The earthquake destroyed or damaged greatly, half of the 15.000 primary schools and 1.500 secondary schools. A few days after the catastrophe, Entreculturas and its local partners Fe y Alegría and the Jesuit Migrant Service, helped in the setting up of refugee camps in the metropolitan area offering activities and sports to the children in order to overcome their trauma.
After the emergency phase, the opening of school on April 5, has slowly started to return education back to normal. For this purpose, Fe y Alegría organized a week seminar for teachers who would give lessons to the children in camps. Thus, teachers would be capable to assist successfully children with traumas and better understand all the situations that may affect their conduct.
Entreculturas works in three lines of work with our partners:
- Emergency Education. Since April 1, emergency education is offered in seven camps for displaced people with the purpose of bringing back to normal their education and help overcome their trauma. We are helping around 5.000 or 6.000 children.
- Education for reconstruction. Technical education for reconstruction work is made up of short duration modules( between 3 and 6 months) in different specialties necessary for reconstruction. There are 1.200 youth enrolled in this programme.
- Education Recovery in Haiti. Entreculturas, with its local partners, works to increase quality education with a school network. This means to improve and adequate education infrastructures in the 12 schools that are at an integration process in Fe y Alegría Haiti, integrating teaching, teacher training and infrastructure improvement with other religious orders.
At Entreculturas we consider that education plays a key role, since it allows the child´s socializing process, developing physical and intellectual capacities.
Fe y Alegria Haiti sums up the idea with the slogan: "Yon timoun san lekòl se pwoblèm tout moun", which means "A child without school concerns us all". This is why we think that we should all participate in the reconstruction of the education system in order to have men and women capable of creating a future for their country.
Architects for school diagnosis
Last March a team of architects from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, through Entreculturas, travelled to Puerto Principe to identify the infrastructure of 79 public schools. This had been required by the Ministry of Education, that asked our local partner Fe y Alegría to inspect 230 schools. During two weeks, the architects carried out a diagnosis of the schools. This work is carried out in the framework of our promotion of public schools. Before the earthquake, 80% of schools in Haiti were private.
