When you sponsor a child, your money goes to paying for the child’s education: school tuition (school in Haiti is not free), uniforms, books, and other supplies needed for school, as well as an advocate to stand up for them and mediate for them with their family.

Twice a year, you will receive an email update on the child you are partnering with, passed along to us from their advocate. Also, if a recent photo of your child is available, we will also include this with your update. In addition, once a year you will receive a special card created by your sponsored child and their advocate.

Your sponsorship has no end date.  We encourage sponsors to partner with the child and their advocate throughout the child’s education.  However, we understand that sometimes circumstances change and require people to adjust their charitable giving.  So if you need to discontinue your sponsorship, you may contact us at any time.

Currently, our Child Sponsorship Program does not offer letter-writing or gift sending. Most of the children in our program are living in slavery-like conditions, and gift giving and letter writing can create additional conflict in the home. Consequently, we instead strive to make these children feel accepted and valued in Haitian society through their relationship with their Child Advocate, which is one of the most important things your sponsorship provides.

Sponsors who would like to provide something special for their sponsored child may purchase a pair of school shoes or clothing for their sponsored child via our online store. To do this, go to www.restavekfreedom.org/estore and make a virtual purchase of “School Shoes” and/or “Casual Clothes”. Then, send an email to [email protected] letting us know you’d like to designate your purchase to your sponsored child. Your child’s advocate will then purchase these items in Haiti and personally deliver the items to your sponsored child.

In Haiti, living with a relative does not always mean better treatment. Often a child goes to live with their older sibling, aunt, uncle or grandmother when their parents can’t afford to take care of them, or when the parents live in the country and want the child to have a chance to go to school. Unfortunately, when a child goes to live with their relative, the relative (or other people living in the house with them) may not see them as family. Rather, the child may be seen as free labor, to clean, cook, watch their children, or any number of other things.

In the most extreme cases, we remove girls from the homes where they are living in restavek, and place them safely in one of our transitional homes, where they live with trauma-competent caregivers, continue their education, and receive job training. When it is safe to do so, we help them transition back to their biological families, or if they are old enough, help them get started on their own feet.

For the majority of the children in our Child Advocacy Program, however,we do not remove children from the homes, but instead work to change the attitudes of their host families. We have found this is a much more sustainable approach. The practice of restavek is so pervasive in Haitian culture that if we were to remove a child from a home, the host family would very likely find another child to replace them. At the same time, sending a child back to their biological family does not guarantee they will not eventually enter back into the restavek system, as their family sent them to live in restavek out of desperate poverty, and may very well be in the same position.

We are working on many fronts to end the restavek system, including meeting with host families to talk about appropriate treatment of children, working with the government to enforce child protection laws, working to change people’s overall attitudes through media and education, and providing job training and classes for sending families in the rural areas of Haiti.

Restavek Freedom does not have an age cut-off for the children in our program. Because many of the children who join our program were not attending school before our Child Advocates met them, many of them tend to be several grades behind in school. In addition, we have found that children’s education is one of the highest contributing factors to breaking the cycle of restavek and of poverty, and for this reason we continue to sponsor a child’s education as long as they show an interest in school (in Haiti there are 13 grades).

Sometimes, for various reasons, children leave or are exited from our program. If this happens, you will receive a letter in the mail notifying you of this change and giving you the opportunity to continue your sponsorship with another child from our program who is in need of a sponsor.

There are many ways to help! You can spread awareness about the restavek issue, and invite others to become sponsors. You are also more than welcome to sponsor more than one child, or invite a church or school near you to sponsor multiple children from our program. In addition, many of our sponsors have their donations matched by their businesses; ask your company if they have a matching gift program. Finally, you can provide extra help to the children in our Child Advocacy program by going to our Freedom E-Store (www.restavekfreedom.org/estore).

We will send you an email reminder one month before your sponsorship is set to renew. If you do not have an email address, we will notify you via phone or standard mail. You may also contact us at any time if you have questions about your sponsorship.

Yes there is!  Keep up to date on our blog, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @RestavekFreedom to stay current with our work in Haiti. In addition, if you are interested in visiting Haiti and seeing our work first-hand, you may also contact us about joining us on a vision trip.