Teachers psyched up for new school year!

45 teachers participated in an intense 2-week training where we explored:
-Positive Discipline
-Play-based Learning
-Circle of Love (Morning Meeting)

These teachers will work in the AMSAI and Sineyas learning centers this year with children ages 3-12.  Looking forward to the start of the new school year in Port au Prince!

Highlights of the last months

The last 3 months have been wildly exciting and busy for our Education & Child Protection team.  Here are a few highlights:

~ We received a generous donation of 25 XO laptops from the organization One Laptop Per Child.  In addition, we have partnered with Waveplace to be trained in how to most effectively use the laptops with children.  These little machines are quite phenomenal with cameras, internet, games and more.  Yet the real jewel in all of this is that laptops are cool, especially these funky green and white alien-looking ones!  Children naturally want to play with them, and they learn so much in the process.  Six members of the AMURT staff were trained by Waveplace to use the laptops and create curriculum.  Currently 20 children are engaged in our pilot 8-week course. They have created digital stories, some even are animated!  Below, Jakline and Francesca learn to maneuver a mouse for the first time.

~ Women of all ages (18-83!) have been raving about their support groups where they sing, dance, share, (and I bet, gossip too).  They also love the chance to make beads, learn papier mache, teach each other new recipes, receive health advice, and improve their literacy.  The women's program has really soared due to the energy and dedication of our phenomenal community organizers.  They facilitate daily circles to share fundamental organizing techniques and leadership skills.

~ The kindergarten program is showing marked improvements.   Teachers are learning how to create centers for children to choose activities.  They are painting, playing with blocks and puzzles, singing and dancing.  Our trainers go around to the 5 sites to coach the teachers in child-centered methods.  

~The Youth Leadership team just finished a two week course in participative video with a group called Global Eyes TV.  Twenty teens formed small groups and learned how to tell a story on film.  Some chose to document their daily lives, a few created public service announcements, and others tried their hand at romantic soap opera-esque dramas.   The videos can be viewed on the website: http://reset.to/global-eyes-tv  The youth leadership course is finding ways to continue these types of film projects with the teens, so that more of their voices are heard and stories are told!

~ Our primary school teachers were trained in the Gattegno Method of using little, colorful wooden rods to learn math and literacy.  Totally unconventional and experiential, the method is perfect for children and the teachers had a lot of fun too.  

~ We just started a new program called CIRCLES with the support of child psychologists from an organization called Artisans for Haiti out of Oregon.  We have a group of 10 women and 20 teen volunteers who are learning practical psychosocial skills to work with young children who have experienced trauma.  A CIRCLES group will consist of 1 woman and 2 teen facilitators with 10 child participants.  Along with the children benefiting from a year of small group play therapy, the facilitators will be coached and supported for the next year as this program evolves.

~Spring has sprung, and it is hot here!  The city sometimes feels scorchingly hot and dusty, but in the site at camp Seneas, Wilky the agronomist, has launched the beginnings of a urban permaculture paradise.  He has recycled tires to become beds for all types plants in the garden.  Every day, he spends time with the children, teens and women to nurture the garden and teach the invaluable skills of gardening and environmental protection.  

Never-ending election fallout

I have a bit of cabin-fever.  For the past 5 days, I've not left the block due to political turmoil and street riots.  The election news announced last Tuesday evening brought about huge disgruntlement and anger, to say the least.  Preval's hand-picked candidate, Jude Celestin, is in the top 2 with Mama Manigat.  The Tet Kale (bald head) performer/singer, Mickey Martelly, did not rank to the disappointment of thousands who flooded the streets in opposition to the election council's results.  Its grossly corrupt.  Up until last Tuesday, almost every Haitian I asked agreed that Manigat and Martelly would be the two in the runoff. 

From our apartment we could smell burning tires and hear riotous screaming.  Black soot and glass shards coat nearby streets.  Of course, the whole country was brought to a standstill.  No tap-taps (pick-ups serving as public transport) or motorcycles were on the roads.  Stores, schools, banks, all closed.  Even as the riots calm down, general fear still rears its head as we wait for the election council's next announcement... will Martelly be added to the runoff? Will Celestin be taken off?  How will everyone react?   And then, what will happen on January 16?

Our programs have been closed due to the situation, but hopefully everything will reopen tomorrow.  Just one more week, and then Dharma and I head to the US for some time with family and friends!  Last year at this time, I was trying to fly to Haiti but got blocked due to the huge 2-foot snowfall.  This time, I hope we don't get blocked from flying out of the PAP airport due to any political unrest.  Whatever happens, it will be an adventure.

