Solar Transformation for Haitian Education

Most of you are probably aware of our team’s work to provide solar power and Internet connectivity to the EFACAP School in Lascahobas, but many of you may not know about the library that we set up there in August of last year. I’d like to take this opportunity to write about it, because it figures in to our plans for moving forward.

Before our deployment trip in August last year, we had partnered with a 3^rd grade teacher, Fabrice Urrizalqui, at the French-American International School (FAIS) in San Francisco. Fabrice led a book drive at FAIS, and we brought three suitcases full of these books with us to Haiti. When we arrived at the school, we found an empty room with beautiful wooden shelving, just waiting for books. We also discovered dust-covered boxes and boxes of books donated from the EU that had never been unpacked.

Our team set about unpacking the books, while Fabrice led the week-long effort to organize, sort, and catalog the books, which were in French and Creole. He also led a meeting with teachers and the school’s administration to explain the cataloging system so that they’d be able to more effectively utilize it. The school’s administration was extremely grateful for our team’s efforts, and we all believed that the “old” technology of actual books provided the perfect complement to the “new” technology of solar power to be able to charge the laptops that the school had received.

However, after two subsequent visits, the library still had not opened. This remained a frustrating puzzle for our team until the headmaster, Mr. Saintil, explained that the library would not open until there was a librarian, and the hopes for getting a librarian remained slim-to-none, given the Ministry of Education’s lack of financial support for this. (The existence of a library in a public primary school in Haiti is nothing if not a rarity!)

This is where our plan for moving forward comes in: we hope to not only modernize the EFACAP’s library with digital technology (powered by the solar system already in place) but also to apply for funding to hire a librarian for the school. Please stay tuned for our next report for further details!