Hope for children in poor schools

Haiti Focus: The first of four reports on the different types of school in Haiti, by Larry Jerden, UBS photojournalist

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti —Cité Soleil is one of the poorest areas of Port-au-Prince: a place of dirt streets, shanty homes and small children wandering around in the rubbish. But thanks to a mission compound that includes a school, clinic and church, it is also a place of hope. Now the O-21-funded program Le Livre de Vie (‘Book of Life’) is adding to that hope.
The joy of knowledge: children from a school in one of the poorest areas of Port-au-Prince, Cité Soleil
n The joy of knowledge: children from a school in one of the poorest areas of Port-au-Prince, Cité Soleil


“If you tell people you are going to Cité Soleil,” explains Jacqueline F Dorléans, Principal of the École Chrétienne des Frères Unis (United Brothers’ Christian School), “they think you will never return – and yet the Lord loves these people so much!

Sponsored

“Our primary school has 384 students from pre-kindergarten through to the sixth grade, all sponsored by supporters in the USA. If they were not sponsored, there would be no way they could receive any kind of education. Their parents could never afford it.”

The school, clinic, and church all grew from a two-room house in what was originally a sugar cane field. Mrs Dorléans and her husband, a pastor, started the church in 1989 and the school two years later.
“If the primary school students were not sponsored, there would be no way they could receive any kind of education”

“When we began we had no books, no furniture, no classrooms – nothing,” she notes. “The Lord has blessed us a lot. We have Bible study every morning. We read Bible stories and verses, and we pray and worship. Our goal is for the children to come to know Christ.”

Having recently started the O-21 Book of Life program, she is very excited about its promise.

“We were using other Bible study material before, but this is much better,” she says. “It is more attractive, has more colour and more life. It will get much more attention from the younger children because they like the comic-book format.

‘Like television’

“To them, the pictures are like watching television. Thanks to the format, the Bible stories won’t seem old or distant – they will be real. If we present them in this way, the truths of the Bible will seem more like a part of life.”

Moreover , the impact of the O-21 books goes well beyond the children, she says, because “they take the Gospel home to their parents. I am so encouraged to see the parents in church because I know many were formerly not Christians. The Lord has done some wonderful things and with this Book of Life, he is doing even more!” (WR 362/24 - 09.01) [PHOTOS]