photo 1997©Jennifer Cheek Pantaléon

By Jean-Bertrand Aristide

Haiti’s devastating earthquake in January last year destroyed up to 5,000 schools and 80% of the country’s already weak university infrastructure. The primary school in Port-au-Prince that I attended as a small boy collapsed with more than 200 students inside. The weight of the state nursing school killed 150 future nurses. The state medical school was levelled. The exact number of students, teachers, professors, librarians, researchers, academics and administrators lost during those 65 seconds that irrevocably changed Haiti will never be known. But what we do know is that it cannot end there.

One month after the quake, the Aristide Foundation opened mobile schools in five refugee camps across Port-au-Prince.  Throughout the spring these schools held open-air classrooms  led by young high school and college graduates, offering a refuge for children who survived the quake.   The schools gave the kids a safe place to go each day to relax,  learn and spend time with supportive adults in the midst of the utter calamity they were living though.   The mobiles schools served 1,200 children five days a week and employed 100 young Haitians during the first few critical months after the quake.

By summer as schools across the city began to slowly reopen, we ended the full time mobile school program.  We had never intended the project to be permanent, and we did not have the funds to keep  the schools open indefinitely.

However, in Nazon (central Port-au-Prince), Fontamara (Carrefour) and Tapage (La Plaine) the monitors along with the parents and members of these communities decided these schools  were so important, and the collaboration was so successful, that they determined one way or another to keep the schools going on their own.

Each schools took a slightly different path.  In Fontamara, the director Rithie Mettelus kept aschool for 180 kids going in the donated yard of a house that was destroyed.   Four of the original  monitors stayed on to work with him.   Carrefour was the hardest hit neighborhood of Port-au-Prince, nearly every building was damaged. This school is a vital the presence for children whose parents have lost everything.

In Nazon in central Port-au-Prince, director Zamor Duboirand, along with five of the original monitors kept the school going in the yard of his own house.  This school now has eighty students, and seven teachers.   And in Tapage, Mirlande Jeudi runs the school for about 100 kids in the yard of her home.

These schools function on a shoe string, funded by small fees paid by the parents, and the great generosity of the teachers who sometimes go without salaries.   Each school is smaller than the original mobile schools – fortunately some children were able to return to the schools they attended before the quake.  But many were not, because the schools are gone, or their parents don’t have the money to send them.  These schools are meeting a vital need right now.  Giving children who nine months after the quake are still living under tents, organized activities each day, some very basic schooling and a sense of dignity.

School Supply Distribution in November

In November, thanks to a grant from the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund we were able to assist all three schools in purchasing and distributing school supplies and offering the kids a day of celebratory activity.  (Dance, Music, Poetry, and Food!)  Photos from those events are posted here.

Over the next few months we hope to keep supporting these schools and the teachers.   We’d love to find sister schools outside Haiti who might want to build a direct relationship with one of these schools.  If you are an educator and are interested in learning more, please contact us.

If you would like to support the work of the Aristide Foundation for Democracy tax-deductible donations can be made here:

Or mail checks to: Aristide Foundation, PO Box 490271, Key Biscayne, Florida 33149

All donations are tax deductible and will be acknowledged.

AFD Lay Mental Health Workers lead a workshop at a camp in Tabarre

Aristide Foundation Lay Mental Health Workers Lead Workshops in the Camps

Four months after January 12 the experience of that day — the terror and the losses — remain vivid and present in the minds of all Haitians who survived the quake.   Nearly everyone has some degree of post-traumatic stress with hyper-vigilance, startle responses, sleep difficulties, intrusive memories, fear, anxiety, grief, and anger widespread.    Even before the quake Haiti’s mental health structure was nearly non-existent.  Right now for the majority of the population of Port-au-Prince, who are now living in tents in refugee settlements, mental health care is both inaccessible and foreign to their experience.

Beginning in late April the AFD in cooperation with a group of social workers and doctoral students from the University of Michigan began working together to to create a Haitian-model for lay mental health workers to reach people in the camps.  Ten extraordinary young Haitian college students spent a week receiving training from Leah James, a social worker and doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan, and Dr. Todd Favorite and Dr. Mike
Messina, psychologists at the PTSD clinic at the Ann Arbor VA. (Read Leah’s Huffington Post Article Describing the evolution of this project here).

A Haitian psychologist who has been providing mental health care at the AFD weekly clinics signed on to advise the project, and provide ongoing mentoring for the young mental health workers.   Together they created a culturally appropriate  90-minute  psycho-education and coping skills curriculum.  The project that has emerged from this collaboration we are calling Soulaje Lespri Moun, or Relief for the Spirit.  Soulaje Lespri Moun is an expansion of the AFD Mobile School project.  For the past four weeks The Lay Mental Health Workers have been working at two of the mobile school sites (at Carradeux and Building 2004),  leading workshops for parents of the children who’ve attended the mobile schools.

