In Haiti, an old routine leads to a brighter future

Two children play in front of the destroyed Haitian palace. (Photo courtesy of UNICEF Sverige)

A long walk to school through the Champs de Mars plaza, where the half-crumbled Haitian capitol building stands, may bring back painful and terrifying memories. For children however, this simple routine walk may be more therapeutic, and more essential to the rebuilding process than most would guess.

“That’s a really important thing; a sort of ongoing routine happens. A routine is important to get kids to feel more comfortable,” Carolyn Miles, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Save the Children, told MediaGlobal. “In Haiti, the challenge is finding those support services.”

Children compose nearly half of Haiti’s population, and nearly 500,000 remain living in refugee camps and slums; 50,000 are without parents. A walk to and from school can let kids be kids; talking and playful teasing helps combat the psychological trauma brought on by the disaster. In addition, schools offer a protective social network that can keep vulnerable children off the streets where rape, violence, and disease are becoming increasingly common.

In the chaotic aftermath of the earthquake, the complete absence of schools or support networks was a concern that many groups, including Save the Children, initially addressed by creating Child-Friendly Spaces.

“A lot of times it [a Child-Friendly Space] is a tent or a temporary, relatively temporary structure, and we train people in the camp or in the community to run these child-friendly spaces,” Miles explained.

Miles described three main objectives of Child-Friendly Spaces: First, volunteers establish a routine and provide a place for children to go where they can play, talk, and most importantly, feel safe. Secondly, children that are lost or have been separated from their parents can be identified and either reconnected or placed in new homes. The final objective is to care for those children who are unable to rapidly bounce back.

“The challenge always is, are there enough services for those kids?” asked Miles. “We use art in those child-friendly spaces to get kids to be able to express themselves; that often helps a lot. Most of the kids are able, with that kind of support, to deal with the trauma.”

Many of these stop-gap centers are no longer in use, meaning that children are back in school, and the focus needs to shift from relief to rebuilding, said Roger Yates, Director of Disaster Management for Plan International, an independent non-profit group dedicated to helping children escape extreme poverty and its effects. Temporary schools and modular classrooms have helped this transition, but it’s time to look to permanent facilities.

“I think this is the eternal challenge, that there is so much to do that you can run around just doing the immediate short-term things,” said Yates. “We have to keep an eye on those bigger investments…but we can’t take our eye off of the fact that as soon as possible, we’ve got to start putting in permanent schools.”

Building a functioning education system for Haiti is Plan’s main priority, and would help provide jobs in a nation with a 60 percent unemployment rate. The United Nations Development Program’s (UNDP) Cash-for-Work programs employ over 240,000 Haitians, jumpstarting the local economies around Port-au-Prince and Léogâne,

“I would rather see a school built over 12 months with local employment rather than to see a foreign contractor coming in and putting it up in 9 months,” Yates explained. Plan has employed an additional 11,800 people to build six permanent classrooms and assess the conditions and needs of 483 other school sites, in addition to clearing rubble and creating sanitation services.

It will likely take decades for Haiti to fully recover from the earthquake’s devastation. But for many Haitians, school has become a viable escape and an opportunity that can’t be matched elsewhere within the capital. While the walk to and from school is ridden with reminders of Haiti’s recent history, it is a routine that will ultimately change their lives.