by Heather Gentzel, Communications and Child Sponsorship Coordinator
Imagine not being able to read this blog. Imagine getting a letter from your child’s school, but not knowing what it says. Imagine being asked to sign a contract, but not knowing how to sign your name. Then imagine the challenges that would have led you there.
Imagine, for example, you grew up in Haiti, where nearly two-thirds the population lives under the national poverty line of $2.42 per day. Can you picture trying to provide for your family’s basic needs, knowing it would cost around $130 to send one of your children to school for a year? This is a big obstacle faced by families in Haiti, especially in rural areas, where poverty tends to be more extreme, and families tend to be larger. Some families manage to send their children to school in months they can afford it, while keeping the children at home when money is scarce. This makes it difficult for Haitian children to advance in their education; one-third of 14 year-olds in Haiti are in the appropriate grade for their age.
Knowing these facts, it’s understandable why literacy in Haiti is not taken for granted.
Now picture with me a classroom full of courageous adults, all sporting grey t-shirts whose backs proclaim in bold yellow, “Edikasyon Se Kle!” (“Education is Key!”). These men and women have left their duties at home, in the marketplace, or in the fields for the afternoon, because they believe it is that important to learn how to read and write in Creole. Some have walked two hours just to get here. They are determined, they are hard-working, and they are part of Restavek Freedom’s (RF) Literacy Program.
Around twenty-five adults fill a classroom twice a week for literacy classes in RF’s Learning Center in the rural south of Haiti. Each Thursday and Friday afternoon they come, mostly older women from surrounding mountain villages, trekking long distances to get to class. Restavek Freedom staff member Roslyn shared with me that many of the women show up several hours early for class. When I asked why, she explained, “For some, they decide to work half a day in the fields or at the market in order to come to class. They leave early, unsure exactly what time the classes start and unable to tell time anyway. They just know it is in the afternoon, it is something that is extremely important to them, and that they have to be there! For many of these women, the concept of time is very different from what we are used to. In the countryside, for example, they are not used to working according to a clock; rather they wake up and begin their work in the fields as soon as the sun is up.”
I pressed on. “So what do they do when they arrive three hours early for a class that begins at 4pm?” Roslyn smiled and answered, “They practice reading books.” Her voice picked up excitement as she described the beautiful donated books they practice reading. “These books tell stories of daily life in Haiti, and are illustrated with beautiful artwork,” she explained. “Stories of working in the fields or selling goods at the market, all dotted with vivid pictures. And the women love to read them.”
Roslyn noted how each woman has a notebook she uses throughout the class. This is where she practices writing. She shared how thrilling it is to look back through the pages of a student’s notebook and see the progress she has made throughout the class. At the front of the notebook, you can see where she learned to print letters. Keep flipping, and you see letters join to become words. Then a beautiful moment when you see his or her name carefully written. Keeping turning the pages, and you see words come together into sentences!
The classes are obviously impactful. So I challenged Roslyn with one last question: How do you encourage adults to come to these classes, when they have come this far without learning how to read or write? Her answer to this nearly brought tears to my eyes.
She related the story of a woman who recently began attending the literacy classes. Not too long after, Roslyn held a meeting for a hundred women in the south of Haiti who were all involved in women’s community groups. Towards the end of the meeting, Roslyn explained the literacy classes, and invited the women to come. When she asked if anyone had any questions, no one spoke. After a few silent moments, someone in the front corner of the room stood up. It was the woman who had started attending the literacy classes a few weeks earlier. Standing at the front of the room, her grey t-shirt professed, “Education is Key!”.
She turned around and began to speak to the room full of women her own age: her neighbors, friends from church, people she had known since she was a small child growing up in the mountains of Port Salut. “I am just like you,” she began. “You know this, because for as long as you have been living this hard life and struggling to care for your family, so have I. I don’t know how to read or write. Each time I get a letter, I have to call my son and have him read it to me. When I’m asked to sign a document, I don’t know how to write my name. At the market, I can’t read the signs or prices. But it is time I take my place. I don’t want my little ones to have to read to me. It’s time we take our places as the adults. It’s time we take our place in politics and in our communities. It’s time we stand together, we work together, we help one another! You don’t have to be embarrassed. Let us be the ones to help our children with their schoolwork, and not have them helping us sign our names on important papers.”
At this, women around the room began raising their hands and speaking up: “I don’t know how to read and write.” “I too call my son to read my letters to me.” “I want to learn to read so I can make more profit in the marketplace.” The small meeting room started to buzz with conversation as the crowd of one hundred women began to discuss and share ideas of the things they could do in their own small communities in the mountains if they learned to read and write. They knew education was the key. In fact, they have always understood the value of literacy; the opportunities were simply not always available. But here, with the opportunity in front of them, the women dreamed together what it would look like advance in their society.
As Roslyn explained, these classes are so vitally important because of the impact women in Haiti have not only on their society, but particularly on the restavek system. Women in the countryside are often the ones conflicted with the decision of keeping their children at home despite not being able to feed them or send them to school, or sending them to someone’s home in a larger town or city with the promise of the child going to school. And it is primarily the women in the towns and cities who decide whether or not to take a poor mountain child into her home, and whether she will treat her as a restavek or as her own child. As the women in the mountains learn to read and write, they become more able to support their children and are not conflicted by such difficult decisions. The women in the cities become more aware of the value of all children, and the role they have in advancing their country in a direction that supports individual rights. As both groups of women are educated, they begin to use their influence to tear down the restavek system. Edikasyon se Kle.
To
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