Help with Food
September 7, 2015 - Port-au-Prince Haiti - The new school year began on September 7th but less than 10% of the children enrolled showed up! You might ask what is wrong?
In Haiti, dates and time have little meaning. Life is day by day and when the calendar says school starts, most don't recognize it until they notice other kids in their school uniforms walking to school. That means that during the first week, each days attendance will increase rapidly so that by the end of the first week almost all the kids will be in class.
As an example, pictured above is the entire student body and the teachers that were at our Jeanton school the first day. Jeanton has 380 children registered for this school year! Not that many showed up.
Imagine if only this many showed up the first day of school at your local elementary school! There would be news media everwhere! Foxnews, MSNBC and every reporter you could imagine would be live on site, asking why? Who is at fault for this failure? But not in Haiti. It is simply life.
As you can see, the few numbers did not stop the kids from getting the new year started!
The 3,000 plus children in our schools have been provided with material for their uniform, books and materials. The parents need to provide shoes, underwear and have the material sewn into the uniforms. For some kids, the reason the didn't start this first day is that their families simply could not find the money to buy shoes, underwear or pay the $9 to have someone sew their child's uniform.
The severe drought that has hit the rural areas where we work the past nine months has greatly reduced the farm crops and these families, who exist as peasant farmers, simply could not save even the limited amount needed to get their children to school.
This is one reason that our #Hungervanish project is so vital. The school lunch is in reality, a necessity.
Tony Boursiquot, Project Manager, Star of Hope in Haiti writes "the start of school is a great occasion to thank our sponsors and friends who make it possible for our kids to attend school."
