Helping Teachers, Helping Schools

School teachers and directors study pedagogy together as part of the CRWM Christian education project

In Haiti, there are only enough government-supported schools to serve a small percentage of the ever increasing number of school-aged children (as there are about five births per woman, a large percentage of the Haitian population is children).  Haiti's protestant evangelical churches are filling that void in primary and secondary school education.  Christian Reformed World Missions (CRWM) in Haiti encouraged one of the denominations that we partner with, the Christian Reformed Church of Haiti (CRCH), to find out just how many Christian day schools were operating out of its local churches.  Pastor Romelus Dieusibon was given the task of this research and he was shocked at what he discovered.  Out of a denomination which, at that time had 35 churches, nearly 20 of them operated a Christian day school.  Most of these schools had little or no assistance from the Haitian government or other organizations.  After learning about this situation, CRWM worked with Pastor Dieusibon to provide these teachers, who are paid less than $5 per day, with the opportunity for training in pedagogy and integration of the Christian faith with academic subjects.  In August, Pastor Dieusibon invited a hand-full of educators to share several days of training with thirteen CRCH Christian school directors and teachers.  In addition to training, CRWM has been assisting one school in Layay (near the Dominican border) with an income-generation project that we hope will help support the school along with tuition.  The plan was to buy a peanut husking and grinding machine and install it at the school for Layay farmers who grow lots of peanuts and have to travel long distances for processing. There was a setback when the fabricator of the machine was robbed in the Dominican Republic where he purchases motors and parts for the husker/grinder.  Pray that Pastor Dieusibon would be able to push forward the training and income generation aspects of the project despite this setback.  If you would like to support the project, please send donations to CRWM with "CRCH Education Proj 805897" in the memo line.  We need approximately $3,000 USD for this project.