Historically speaking many of the children in the community, who could afford to, would travel many hours to larger neighboring towns to go to school, primarily for a higher quality of education. Many of these families are prepared to send their children to a quality school in their own community for the first time in history and proud their community now has the ability to offer this level of education to its children.
A special thanks to the Blue Valley School District, My Father’s House, and our partnership with The United Methodist Church of Resurrection for coming together and donating students and teachers desks and chairs to be sent to Heart to Heart International – Haiti. These items were sent from our office in Petionville to our partnering community school in the remote Sud-Est, in a village called Cascade Pichon. Pichon has always faced many challenges revolving around education, from a lack of official schools, qualified teachers, proper materials, and equipment. Thanks to another partnership with Mid-America Nazarene University, Heart to Heart International – Haiti and the Federation of Peasants of Pichon, we were able to build a proper school for the communities students. After the school was completed, we were grateful to receive the desks and chairs to outfit the school.
Another challenge that plagues many of Haiti’s school is qualified teachers who have the necessary resources to prepare their classes for the national exams. Thanks to our partners with the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection and Inveno for providing tablets and education to the teachers at Cascade Pichon. Through a training program called “Tablets for Teacher Training”, Inveno equipped each of the teachers with tablets, connection to the internet, and training seminars to educate and equip the teachers to use their tablets as tools for teaching. They were shown how to create and share lesson plans and were given access to hundreds of educational applications to expand their educational resources.
Throughout the 13 years of official schooling, each student must take and pass 4 national exams to be permitted to continue their education. In the history of Cascade Pichon only one child had ever passed a national exam. Thanks to the new school, the desks and chairs, and the Tablets for Teacher Training program, Cascade Pichon sent 23 students to the national exams. We are all very pleased and excited to share that all 23 students passed their exams.