As a new day begins in Meloniere, 200 students (K-6) start arriving at school, prepared to start lessons. They arrive in their uniforms, looking tidy despite having to travel one to two hours on foot. There are no public school systems in Haiti—if they are at school, it means that their parents have enough money to pay for their education. This opportunity is a privilege.

Adding further hardship, the school building in Meloniere was destroyed in Hurricane Matthew in 2016. Since then, students and teachers have met under tarps, in the church, and under trees to continue their education.

What if this was reality for you and your family?

I was just telling my oldest son about many of the difficulties of going to school in Haiti and he said, “Wow, that’s a lot of work!” and then added that he probably took what he had been “forced” to do for granted in our country.  

Many Haitians living in the remote Sud Department, where Haiti H2O partners with four communities, know that education is a foundational rung in the ladder to rise above the cycle of poverty. In Meloniere, there are nine teachers, so class sizes are similar to our public schools here in the U.S.  

Three of the rural Haitian churches that we partner with have opened schools to serve children in their areas. They use the national curriculum and charge as little as possible in tuition to be able to pay the teachers a salary. The tuition in Meloniere is $500 Haitian dollars per year—that’s between $25-$30 in U.S. dollars. There’s no cafeteria or lunch program currently in these schools, and it’s not uncommon for teachers to go unpaid for a time if families are unable to pay their tuition.  

For a parent making less than $2 per day, even this small amount can be difficult to come by. In many families, a younger child will go to school and then teach their older siblings what they learned when they get home. The older children are needed to work so that the family can afford basic necessities.

Haiti H2O has been partnering with Meloniere for the last couple of years to reconstruct the school building in order to shelter students from the elements. This was made possible by generous funding from Geneva College students and the Church of the Ascension Youth Group in Pittsburgh. The youth group is currently working to raise money to finish the roof, and even possibly the floor. With those last pieces, we hope the project will be completed by the end of this year.

As Nelson Mandela once said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” Thank you for joining Haiti H2O in partnering with rural Haitian churches to make education available to more than 600 children—changing their world for the better.