Schools Not Slavery for Rural Haitian Children

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)