Every morning most parents (all over the world) wake up their sleepy children to get them ready for school. Kids everywhere wake up, wash up, get dressed, eat their breakfast, and then go to school. This is no different in Haïti.
In a little mountainside town of Haïti, children are awakened by their parents and get themselves ready for the day. They are so excited to see their classmates and teachers and start a new day of learning.
They look forward to attending school with the hopes of graduating from secondary school. If they do well, they attend university to get a good job and provide for their families. However, their school experience is vastly different from many children in the U.S, Canada, or any other developed country.
They start their day by fetching water for the family. Then they walk up and down the steep mountainside to their school. The school was constructed out of a few posts of wood and a tarp to protect them from the sun and rain. Though their school building is not structurally sound, they are determined to attend school every day. They have the same hopes and dreams for their futures as all children do.
Today is Flag Day in Haïti.
Throughout Haïti and the diaspora, Haitians recognize this day of sacrifice and solidarity. Like many children around the world, at the start of the school day, they perform a pledge of allegiance to their flag and country.
It’s a sense of pride, patriotism, and unity under their flag. The flag means resistance, perseverance, and the promise of a better life and freedom. For many of these kids, their only dream is to get an education to have a successful and prosperous future. So they persevere under extraordinary circumstances.
The challenge? Hurricane season. Every year, from June to November, a significant storm destroys their temporary school shelter. What can they do when the school is destroyed every two or three years?
About The Saul Louis School
The Saul Louis Community School is named after the late Saul Louis, a farmer in our Mountainside Partner Community. He could neither read or write, but was a tireless advocate of education for every child in his community.
For over 10 years, the Mountainside Partner Community and Peasant Association in Petit Goȃve have been committed to seeing the dream of a permanent school building become a reality. In 2010, the community provided us with drawings and a budget for a school. Since then, we have endeavored to raise money to build a permanent school building. In 2020, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, C2C continued to receive donations from our C2C Neighbors and other donors. C2C was able to send $10k toward building the construction of the permanent school. Construction began in December 2021.
The construction of the permanent school building will replace the multiple temporary school shelters built from 2010 to the present due to various hurricanes destroying the structures. With a permanent home, The Saul Louis Community School will continue providing quality education to children in K through 7th grade and nightly vocational training for youth and adults.
Your donation will go towards:
- completing the construction of the permanent school
- providing a monthly stipend to support the school’s teachers
- purchasing vocational school materials and equipment
- supporting our plans to start a school lunch program, as many students and the teachers are not receiving adequate nutrition to sustain their four to six-hour round trip journey to the school each day
Help us keep up this momentum by becoming a C2C Neighbor today and giving monthly towards the Haïti Restoration and Transformation Project! Your donations will restore and transform this community! Give as little as $10 per month!
