By Emma Taylor | IDV Head of Media & Marketing
Over the last three years your generous donations have enabled us to provide a life-changing education for some of Port au Prince’s most vulnerable children.
School in Haiti isn’t free and these kids, whose parents’ can’t afford to pay school fees, would have been denied an education if it wasn’t for donors like you.
All the kids have worked hard, attended class regularly and done well in their exams because they’ve been extremely grateful for the opportunity your donations have given them.
So, it is with real sadness that we now have to inform you of issues that have developed with the host school over the summer. In negotiating our program plans for the next school year the school principal has proposed what we feel are unjustifiable price increases for school fees and materials, such as books, for the coming year.
This price increase brings the cost of school far above the average for a quality education in Port au Prince.
Despite comprehensive discussions the principal is refusing to move from his position. This means that we do not feel we can proceed at the current school while also safeguarding the donations you have so generously chosen to give.
As a result we are now seeking a new school to work with for the coming school year, but this presents us with other challenges.
Parents can be reluctant to send their children to school in other neighborhoods, and others may not want to separate kids from their friends.
So, while we had always planned to support the same kids year after year, it may not be possible to move all the kids currently in our scholarship program to the new school.
We understand that many of you have donated to support particular kids and we are truly sorry for any disappointment this causes. We take our commitments very seriously and so we wanted to send this report as soon as it became clear that we would not be able to proceed as planned.
At this point, we have sufficient funding in the bank to pay for an additional year of school for all the children in our programme. For the time being, we’ll close this project down on GlobalGiving as we explore options for continuing the programme.
Our plan is to use the funds already received for another year of school for as many of the children you’ve supported as possible next year. If we then feel that the project will continue in the long-term, we’ll re-post this project here on GlobalGiving, and you’ll be able to continue supporting education in Haiti.
If we do not feel confident that we can continue our scholarship programme the following year without hitting these same problems again, then we will permanently close the programme.
We understand that this may be upsetting news for many of you. If you have any concerns at all please don’t hesitate to email Emma@IDVolunteers.org so we can discuss them.
Once again, we would like to extend our sincerest apologies for any disappointment or inconvenience.
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