built by FATEM)

Education Returns to Haiti, by Gabriela Brubaker, Washington International School.

January 2011 - One year after the earthquake in Haiti killed 230,000, left 300,000 injured and 1.5 million homeless, hundreds of thousands of children are back in school, a small but significant step in the rebuilding of the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.

Haitian and international aid organizations have cleared rubble from 65 school sites, constructed 322 primary school classrooms and distributed 144,900 textbooks so that 80 percent of the nation's children can return to school if they want to, according to a report released January 11 by the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission, co-chaired by former U.S. President Bill Clinton and Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive.

“We’ve made progress despite the setbacks of a threatening hurricane season and a devastating cholera outbreak,” Clinton and Bellerive wrote in the report. “But we know that in many ways, the true work has just begun.”

The colossal challenge can be witnessed across the mountainous French- and Creole- speaking Caribbean nation, in the teaming city of Port-au-Prince and in provincial towns such as Mirebalais, an hour and a half north of the capital on a rutted, winding road.

A community organization formed by a group of Haitian-American professionals who live in the Boston area and grew up in Mirebalais is supporting 14 schools in the region, opening a new K- through-12 school this fall, headed by an American educator named Lynn Black, and building a new primary school in a rural hamlet named Nicolas. Washington International School has donated money to the primary school project.

Many children in Mirebalais area cannot read or write, just as their parents cannot, in part because the nearest school (a single room inside a church where the teachers barely have a 6th grade education) is a 45 minute walk that could turn into a dreadful journey that can take hours if the unpaved road is washed out by even the smallest storm, according to Jacky Poteau, president and executive director of the Boston-based Foundation for the Technological and Economic Advancement of Mirebalais (FATEM).

A visit in early January to the community offered a window into the challenges that Haiti and international organizations face in rebuilding an educational system that was destroyed in many parts of the country. Mirebalais gained international attention last fall as the town where the cholera epidemic that has killed more than 3,700 people began, according to Doctors Without Borders.

The proposed school for Nicolas is today a pristine but vacant one-acre lot with mango and banana trees, sugar cane fields, and goats and horses.

“But when you come back next year, there will be a school here,” Poteau said confidently.

The school will consist of six classrooms, a principal’s office, a kitchen, two latrines and a water well, Poteau said. The land was donated by a family in the community. The cost of the project has not been determined but FATEM has obtained funding from Zynga Inc., a San Francisco social gaming company, and various smaller donations, including $1,500 from Washington International School. The private Washington D.C. school has committed the same amount of money for the next four years.

Driving with Poteau on a road near the proposed school, Ricardo Telemaque, a Haitian-American who is the associate director of FATEM, spotted four shoeless children with raggedy clothes. “I’m guessing they’re between 4 and 9 years old,” he said.

Stopping the car, he asked the kids if they attend school. A boy named Pierre responded, “We don’t go to school because we don’t have uniforms or shoes.”

Telemaque said later that lack of proper clothing is a major reason many Haitian children do not attend school. Asked if he knew the literacy rate in the Mirebalais region, where he grew up, Telemaque said, “it is very, very, very low.”

FATEM decided to focus on education “because we were witnessing its deterioration in Haiti,” Poteau said. Of the country's 8.7 million inhabitants, about half (52.9 percent) are illiterate, which is by far the highest rate in the Caribbean region, according to data provided by FATEM. In the year since the earthquake struck, the United States, France, Canada, Spain, Venezuela, the World Bank and the European Community have made grants to educational programs in the country, the report by the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission said.

Most schools in Haiti are privately operated and managed by communities, religious organizations or nongovernmental organizations. Only 67 percent of school age children are enrolled in primary school and only 30 percent of those reach the sixth grade according to FATEM. Just 20 percent of high school-age students are enrolled. In many rural areas, there are virtually no schools because parents need their children to work in the fields or care for their siblings, FATEM officials say.

“This school is especially needed in the Mirebalais area because after the earthquake many families in Port-au-Prince, which was hit the hardest, got on a bus and got off here," Poteau said after visiting the new school site.

Many homes in the Mirebalais region do not have electricity but the community does have some natural resources, including an abundance of fruit trees and easy access to fire wood that residents of the capital do not have. Overall, Haiti suffers from lack of wood because of massive deforestation, caused by an enormous demand for wood, which is used for cooking and building houses.

Poteau said he hopes to open the new primary school this year. “One of the most important details of the school we are building is that it must be hurricane and earthquake resistant," he said. Beyond that, he said: “We would like to provide more than the bare minimum that the Haitian community expects and has experienced for years.”

No tuition will be charged for children who cannot afford to pay, he said. Thinking back to the four children he saw on the side of the road earlier in the day, Poteau added: “Haiti desperately needs new schools. And we plan to do our part.”