Education: Classroom Resources / Teacher Training

• Only half of primary school-age children in Haiti are enrolled in school.
• Only 22% of children in Haiti attend secondary school.
• Less than 2 per cent of children in Haiti finish secondary school.
• 70% of students in Haiti fail national tests
• 40% of adults in Haiti are illiterate.
• 90% of all schools in Haiti are privately owned and run by churches and other nongovernment organizations. 10% are government-run.

All agree. THE most fundamentally important thing that must be repaired in Haiti is her broken educational system. And if the people of the destitutely-poor island of La Gonave, Haiti are to ever rise from their misery permanently, it will not because of outside help, but because her own people do the raising. We recognize this, and have placed a high priority in educating, training, and developing young leaders. Over the next several years, Starfysh hopes to impact the educational system of La Gonave at many levels, but have chosen in this our first year to start with elementary education and reading.

Itʼs striking. Walking into any classroom of any school on the island of La Gonave, it hits you. There are so few learning resources! No books, no visuals. To be sure, La Gonaveʼs teachers are bright and energetic, yet theyʼre handicapped. You can see it in their eyes, their desire to teach and for their students to learn. But they simply lack basic teaching tools. Tools we can provide. It is sad: classrooms are stark and bare of the very things that teachers can use to help kids learn. Few, if any, classrooms on La Gonave have books in Haitian Creole for students to read at school. And students do not regularly read at home since most of them do not experience the joy of owning books in their own language. We choose to start here.

In October, 2011 Starfysh will send a small, pilot group of teachers from Michigan to the island of La Gonave Haiti to meet with teachers from several schools, and to conduct workshops presenting up-todate teaching methods. And they will be armed with resources! Books, purchased and even written especially for this effort, in their native Creole are being published and gathered up for these teachers to take with them and distribute.

The experiences of this pilot team will help set the stage for more teams and more workshops in 2012.

How you can help...

• $5 will provide a child a book written in their native Haitian Creole language that will be theirs to take home.
• $250 will provide take home books for an entire class of students.
• $1,000 will provide a classroom/school with a library of 120 Creole-language books. Many titles, many grade levels.
• A gift of any amount can help send this team and cover the cost of the supplies needed.