US Mental Health Professionals training AFD Lay Mental Health Workers in April

The goal of the workshops is to decrease stigma, shame, fear, and self-blame and increase ongoing healing and communication within families and communities.   The Lay Mental Health Workers first encourage participants to share their experiences and talk about the symptoms of trauma they are experiencing.   They work on trying to “normalize” the responses, that is to emphasize that it is a normal human response to continue to feel that the ground is shaking, to be hyper-vigilant etc.    And then they teach basic relaxation and self-soothing techniques designed to reduce symptoms of physiological hyper-arousal and thus decrease anxiety, fear, irritability, startle response, bodily aches and pains, and sleep difficulty.

Soulaje Lespri Moun is not an effort to train mental health professionals with the skills needed to work with the seriously mentally ill (although this is needed, too). Rather, it is a movement toward widespread dissemination of education and coping skills to benefit the general public in the belief that some of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress among the population can be alleviated through basic psycho-education about common reactions to trauma paired with training in relaxation and other coping strategies.

We began the project as a pilot to train this first group of 10 mental health workers, and find out how participants in the camps responded to the workshops.  Given the conditions of life in the camps — hunger first and foremost — we wondered if people would be motivated to participate.   Initial results are heartening, in fact inspiring, largely because of the dedication and determination of the young people carrying out the project.   They report that despite some initial resistance to a project that offers only words, they are having success drawing people into the sessions.  Participants report relief from some of their symptoms, and most importantly, they say they are sharing the skills they’ve  learned with family and friends.  For instance many participants report that they do the breathing and other self-soothing exercises nightly with their partners and children.

We would very much like to expand the project and train at least 10 more mental health workers in late-June.  To do that we need to find the additional funding, most of which will go to paying Haitians who staff the project.

An AFD psycholgist, and lay mental health worker lead a workshop for kids at a camp in Tabarre

Summary of objectives

• To quickly and efficiently provide free basic mental health education and coping skills to residents of Port-au-Prince IDP camps
• To develop an effective, culturally-appropriate protocol for presenting mental health education, coping skills, and relaxation techniques in a group setting and to evaluate the effectiveness of this model in reducing symptoms of PTSD and depression among recipients of the intervention AND among the lay mental health workers implementing the intervention.
• To provide practical training and employment to young Haitian high school and college grads.
• To create a sustainable system of lay mental health provision which will ultimately be maintained entirely by Haitian organizations and workers.
• To establish a safe and efficient pathway for US volunteer mental health professionals who will provide ongoing training to lay mental health workers.  (All foreign volunteers will pay or raise money to cover their expenses.  Any funds raised by the Aristide Foundation for this project go directly to project expenses in Haiti. )

If you would like to support this work tax-deductible donations can be made here:

Or mail checks to: Aristide Foundation, PO Box 490271, Key Biscayne, Florida 33149

All donations are tax deductible and will be acknowledged.

For more information on the the Lay Mental Health Worker Project and on volunteer opportunities for international mental health professionals wishing to support this project please visit: http://mentalhealthhaiti.wordpress.com/

On Saturday April 24 thousands of children from the AFD Mobile School gathered for a cultural celebration at the Aristide Foundation.  Since late February the AFD has been operating open-air classrooms serving 1260 children who lost their homes in the January 12, 2010 earthquake.  The schools are in refugee camps at Fontamara, Nazon, Tarpage, Carredeux, and Building 2004.

For two weeks leading up to the event teachers and kids in the Mobile Schools prepared presentations on the theme  “Life with Love.”  On the afternoon of the 24th buses from the Foundation brought the children, their families, and friends to the AFD for the event — over 2000 people in all.

Marie Stuart Roche, the director of the Mobile School project welcomed all the kids to the Foundation — which she reminded them is their home.

Toussaint Hilaire, the Director of the AFD welcomed the children and their families on behalf of former President Aristide and his wife.  He reaffirmed to them the Foundation’s commitment to work with them for a better life –a better life meaning: school, food, healthcare, hospitals and parks for them to play in.

Zamor, the coordinator of the schools                                                                                                                                                                                                              at Nazon then took over as MC and introduced the kids, who put on a spectacular show.  The kids from the schools at Nazon danced and sang, the schools from Fontamara put together a threatrical piece about what they lived through at the moment of the earthquake. The kids from the camps near Building 2004 danced and read poetry.  The schools at Carradeux and Tarpage performed music and danced.

