Sponsor a rural girl's education in Haiti
Girls who were born and raised in rural Haiti are victims of the worst forms of exploitation in the Haitian society. Most of them don’t even have access to the most basic education. Those who are lucky enough to go to school, don’t go beyond a primary education. Thus, they lack the background knowledge required to go to a vocational school that would prepare them for the workforce.
Girls living in rural Haiti, particularly in isolated communities have the highest rate of teen pregnancy. In these conditions, they are set up to live in abject poverty and remain at the bottom of the social economic echelon generations after generations. They are often forced into forced marriage as early as 15. Oftentimes, their families are so poor to even feed them that they place these girls in urban setting with individuals hoping they will have a better life. For the most part, this is a form of child slavery, which the whole Haitian society has failed to address properly.
Every time you support a rural girl's education in Haiti, you help break the cycle of poverty in a whole community.
These girls are known in Haitian vernacular as ‘restavek” or child domestic workers. The parents’ expectation is that their children will be given food and housing (and sometimes an education) in exchange for doing housework. However, many restaveks continue to live in abject conditions; they may not receive proper education, and are often at grave risk for physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. Restaveks are unpaid and have no power or recourse within the host family. Unlike slaves in the traditional sense, restaveks are not bought or sold or owned. They could run away or return to their families, and are typically released from servitude when they become adults; however, the restavek system is commonly understood to be a form of slavery. Often host families dismiss their restaveks before they turn 15, since by law that is the age when they are supposed to be paid; many are then turned out to live on the streets, and end up adding to the growing number of poor in Haiti.
In order to reduce and eliminating the abuses to which rural girls born to poor families are being subjected, we continue raise public awareness while taking practical actions to break poverty cycle through a well-elaborated empowerment program. Knowing that rural girls born to families that can afford their education end up living better in life, we understand that being born in rural areas is not the problem, and that being born and grown up into poverty is the issue we need to tackle.
For AFPA, access to education and livelihood skills is the best approach to breaking the cycle of poverty. In order eliminate the restavek system, our organization has incorporated these components in its empowerment program:
a. Educate the parents on the consequences of the restavek practice
b. Advocate so the legislative branch and the government can outlaw the restavek system
c. Establish a scholarship fund for rural girls so they can have full access to
• Primary education
• Vocational education
• Livelihood training program