Save the Children Working Rapidly to Re-establish Schools as an Urgent Part of the Humanitarian Response

[AlaskaDenise]

Source: Save the Children Alliance

Date: 20 Jan 2010


PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Jan. 20, 2010) ? Save the Children has been working quickly to set up temporary schooling in Child Friendly Spaces, allowing children to establish a sense of routine in a supportive environment, and begin to recover.

"Children in Haiti have witnessed horrific scenes since the earthquakes and are grieving the loss of family and friends," said Annie Foster, Save the Children's team leader in Haiti. "They have experienced more suffering in the past week than most people experience in a lifetime. And the places that might serve as a refuge, such as schools, were completely demolished in last week's earthquake."

Schools Coming to Child Friendly Spaces

This week, Save the Children began to set up the first of many Child Friendly Spaces planned for shelters and camps housing earthquake survivors. Hundreds of children are expected to start activities this week, with thousands more to be registered in the upcoming weeks.

"Education is crucial in the aftermath of an emergency," Foster said. "Children want to be in school ? school is a safe place where they can play with their friends, speak to their teachers and be in an environment that is totally focused on their needs. But most importantly, education can save lives."

During and after a disaster, education is a crucial part of the emergency response. School can protect children from physical harm, exploitation and violence, and offer psychological support and healing. Providing temporary schooling for children also helps parents to begin to recover from the earthquake. It gives them the emotional space to bury their dead and start to rebuild their lives.

"Children are suffering from emotional distress from the earthquake as well as from living the daily hardships of life amid the destruction," Foster said. "With school, they can get the support they need to recover from this terrifying ordeal."

Haiti's schools have been officially closed since the earthquake. Once that closure ends, it will be crucial to children's recovery to ensure that they have opportunities to learn. The longer term rehabilitation of Haiti's education system, which has "totally collapsed," according to Haiti's Education Minister Joel Jean-Pierre, remains a crucial part of Save the Children's five-year "build back better" initiative.

Save the Children had already begun to run education programs in Haiti before the earthquake hit, as part of the Rewrite the Future campaign, which helps children in conflict-affected countries return to, or enroll in, school.

Even before the earthquake hit in Haiti, 706,000 children remained out of school. This number is set to increase as many schools have been damaged, and teachers killed or injured. The earthquake offers an opportunity to get all of these children back to school, including the most vulnerable children, and address the long-term developments needs of the country.

What You Can Do

Please Help Us Respond to the Haiti Emergency by Donating Now

Donate any amount at www.savethechildren.org or by calling 1-800-728-3843 or 1-203-221-4030.

OR DONATE $10 BY TEXTING "SAVE" to 20222 (U.S. Only).

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/VVOS-7ZVSQU?OpenDocument&rc=2&emid=EQ-2010-000009-HTI

 

[Pathfinder]

Re: Save the Children Working Rapidly to Re-establish Schools as an Urgent Part of the Humanitarian Response

<LI class=dateStamp><SMALL>JANUARY 30, 2010</SMALL> <!-- ID: SB10001424052748704343104575033542998064122 --><!-- TYPE: Americas News --><!-- DISPLAY-NAME: Americas News --><!-- PUBLICATION: The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition --><!-- DATE: 2010-01-30 00:01 --><!-- COPYRIGHT: Dow Jones & Company, Inc. --><!-- ORIGINAL-ID: --><!-- article start --><!--CODE=DJII-INDUSTRY SYMBOL=i5010028CODE=DJII-REGION SYMBOL=haitCODE=DJII-REGION SYMBOL=namzCODE=DJII-INDUSTRY SYMBOL=i501CODE=DJII-INDUSTRY SYMBOL=iconstCODE=DJII-INDUSTRY SYMBOL=icreCODE=DJII-REGION SYMBOL=caribzCODE=DJII-REGION SYMBOL=dvpcozCODE=DJII-REGION SYMBOL=lamzCODE=SUBJECT SYMBOL=OWONCODE=SUBJECT SYMBOL=OAMNCODE=STATISTIC SYMBOL=FREE-->Haiti Moves, Haltingly, to Reopen Schools

Officials Fear Teaching Won't Resume Across the Hard-Hit Capital for Months, Extending Children's Trauma



By GINA CHON

<CITE>Getty Images</CITE> Learning materials sit amid the rubble of a primary school in nearby Leogane, near the epicenter.


PORT-AU-PRINCE?Haiti will reopen some of the country's schools Monday for the first time since the Jan. 12 earthquake, but few are in the capital or other hard-hit areas.

No one knows how long children in those places will go without schooling.
Many schools might not open until the fall, said Pierre Michel Laguerre, director general of Haiti's Education Ministry. But with an untold number of children having lost one or both parents, and almost all needing a distraction from the horrors they have witnessed, resuming school has become an urgent priority.