All the children who attended received new t-shirts,  part of a large gift of new clothing from American Apparel.  The AFD is distributing these clothes to the kids in the Mobile Schools and to others living in refugee camps around Port-au- Prince.  We want to thank American  Apparel for the generous donation.  There are a lot of used clothes coming into Haiti as donations right now, and while people are in great need of all kinds of assistance, it is especially nice to be able to give the kids new clothes — made in the US, and sweatshop-free to boot.

After the event, everyone present, teachers, kids and their families shared a meal together.  It was chance for everyone to be out of the mud and heat that is a daily part of their lives and to celebrate what the teachers and kids in the Mobile Schools have accomplished together over the past two months, under these extraordinary circumstances.

We launched our Mobile School project in late February to do two things: support children living in refugee camps across Port-au-Prince and to offer immediate employment to young Haitians to work with kids at a time when the whole economy has collapsed.   With the generous support from the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund we were able to get schools up and running very quickly.  Since late February we’ve been running Mobile Schools, three hours a day, five days a week, serving 1260 kids in 5 refugee camps in the earthquake zone.

This project has surpassed our expectations at every level.

First the amazing compassion, vitality and professionalism of the 102 monitors we called on to staff the project has inspired us.   The monitors are mostly young people who were students at the language and computer school of the Aristide Foundation at the time of the quake.  Many of them have lost their houses and are facing terrible difficulties in their own lives.  The coordinator of the mobile schools at the Tarpage encampment in Tabarre, Mirlande Janvier, was buried under the rubble with her son for two days after the quake before being rescued by her neighbors.   But she wanted to open these schools.  All the monitors and staff come to work every day with incredible energy and love for the kids they are working with.   In March they got a boost when  Leah James, a social worker from the University of Michigan did a training with them on how to support kids suffering form PTSD.  (See her story on the Huffington Post here. )

Second the overwhelming response of the families in the camps has humbled us.   At each site when we opened there was a massive press of parents desperate to get their children into the schools.  We knew we were offering a very modest program – under tents in the open air, without books or professional teachers. The parents saw this as something far more profound –a chance, a future, some hope for their children.   Here are a couple of testimonies from parents:

Esau, 31, Nazon: I thank God every day that my children can continue their education here at the school. You spend your whole life working to build a home to make life better for your children and then in a moment the catastrophe takes all that work away from you. We moved from our house because there were a lot of cracks in the walls. The concrete split open and was hanging from the ceiling. It was not safe anymore. First we stayed [in a camp] near the airport but it was very crowded so a month ago we moved here (to Nazon). When the director accepted my children to attend this school I was so very very happy because I want them to continue learning and getting an education. It’s good for them to go to school to have a normal life like children should have. It helps them be more confident.

Marjory 28, Tabarre: At the school my daughter learns to count, to say the alphabet and also she learns hygiene. When I come to walk her back after class she sings to me the songs they sing in the school. Her favorite song is “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” Now she knows all the parts of her body and the days of the week, and months of the year. She is very clever and is learning everything very quickly. The teachers at the school are caring and love each of the children.  They know what are the strengths of each child and they try to help each child. Going to school helps children forget about the earthquake for a short time. It’s good that the school is outside because the children will not go indoors. When there are aftershocks, the teachers calm the children.

We planned to take no more than 800 kids – we ended up with 1260.  We had to draw the line there because we simply don’t have the money to do more, but school coordinators in each camp continue to report getting pleas from parents everyday to take their kids into the schools.

And then of course the kids themselves are amazing.  They arrived from the first day in clean clothes, every child with shoes on.  How is that possible when we know the kind of misery these families are living in?  Well Haitians have always sent send their children to school with pride and dignity – even an earthquake, even the misery of the camps, cannot shake that.  Watching the kids sing, dance, play, laugh, smile has been healing for everyone involved–kids, monitors, coordinators, parents.  It’s a cliche perhaps to say that children are resilient and yet, they are, and they are the future of the nation.

When we opened the schools we thought, we hoped, we prayed that food distribution to families at refugee settlements would become more dependable.  This has not happened.  In none of the five camps where we are working is food distribution regular or sufficient to meet the needs of those living there.   Two of the settlements – at Nazon and at Fontamara report that the Aristide Foundation was and is the first and only aid agency of any kind to come to where they are.  These two camps are not on main roads (though they are smack in the middle of Port-au-Prince), but even at Carradeux on the campus of UniFA (the Medical school of the Aristide Foundation), at Tapage in Tabarre, and at Building 2004 , a stone’s throw from the airport, there is nothing resembling regular food distribution.

The terrible reality is that the snack we provide in the mobile schools is for many kids the only meal they get that day.   Naturally children line up more than once, or stash away snacks for their parents.  And yet, somehow the AFD monitors and coordinators along with the families in the camps have established enough discipline to run this project – including a daily snack distribution for the children right in the midst of camps of starving people.  There have been no major disruptions –a profound measure of how committed these communities are to making these schools work for their kids.

