School Meals Program
Malnutrition is a significant challenge in Haiti and acute under-nutrition dramatically impedes growth and learning; food is simply vital to allowing a child to concentrate and learn in class. During academic year 2009-2010, with the support of Zynga.org, FATEM began a pilot program with Ecole Mitsraim de Nivard and provided a daily snack bar and a warm meal to 240 children attending school there. Within just a few days of the meal program’s inception, the school’s management observed an increase in attendance of over 25%.
FATEM also provided cereal bars to an additional 2,334 children at 11 other partner schools! This academic year, with the generous assistance of Zynga and the World Food Program, and through our partnership with Bureau de Nutrition et Développment(BND), we are providing a daily warm meal to 3,384 students at our 14 partner schools.
Brief Report on the State of Education in the Mirebalais Region
By Marconi Médor, FATEM Program Coordinator
Over the past five years, the Central Plateau has had the lowest score on the Haiti national exams. This poor positioning at the bottom of the ladder, much complained about by some organizations engaged in the field of education in the area, is the result of several factors: lack of supervision with regards to the quality of courses taught in the classrooms, unqualified teaching personnel, lack of critical course books, and a deficit in terms of the availability of information.
Toward the end of 2010, FATEM took it upon itself to go after sensitive data regarding the education sector in the commune of Mirebalais, the second most populated of the Centre Department, in terms of population. These data are very important in that they will guide our intervention in our efforts to improve the educational system in the said commune. The results which we obtained reflect in several aspects the state of the education within the Department and at the national level.
Programs and Projects
Learning to Read and Write
- Tuition and School Supplies Assistance - Since the start of the Learning to Read and Write program in 2007, FATEM has provided tuition assistance, backpacks, and school supplies to 1,710 children. This academic year (2010-2011), through our partnership with 14 primary schools attended by 3,384 children across all four communal districts of Mirebalais, we have been able to help some of the most marginalized children. With the assistance of the Worldwide Vincentian Family, via its web portal Zafen.org, we were able tosupport 1,030 children, of whom 30 belong to a group of best performers named “Excellence”,supported by Anna-Marie and Neale Loomis, owners of Mateo Oilfield in Canada. The Loomis havepledged to provide annual scholarships for these 30 students all the way through high school! Thereremain however many more schools to support through scholarships, school building repair, and schoolconstruction, in several cases.
- School Meals - Malnutrition is a significant challenge in Haiti and acute under-nutrition dramatically impedes growth and learning; food is simply vital to allowing a child to concentrate and learn in class. During academic year 2009-2010, with the support of Zynga.org, FATEM began a pilot program with Ecole Mitsraim de Nivard and provided a daily snack bar and a warm meal to 240 children attending school there. Within just a few days of the meal program’s inception, the school’s management observed an increase in attendance of over 25%. FATEM also provided cereal bars to an additional 2,334 children at 11 other partner schools! This academic year, with the generous assistance of Zynga and the World Food Program, and through our partnership with Bureau de Nutrition et Développment(BND), we are providing a daily warm meal to 3,384 students at our 14 partner schools.
School Construction
- Ecole Communautaire de Nicolas - FATEM is fulfilling its promise to Nicolas community residents to help them build an elementary institution. This community has no school accessible within a five-mile radius, and children have to walk about an hour each way to attend the nearest school. Construction is underway, and the new six-classroom building is expected to open its doors officially in September 2012!
Community Schools Construction - Supplemental Projects
- Kitchen Construction - We are very grateful for the generous assistance from the students in the iEARN Natural Disaster Youth Summit (a worldwide network of over 30,000 schools and youth organizations) who contributed funds from the United Kingdom. With their support we were able to build kitchens at Ecole Union des Frères de Morne Blanc and Ecole Mixte Daniel de Gascogne, making cooking lunch at those two schools less of a challenge.