"It gives those traumatized children the feeling that life is back," said Elisabeth Byrs, a United Nations spokeswoman, "and it helps."
There also is a longer-range imperative. "Haiti can't have a future without educated children," said Mr. Laguerre. "But there has been so much destruction, it's a big and unprecedented challenge for us."

The education ministry and the U.N. on Monday plan to begin assessing the state of schools in Port-au-Prince, as well hard-hit areas south and west of the city, and areas now home to large numbers of people displaced from the city, according Ms. Byrs.

As many as 8,000 schools that served 1.8 million children have been destroyed or damaged in the Port-au-Prince area alone, according to the U.N. Mr. Laguerre said all of the schools on the western side of the city were totally destroyed, while 40 percent in the south were severely damaged. A preliminary U.N. estimate calls for at least 4,000 temporary classrooms.

Children under 18 years old make up almost half of Haiti's population of 9 million. Thousands are believed to have been orphaned. The longer orphans and other vulnerable children stay out of school, said Mr. Laguerre, the more likely they are to fall prey to misery or abuse. They could become street children, he said, or child traffickers or other adults could exploit them; for example, some adults force street children to beg for them or engage in other money-making activities.

Even for children whose parents both survived, the numerous aftershocks?some as severe as 6.1 magnitude?have kept many Haitian children in almost constant terror. And almost all are burdened with gruesome memories. In the days following the temblor, it was virtually impossible to avoid seeing dead bodies piled up on the streets, some of them being burned.

The school buildings themselves also hold traumatic memories. Many schools were in the second half of split sessions when the earthquake hit, and many surviving children escaped buildings as they crumbled or collapsed. Thousands more were trapped and killed in the buildings.

In the outdoor camps, where hundreds of thousands of homeless Haitians are living, the education ministry is considering setting up makeshift schools in tents. It's also considering running schools out of vans for areas where buildings were destroyed or rendered unsafe. Schools will also need furniture, books, uniforms, and other supplies, Mr. Laguerre said, as well as trauma counseling for the students.

National exams normally take place in June, but it's unclear whether they can be held on time this year. The ministry is trying to gradually open schools throughout the rest of the school year.

Read more at:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...5033542998064122.html?mod=WSJ_World_LeadStory

 

[Pathfinder]

Re: Save the Children Working Rapidly to Re-establish Schools as an Urgent Part of the Humanitarian Response

Monday, Mar. 01, 2010

In ruined Haiti schools, educators see opportunity



By JONATHAN M. KATZ - Associated Press Writer

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- After seven weeks with seven kids huddled under a shelter of tarps and bed sheets on the median strip of a busy road, Lissithe Delomme says the Haitian government can't reopen schools fast enough.

"If they would open right now I'd be pretty happy," she said, trying to ignore the tumult of two of her boys wrestling as she fried up a batch of plantains for sale. "They're just sitting around doing nothing."

The Jan. 12 quake dealt a devastating blow to Haiti's already struggling schools: More than 80 percent in the earthquake zone were damaged or destroyed. All in Port-au-Prince and the other affected towns remain closed, and with tens of thousands of bored and restless children living in increasingly squalid encampments, patience is growing short.

On Monday, a group of private school directors delivered a petition to President Rene Preval decrying the lack of government action and demanding schools reopen immediately - be they in tents, temporary buildings or other makeshift facilities.

But some are urging caution before rushing back into a system that never really worked in the first place.

"This is an opportunity in a lifetime to radically change the educational system in Haiti," said Marcelo Cabrol, head of the Inter-American Development Bank's education division. "We want to be aggressive."

The problems are monumental: Just one in 10 Haitian teachers is a qualified educator, according to the IADB - and a third have not even completed ninth grade. The government is unable to support more than a handful of schools, leaving the system dominated by fly-by-night, for-profit storefront schools whose onerous fees and other costs keep half of Haiti's children from enrolling at any given time.

Buildings were so unsafe that one school collapsed on its own in 2008, a year and three months before the quake, killing 100 students and adults.

Wealthy Haitians and foreigners opt out entirely, putting their children in upscale schools that cost some $8,000 per year - more than most Haitians will spend on food and basic necessities in 20 years.

Before the earthquake, Associated Press journalists visited classrooms in rickety warehouses, one with an open-pit toilet dug alongside the desks. In a private elementary school just blocks from the National Palace a teacher slumped in his chair, half asleep, while a teenage student scrawled rote Creole phrases on a flimsy blackboard.

That school is gone now - one of the more than 3,800 damaged or destroyed in the quake. Nearly 4,000 students, and more than 700 teachers, principals and staff were killed during afternoon classes. All that's left of the Ministry of Education's main building is a crater filled with torn workbooks and lost teachers' ID cards.

Education advocates see a chance for a fresh start.


Much more at:

http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/2010/03/01/1034900/in-ruined-haiti-schools-educators.html