Schools Not Slavery for Rural Haitian Children

We are deeply grateful for your generous support for Beyond Borders' Schools Not Slavery campaign. You are combating child slavery with education and targeted initiatives that lift families out of extreme poverty in rural Haiti.

Because of you, 2,392 girls and boys in 25 schools in rural Haiti - students like 11-year-old Emeline - are getting a quality education. This includes 262 children who were freed from slavery and reunited with their families during the last three years, and 28 children were freed this year.

Emeline narrowly escaped a life of servitude. She lives in a remote village on Lagonav Island. One of five siblings, Emeline's mother fell ill and couldn't care for her or send her to school. As Emeline’s mother was away recovering, Emeline’s father sent her to live with a relative in Port-au-Prince.

In many situations like this, parents will send their child away to live with a family in a city with the hope that their child will go to school and be taken care of. If they had any idea of the misery and abuse that lay ahead, they would never let them leave.

In Emeline's community, thanks to your support, Beyond Borders set up a Child Rights Training program to warn parents like Emeline's of the dangers of sending their children away, and to help parents find and free their children, and develop the means to care for and educate them.

Now, because of supporters like you 99.6% of the school-aged children in Emeline's village are enrolled in school.

Emeline's mom got the help she needed to bring her daughter home, help that your donation makes possible. When we spoke with Emeline, she said she was excited for the start of the new school year this year.

"I want to be a nurse," she proudly told us, "so I can help everyone where I live to be healthy and strong."

Isn't this what we want for every child, the opportunity to live a better life, to realize their dreams?

Your gift supports education initiatives like teacher training, textbook banks, school gardens, and tuition matching programs. Together, these programs improve the quality of education in rural Haiti, and make school more accessible for more children. That's critically important, since children who are in school are much less likely to be sent away and risk becoming enslaved.

Your gift also supports initiatives designed to ensure that families and communities have the means to keep their children at home - free, safe, and in school.

Thanks to you, this year:

• 1,600 women & men graduated from Child Rights Training
• 28 more children were freed, brought home, and enrolled in a quality school
• 230 families were enrolled in our 18-month asset-building initiative
• 250 women & men are organizing to prevent violence against women
• 100 teachers were trained in nonviolent classroom management
• 1,550 students benefitted from textbook banks at their school
• 1,650 teachers & students were trained to plant & grow school gardens
• 25 schools had successful harvests & five schools had two harvests

Thank you again for your commitment to vulnerable children and families in rural Haiti.

Links:

• By the Numbers: What Your Support for Schools Not Slavery Does.
• Read the Full Story of Emeline's Journey to Freedom.
• Meet Smith Maxine: Working to End Child Slavery in Haiti.

You Are Making Schools & Communities Healthier, Safer, More Hopeful Places for Children

Because so much of a child’s life is shaped by what happens outside the classroom too, your support for Schools Not Slavery is helping to transform the entire community, making it a healthier, safer, and more hopeful place for children.

Having just completed the third year of the Schools Not Slavery initiative on Lagonav Island, we are very grateful for the progress that schools and communities are making - thanks to the support of donors like you.

Freeing Children and Reuniting Them with Their Families

Overall, the communities in which Schools Not Slavery is at work have been able to free and reintegrate 63 percent of children who had been sent away and were trapped in servitude.

Achieving Universal Primary Education in Rural Communities

Additionally, in the last 24-month period, four out of five communities in which the Schools Not Slavery initiative was launched in 2015 achieved universal primary education, stopping the flow of children out of their communities into servitude, and reducing the indicators of discrimination and exploitation of children living apart from their parents to essentially zero (see attached chart on enrollment gains by community). These achievements are changing the lives of boys and girls like Lo-Richama, a sixth-grader at Jean Marie School in Tipalmis - one of the newest schools to join the Schools Not Slavery network. Lo-Richama is growing up at home with her family, free from slavery and abuse, and she's getting a quality education - all because of the generosity of supporters like you. Thank you so much for your care and concern for vulnerable children like Lo-Richama in rural Haiti! 

What Your Support Makes Possible

Here are some of the school and community-based initiatives made possible by your support for Schools Not Slavery:

- Helping parents find and free children they’ve sent away and organizing communities to stop the flow of children into slavery through our six-month Child Rights Training and the creation of neighborhood Child Protection Brigades,

- Training teachers in nonviolent, participatory classroom management techniques,

- Creating school textbook banks to provide affordable book rentals for every student,

- Supporting tuition matching programs for parents who can’t pay their child’s full tuition,

- Launching school gardens to teach children about agriculture and provide food for meals at school,

- Supporting adult literacy training, agricultural training, small business training, and seed and tool banks to help struggling rural families lift themselves out of poverty (see attached newsletter article for an in-depth report), and,

- Training and organizing community members to prevent violence against women and girls.

Expanding Schools Not Slavery to More Communities on Lagonav Island

In fiscal year 2018, the Schools Not Slavery initiative will be expanding on Lagonav Island to reach a total of 14 communities where vulnerable children and families live.

Mobilizing Diverse Local Leadership to Create Lasting Change in Communities

In every community where Schools Not Slavery works, we proactively include every local institution and individual as a means to build trust and collaboration and create lasting change.

Many external initiatives to help Haitian communities funnel their efforts through a single local church, school, organization, or individual leader. This approach often ends up alienating or excluding large segments of the community, though, and can increase divisions and distrusts, as power shifts to the local partner in ways that exclude broader leadership and accountability to the community.

