Cite Soleil in Port-au-Prince, Haiti is known as the biggest slum in the Western Hemisphere. It has also been called the kidnap capital of the world. With over 100,000 children not in school, gang life is a very dangerous and a pressing influence for youth. Please watch the video below to hear testimonies that protest to the dire need for schools in this area. While this video is more than a decade old, the problems have unfortunatley not disappeared, although we do believe some progress has been made. We hope to be able to highlight groups that are doing good work in the area. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VgvVqYl-_4

We are working on a project to combat this and we want to invite your participation. The project is called Educate Cite Soleil. We believe that executing this project will create transformation. We believe that the results will be far from perfect, but the effort will be ongoing and improve over time. We believe that an encompassing effort to serve the area in this way would undoubtedly create positive transformation. 

Goals:

• Empower already existing schools in the area that struggle to operate due to lack of resources.
• Create a database of already existing schools in the area and census information identifying educational need. Note: If you support or run an educational initiative in the area, we would love to hear from you.
• Empower local high school graduates in the area to form learning centers to educate the tens of thousands of kids not in school.
• Form partnerships between donor teams and teaching teams. The two teams should have direct contact. The teaching team’s responsibility is to maintain a learning center location and materials while holding class for an average of 100 students from 8am to noon each weekday. If the building cannot hold 100 kids all at once, the classes may be split between morning and afternoon. 

Needs: The financial commitment is $700 per month, per learning center. We are looking for donor teams who are interested in investing in this. Again, we encourage donor teams to stay in direct contact with the teaching teams and send funds directly.

Caveat: We should expect messy beginnings here. We should expect far from ideal and perfect. That is not the most important thing. The most important thing is that we continue to believe in and stay committed to the effort. If we find that a learning center has ceased to function, of course funds should not continue to be sent. We will not blindly invest. But we should understand that this is an area that needs a whole lot of TLC. To all those who believe in this, we want to partner with YOU!

While guns tend to equip the youth in this area, we need to fight back with education! Let’s reward those who have studied hard with this opportunity and stir up some positive movement where it’s so greatly needed.

Get started: E-mail grassrootsschools@gmail.com if you would like to be involved financially, or would like to share experiences, ideas, contacts, etc.