SOS Children’s Villages

Chil­dren liv­ing in tent and makeshift shel­ters are among the most vul­ner­a­ble in the coun­try. Fac­ing extreme poverty, they have the least access to education.

Haiti’s gov­ern­ment is now hard at work at a dis­as­ter plan­ning and emer­gency pre­pared­ness strat­egy, as the 2010 hur­ri­cane sea­son looms. With inter­na­tional assis­tance, a tem­po­rary emer­gency shel­ter (pre­cau­tion­ary) has been built. The shel­ter can accom­mo­date 500 people.

The island’s city of Gonaives is par­tic­u­larly at risk as it has been dev­as­tated by intense flood­ing over the past five years. These floods have led to the deaths of 5 00 peo­ple. Floods have also destroyed more than 25 school build­ings, dis­rupt­ing edu­ca­tional progress in the region. In the con­text of extreme poverty, under­stand­ing the links between emer­gen­cies, shel­ter and habi­ta­tion and school­ing is of the utmost impor­tance for improv­ing both phys­i­cal and socioe­co­nomic resilience to nat­ural disasters.

Impov­er­ished Hait­ian chil­dren score very poorly on the United Nations (UN) edu­ca­tional attain­ment indi­ca­tors. Accord­ing to UNICEF, only about 50% of chil­dren are able to attend school on a reg­u­lar basis and only 85% make it to pri­mary school (there is a lack of data as to how many chil­dren are able to attend school in the first place). More young women than men are able to read and write (87% as opposed to 76%). How­ever, when the lit­er­acy rate of the entire pop­u­la­tion (includ­ing chil­dren and adults is con­sid­ered, lit­er­acy shrinks to a mea­gre 44%.

Edu­ca­tion has remained part of the myr­iad of pro­gram­ming that has been installed in Haiti since the Jan­u­ary earth­quake that left 300 000 peo­ple dead. A pro­gram in the city’s cap­i­tal of Port-au-Prince, for instance, uses a read­ing pro­gram (called Li Li Li!) to fos­ter lit­er­acy among local chil­dren. The pro­gramme is also designed to be a ther­a­peu­tic activ­ity to help chil­dren recov­ery from the shock of the quake and the mas­sive human and phys­i­cal destruc­tion it wrought.

While Haiti’s pub­lic schools reopened about three months ago, few build­ings have been com­pletely reha­bil­i­tated. Many chil­dren con­tinue to learn in large groups under tents and makeshift shel­ters. Of Haiti’s 1.3 mil­lion home­less peo­ple, the chil­dren liv­ing in the poor­est makeshift tent set­tle­ments have no access to edu­ca­tion at all. Their fam­i­lies can­not pay the $12–60 a year it costs to edu­cate a child at the pri­mary level.

http://www.soschildrensvillages.ca/News/News/child-charity-news/Pages/Education-Haiti-Vulnerable-Child-274.aspx