Those who already feel excluded in a community are often reluctant to participate. They may feel ashamed or worry that they'll be shunned if they show up. Schools Not Slavery employs a range of strategies to win the participation of the excluded, and, just as important, to help every participant to progressively show up with those parts of themselves that they’ve excluded.

Give With Confidence

We are committed to transparency and accountability at all levels, and we are proud to have been named as 'One of the Best Small Nonprofits' in the 2017-18 Greater Washington Catalogue for Philanthropy. On our website you'll find:

- our seven most-recent audited financial statements,

- our seven most-recent IRS Form 990 filings, and,

- our Donor Privacy Policy.

If you have any questions about how your support for Schools Not Slavery is used, please contact us anytime at (202) 686-2088. Thank you for your trust, your generosity, and your concern for vulnerable children in Haiti.

Links:

• See Updates Direct from Haiti on our Facebook Page
• See a Google Map of the Schools Not Slavery Initiative

• SNS Helps Families Move from Poverty to Dignity. (PDF)
  

We are so grateful for your generous gift to Schools Not Slavery. Your support means girls and boys in nine rural communities on Lagonav Island are safe, free, and enrolled in quality schools.

In 2016, 104 children were freed from slavery, reunited with their parents, and enrolled in school thanks to supporters like you.

Children whose parents can't afford to send them to school face the highest risk of being sent in to slavery. Your support enrolls kids in a school near where they live and helps improve the quality of those schools.

Today, thanks to supporters like you, more than 3,500 rural children are getting a quality education from well-trained teachers who care. That's because all 35 schools in the Schools Not Slavery Network are implementing a six-point strategy to boost the capacity of teachers and enhance the learning environment for every student.

This strategy for educational excellence was pioneered by our long-time partners at the Matènwa Community Learning Center and is proven to produce reading scores that are nearly three times better than the national average, according to a 2014 MIT study. It includes:

1. Native Language Instruction – Students are taught in Haitian Creole, the language they speak at home, instead of French, which is introduced later in the classroom, as a second language.
2. Participatory Approach to Classroom Management – This approach fosters intellectual curiosity and critical thinking skills and encourages students to write stories in Haitian Creole about their own lives and share them with each other.
3. Non-Violent Classroom Management – Teachers use a non-violent approach to classroom management that teaches students leadership and democracy.
4. Textbook Banks – Textbook banks ensure every student has the textbooks they need to be a successful learner.
5. Accelerated Education – Students who miss out on starting school at age six either because their parents were too poor to pay tuition fees OR because they were sent away to live with others and work as household servants can catch up on the learning they missed through an Accelerated Education program.
6. Education Rooted in Rural Life - At every school agriculture is integrated into almost every aspect of the curriculum, teaching students agricultural science and improved farming techniques that they can share with their families, like how to produce higher crop yields and minimize the impact of drought and deforestation.

Your generous support for Schools Not Slavery makes this kind of high-quality education possible for girls and boys in rural Haiti and greatly reduces their risk of being sent away in to slavery. Thank you so much for your care and concern for vulnerable children in Haiti. We are grateful for your support!

Links:

• Watch a video about school gardens.

• School Gardens help parents feed their children. (PDF)
  
• Teachers are trained in nonviolent classroom mgmt. (PDF)
  

Thank you for your generous support for the Schools Not Slavery Initiative in rural Haiti. You are making a difference in the lives of girls like 11-year-old Beatrice, who was freed from domestic slavery, returned home to her family in the village of Nan Kafe, and enrolled in a quality school.

A just-completed household survey conducted in six of the nine communities on the island of Lagonav where the Schools Not Slavery Initiative is working found that 97.1% of school-aged children like Beatrice are in school -- that's compared to an average of just 72.8% for rural children nationally in Haiti.

Thanks to you, more and more children like Beatrice are enrolled in quality schools near where they live, and their parents are getting the help they need to raise them at home, instead of sending them away to live with other families where they risk becoming enslaved.

"We're encouraged by these results and what they mean for vulnerable girls and boys and their families in rural Haiti," said Beyond Borders' Executive Director David Diggs. "But we've got more work to do. We are continuing to invest in new strategies that will help our partners in all the communities where we work to ensure that every child is in school," he added. The same household survey will be conducted later this year in the three remaining communities where Schools Not Slavery works.

Beatrice told Beyond Borders' Freda Catheus, who coordinates the Schools Not Slavery Initiative on Lagonav Island, that it's her wish too that every child could be free.

“I would like every child in slavery like I was to return to their family and to be free,” Beatrice told Freda, “so that no child suffers like I did.” 

Your generosity is also helping to ensure that boys and girls like Beatrice are never sent away to live with others in the first place, by organizing local Child Protection Brigades. Made up of volunteers trained in a six-month Schools Not Slavery Child Rights Program, these brigades are reducing the number of children sent away by helping parents understand the dangers their children face when sent away to live with others. 

In the communities where Schools Not Slavery-supported Child Protection Brigades are at work, the rate of children sent away by their parents to live with other families is less than half the national average -- 12.7% versus 26%.

"Our goal is to see the practice of sending children away completely end in all the communities where we work," David said. "We will continue to work with families to help them bring their children home, enroll them in a good local school, and find the means to earn a dignified living so they never feel pressured to send their children away again," he said.

Links:

• See a map of all 35 schools in the Schools Not Slavery Network.
• Read about the 104 children Schools Not Slavery freed in 2016.
• Follow us on Facebook for stories and photos from Haiti.