________________

Mobile School Update July 2010

An estimated 90% of the schools in Port-au-Prince were damaged or destroyed in the earthquake. Tens of thousands of children are living in refugee camps and will be for many months to come.

The government of Haiti officially reopened school in early April–meaning they announced that schools were reopened. But with so many schools destroyed and with the responsibility for reopening schools primarily left in the hands of individual school directors, some of whom received gifts of tents and supplies, many of whom did not, schools opened slowly if at all.  By late April about half the kids in the Mobile School project had returned to school.  We were very happy for those children.  And very worried about the rest of the kids for whom school remained a distant possibility (for all kinds of reasons–their school was destroyed and there is no sign of it being reopened, they lost their uniforms in the quake and their parents had no money to buy new ones, their parents can no longer pay school fees, they are displaced from where they once lived and cannot afford to travel back to their old schools, or, for a minority, they were never in school before the quake.)
We never intended to run full-time schools– this was always to be a temporary project to respond to the immediate emergency of the earthquake.   But the parents in the camps begged us not to leave.

We’ve decided to continue the program as a recreational/arts/sports program 2-days a week, with a schedule, which will not conflict with school for those who have returned to school.   After a Summer holiday in June and July we plan to tranisition the project to a Friday afternoon and Saturday morning program.   The AFD will still be able to be present in the camps, accompanying children, and building on the relationships already established with their parents.   We will also be able to keep providing a work stipend to a group of young teachers.   In addition, to the recreational activities the kids have already been doing (arts and crafts, singing, dance, theater) we will increase the emphasis on mental health and add an agricultural component.
We plan to increase an emphasis on mental health work by more closely linking this project with the Soulaje Lespri Moun (Relief for the Spirit, our Lay Mental Health Worker Project aimed at parents).  Through the Soulaje Lespri Moun project  professional mental health workers from the US have been providing training to our staff to enable them to lead workshops with earthquake survivors in the camps.   A group of 37 Haitian-American Psychologists and Social Workers will be coming to Haiti and staying at the AFD for a week in August.   The Mobile Schools monitors will all receive training from these professionals on working with children after a trauma.   Together the Mobile School project and the Soulaje Lespri Moun Project will offer workshops and training on dealing with trauma and symptoms of PTSD for both children and their parents in the camps.

Finally, we will add an agricultural education program for the children in the Mobile Schools. Near the Foundation in Tabarre we have an ongoing agricultural project with a group pf 150 peasant farmers, who are growing corn, beans and vegetables and planning to build fish ponds.   In the wake of the quake, the importance of supporting local food production, and of maintaining food producing land near the urban center has become even more urgent. We want to connect city kids living in refugee encampments to food production.    On Saturdays groups of children from the Mobile Schools will work on two integrated farms plots (groups from each of the camps will work in rotation). The mobile school monitors will accompany them as will the farmers who are cultivating the plots.  The kids will participate in creation of the plots, learn skills associated with organic, integrated farming, including irrigation processes and fish farming   When the crops come in and when the fish produce each child will get a share to bring back to their families.

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A group of AFD Monitors opens a Mobile School site at Building 2004

On Monday Feb. 22, the Aristide Foundation for Democracy inaugurated its first mobile school  in front of Building 2004 (near the Parc Jean-Marie Vincent refugee settlement).   Mobile School openings at three other locations followed in quick succession this week.  Community support for this project has been overwhelmingly positive, with over 1,500 children now enrolled in the program.

Open-air classrooms are now up and running three hours a day, five days a week at four locations: Building 2004/Parc Jean-Marie Vincent – 600 children enrolled, Carradeux (the encampment near the student dormitories of the Medical School of the AFD) – 550 children enrolled, Fontamara 27 (in the southern part of Port-au-Prince) – 150 children enrolled, and Nazon – 350 children enrolled.

Classes are led by high school and college grads (monitors) recruited and trained by the AFD to lead the kids in activities—singing, dancing, artwork, discussions, sports—and to share a snack each day.  We hope to add some very basic reading and writing once we have enough school supplies.

AFD Monitors Prepare the Mobil School Project

In addition to reaching out to children in the camps this project offers employment to 102 young Haitians—supporting their families in turn—at a time when the whole economy has collapsed.

AFD-Haiti Director Toussaint Hilaire lead a Mobile School Training Session

A volunteer psychologist and AFD staff led trainings to prepare the monitors.  We are now recruiting and training more monitors to meet the needs at these four sites. Ongoing discussion and training for all the monitors on how to support children suffering from PTSD and from the loss of loved ones in the quake is planned for the coming weeks.

To prepare for the mobile schools  AFD staff worked with community members in these four refugee encampments to construct shelters to house the classes.

A huge Thank You to the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund for making this project possible!

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