- Latrine Construction - As part of FATEM assistance with school repair, we help our partner schools build latrines where needed. We provide the financial support, and our local staff coordinates all planning and identifies the necessary resources to carry out the construction. Each latrine is in cement and has one section for boys and another for girls. So far, we have built three of these latrines at the following partner schools: Ecole Mixte Daniel de Gascogne, Ecole Communautaire de Pinchinat, and Ecole Communautaire de Dolubrun.
Community Continuing Education
- English Language Institute of Mirebalais (ELIM) - Our English program will resume soon. Please visit this page often for the date of the new session. Thanks for your patience.
- Teacher Training - FATEM is working with FAMILY, and Ecole Normale de Liancourt to establish a Teacher Training Academy (TTA), through which we will provide ongoing training for first and second primary cycle teachers from the Lower Plateau Central and Artibonite regions. Because it is often difficult for most students from the countryside to attend universities in Port-au-Prince or elsewhere, mainly for financial reasons, educators opt to establish schools, or become teachers to earn a living, often using their old school notebooks without any formal teaching training; hence the reason for the existence of the Academy, which will provide training specifically designed for this group. In June of 2010, a six-person delegation comprised of Haitian and Haitian-American teachers and administrators traveled to Chicago for a three-day workshop conducted by Dr. Darlene Unger and Dr. Kathie Kapustka of DePaul’s School of Education. Following the Chicago workshop, the first official training session of the Teacher Training Academy was held in Mirebalais in July, followed by another session in Verrettes. DePaul University has committed teachers from both its School of Education and its Masters in Public Service program to provide regular training to TTA trainers, as well as assistance with teaching materials. We are grateful to the Boston Foundation Haiti Fund for providing partial funding for the July 2010 training.
- Information and Communication Technology - Through a collaboration between FATEM and University of the People, the first worldwide tuition-free online university to offer degrees in Computer Science and Business Administration, residents from the Central Plateau area can now pursue Associate's and Bachelor's degrees in these fields.
- Mirebalais Public Library and Technology Center - FATEM collaborated with the Mirebalais district of the Rotary Club International, the City of Mirebalais and the Office of Senator Edmonde Beauzile to build the Mirebalais Municipal Library and Technology Center. Through the assistance of a generous donor and the contributions of Mirebalais expatriates living in the Diaspora, FATEM provided a small financial contribution towards the completion of the project.
- Establishment of Center for Documentation and Research - OPAJEC (Organisation des Paysans et des Jeunes pour l’Epanouissement du Centre) was created by young men and women living in Mirebalais, with the objective of developing useful programs that employ information and communication technologies. Today OPAJEC operates a vital center for documentation and research; it provides lamination services for local schools and businesses, computer literacy classes, and online access for students and professionals. Our partnership with this organization contributed to the implementation of a Center for Documentation and Research, which is currently housed at the Leocardie Kenscoff Cultural Center.
Economic Development
- Parents Economic Empowerment Initiative - Developing a plan that can help parents from the FATEM school network to find ways to meet the basic needs of their children, is one of our objectives for the coming year. In an effort to materialize our dream to see these parents, generally poor, in a position to have the means to generate and accelerate revenues, we have put in place a structure to support agricultural microcredit that can curb the misery to which these underserved parents seem to be linked. After extensive studies, obviously guided by Agronomist Nixon Dorilas, we identified a group of 40 people, including mothers and fathers of some of our students, to experiment with the plantation of beans in the locality of Marché-Canard, Section of Gascogne in Mirebalais. Three hundred eighty thousand gourdes (380,000.00 gourdes, or about US$9,500) is the amount that was disbursed for this project, including the agronomist’s fees. Each participant in the program receives a loan of between five thousand gourdes (5,000.00) and ten thousand gourdes (10,000.00), depending on the amount of land they have available for the experimentation. Unlike microfinance institutions, the loans which FATEM awarded to the farmer parents are interest-free and will be repaid in three (3) installments, the last one being due on June 30, 2011.