AMSAI: Kinder & Primary School

Dressed in crisp, orange-checkered uniforms with their names prominently embroidered on the front, the kindergarten children arrive at our 5 sites every morning by 8am.   At our home base, AMSAI is the kindergarten and primary school which has been in existence for the last several years.  Dada Gopal has done a beautiful job transforming the school into a more beautiful space, and we have a vibrant new pedagogical director, Ralph.  2011 is looking up!

Mary Ange is one of our trainers for the kindergarten program.  She used to be a teacher at the AMSAI school, but in the last 6 months she has been serving all of our kindergarten sites as a trainer to support the teachers by modeling lessons and conducting professional development trainings.  She also just gave birth to a precious little baby in May!

The children are active everyday with physical activities, but Fridays are special sports days for the kindergarten children.  They play relay race games, practice yoga, and toss balls. 

We had a wonderful week with the AMSAI children.  Marg, Emily and Sherry have been coming from the US to support the school over the last several years.  They facilitated beautiful lessons with each of the classes.

AMSAI is a warm, loving community school.  I love seeing our team members' children in classes.  It reminds me of Newtown Friends School and George School where everyone feels like one big family.  Dharma and I love our new neighbor family.  Kettlie and Jacque have 7 children and 3 of them go to AMSAI.  Every day I look for Sharina (4), Misterline (6) or Jakline (7) in their classes just to catch a peek of their beautiful smiles.

Children in 3rd grade painted their own illustrations to a book, and 5th graders created wheels about animals' life cycles. 

Upcoming Elections

The tension is palpable in the days leading up to the election. There are 19 official candidates running for president (even 1 woman). Sunday is voting day. Of the 4.7 million Haitians eligible to vote, I wonder how many will actually venture to the polls.

Anecdotal conversations with my team members, people in the camps and the neighborhood point to high level of distrust, anger, resentment toward all the candidates. I have been hard-pressed to find even one person who plans to vote on Sunday. Those who do plan to vote are endorsing Manigat, the only woman candidate, or Martelly, a former musician.

As one of my team members explained, "It's almost becoming a cultural norm to fear the days leading up to and days following the election." Our team leaders discussed and decided that our programs would be closed today and Monday due to potential violence and volatility at each of the camps due to political tensions. Each site coordinator would decide when to re-open based on the local situation.

In the last week, more and more streets are blocked for demonstrations. One of the leading candidate's deputies was shot. Gunfire is regularly heard at night in some areas of the city. One of our team leaders cautioned us to prepare for a lot of unrest next week as the results are being tabulated.

With the increasing rate of cholera cases, several candidates urged authorities to postpone elections, but the move was denied.

Cholera is a huge threat, and people are more aware of the potential severity of the disease over the next year. Some reports project that more than a 500,000 Haitians could contract cholera. Already some family members of my team who live in the provinces have contracted the disease and are barely hanging on. We are sending medicines and oral rehydration salts (ORS) as fast as we can.

We learned last weekend that cholera has reached the Artibonite communes of Sou Chod and Terre Neuve, where AMURT has had a variety of project over the last six years. These two communes are located in the northwest of Haiti. The two local clinics responsible for the whole area were swamped with patients and were distributing ORS and antibiotics, yet already several had died. The elderly and children are still the most vulnerable.

I would say I see a marked difference in our team's overall well being these last couple weeks. With all of the stresses, unknowns and challenges that everyone faces, people are really feeling stretched. I continue to be inspired by the strength and support among our team members. The team has grown steadily over the last 10 months, yet the love and respect for each other is unwavering.

Serendipitous meetings

It was wonderful to meet Tim and Adam last week who showed us the wonderful technology of XO laptops and the Waveplace software.

Laptops, and accessibility to technology in general, are so important to really be successful in this new, fast-paced, global millennium. We look forward to incorporating this program into our after-school enrichment program for children aged 7-12.

This morning we had a wonderful meeting with our kindergarten trainers in how to support our community teachers with the ever constant challenges of teaching in camp-conditions. We did another round of brainstorming about what the "ideal" kinder class should be like: what does it look like? what are the children doing? what is the teacher doing? what are the trainers doing?

Learning opportunities that foster self-guided discovery and exploration are what we are after! Tiny steps toward constructivist, student-centered pedagogy!

Check out www.waveplace.org and www.laptop.org
To see Tim's blog about his visit with us, go to:
http://waveplace.com/news/blog/archive/001019.jsp

School-aged children among most vulnerable to Cholera

The Ministry of Public Health declared that cholera has indeed spread to six departments (or regions) of Haiti, affecting over 11,000 people. More than 700 have died. The reports are showing that school aged children are most vulnerable, with a high mortality rate.

In response to the cholera outbreak, we have stepped up our prevention strategies: informative messaging with flyers and signs, community/family outreach, teacher-training, increased supply of cleaning materials & wash basins, acquisition of rehydration salts, etc.