School Rocks!

A few weeks ago two fellow QCS teachers,  Jill & Kellyanne, met 3 girls and began talking with them. Their names are JoAnnn (the oldest, 12), Cassandra (about 10), Fideria (I would guess about 7, maybe younger. I’m really bad at guessing ages). The girls live in the ravine close by our school. After a couple of conversations, Jill and Kellyanne found out that the girls were not in school. (Sad fact, 50% of primary school age children are not enrolled in school (UNICEF)). Miquette, founder of TeacHaiti, found out about the girls and wanted to meet with their mother. She had the girls tested and the two younger siblings, Cassandra and Fideria, were accepted to the TeacHaiti school. Unfortunately, JoAnn was not. You can read more about it at Jill’s blog here.

JoAnn & Jill

A few weeks ago, my parents decided to sponsor a TeacHaiti student. Normally, the big push for sponsors is done in the summer with the cut-off around August 1, because that is when school starts. I didn’t know what would happen if someone began sponsoring mid-year. Now I know. I was talking with Miquette last week and she told me that my parents would be sponsoring one of the little girls, Cassandra or Fideria! How sweet it is that it would work this way. The girls’ first day of school at the TeacHaiti school was on Tuesday. 

JoAnn in the white, Cassandra in the middle, Fideria in the pink, Jill...the blan.

Yesterday, Jill and I went to the house where the girls were staying to see how their first day of school was. JoAnn (older sister) had met us at the school and walked us to her house and let us in. Joseph, the man of the household (not sure what his relation to the girls is) was hemming jeans for the girls to wear to school (the TeacHaiti uniform rocks: Jeans and a brightly colored t-shirt). Cassandra and Fideria came out from behind a curtain and greeted us with big smiles, even bigger hugs, and a kiss on the cheek.

We spent an hour or so with them. We danced, we played musical chairs, and best of all, the two girls who were able to go to school that day showed us the books they had gotten. 

Cassandra reading to us from her book. 

Cassandra read me a story from her Level 4 book (in our Creole class we read the Level 3 book and I don’t understand it. That was only slightly humbling for me…). Fideria showed us the words she had written that day and all the worksheets in her “premye” grammar book. They were both bubbling over with joy as they pulled book after book out of their bags and then turned the pages in the new treasures they had gotten. The books themselves didn’t matter, it was what the books represented. Education. A chance. They may not realize it now. Right now they are just writing the names beside pictures in beautiful cursive (that’s right, a 7 year old with really good cursive. Impressive). They’re just reading about the antics of a fictional character named Bouki. But today they learned. Today at the school they ate lunch...and breakfast! Today they came home with more knowledge in their skulls than they did when they left that morning. It gives me goosebumps.

If you want to help a student, visit the TeacHaiti website at www.teachaiti.org

Maybe you can’t sponsor a student this year, make a donation to the General Fund. 

$31 per month! Per month! I could do the math and figure out how many grande lattes that is and do one of those guilt trips that people who write stuff like this do, but I don’t want to do the math and that stuff doesn’t usually work anyway. Instead, I will show you a cute picture.

No sure what Fideria (on the right) is doing. Being silly for the camera , I think. 

These two girls got to go to school yesterday, today, and will go tomorrow and the next day. That’s cooler than a grande, vanilla, non-fat latte anyway :)

Join me in praying for JoAnn, Cassandra, Fideria, Joseph, Fabian, the rest of the family, TeacHaiti, and the entire country of Haiti.