Schools Not Slavery for Rural Haitian Children

Thanks to You, 105 More Children Free, in School; 4,300+ Adults Join the Movement

Your generous support is building a movement to ensure every girl and boy grows up free, safe, in school and at home with their family, where they belong.

Thank you for your generous support for Beyond Borders’ Schools Not Slavery project on GlobalGiving. We are grateful for your solidarity!

I’m happy to share wonderful news from the first six months of 2023: thanks to you and your generous support, 105 more children benefited from child protective support services that included interrupting violence, liberating children from domestic servitude, accessing interim care, legal support services, psychosocial support, family reunification, and ensuring reunified children attend school.

Thank you for making this kind of life-saving and life-changing work possible – even in profoundly challenging times in Haiti.

4,386 Women and Men Participate in Child Rights Awareness-Raising Activities

Your generosity is also growing the movement to end child servitude by supporting awareness-raising activities on Lagonav Island and in Haiti’s Artibonite region, where Beyond Borders recently expanded our Child Rights training.

With your support, 4,386 people participated in awareness-raising activities, such as door-to-door “Zero Restavèk”* Campaigns, Open Spaces and conferences organized by Adult Survivor of Restavèk Branches and Child Protection Brigades on Lagonav and in St. Raphael in the Artibonite.

* Restavek is a Haitian Creole word. Here is how our friends at Restavek Freedom define the word: “Restavek (a Haitian creole word which is from two French words: “rester” and “avec”) refers to a child who has moved from his or her biological family to stay with a host family and serves the family as a domestic child; this new social environment is characterized by the violation of his/her rights, such as: his/her rights to go to school, and rest and play and be protected from all forms of exploitation and abuse.”

New Advocacy-Awareness Raising Tool Piloted on Lagonav Island

Thanks to your generous support, we are excited to launch a new advocacy tool to create greater awareness of the 2014 Haitian law that makes human trafficking – including the restavèk practice – a crime punishable by prison time. Most Haitians (including law enforcement and judicial officials) are unaware of this law. In 2021, BB staff teamed up with lawyers from the Office of Human Rights Defenders, with whom BB now has a signed strategic partnership agreement, to put on a mock criminal trial of a fictitious accused perpetrator of restavèk. One hundred sixty-three people in four urban Lagonav neighborhoods watched the film and took part in Q&A sessions that followed. This new tool will be added to protection programming across the island.

Partnering with Ansagalè Mayor’s Office to Protect At-Risk Children on Lagonav

BB’s partnership with local authorities in the urban neighborhoods of Ansagalè continues to deepen, with authorities showing increased leadership and responsibility in the fight to end the restavèk practice.

Previously conducted Child Welfare Surveys in a number of urban Lagonav neighborhoods noted a significant number of children living with families not their own (34%) with a number of children coming from outside the neighborhoods. This means the children are potentially already living in a restavèk situation or are at risk of entering a restavèk situation.

BB is partnering with the Mayor’s Office to carry out in-depth evaluations of each situation to better understand which children are in need of assistance, liberation, and/or protection. A project coordinator under the management of the Mayor’s Office has been contracted, as well as 26 community members who have been trained by BB staff to carry-out the in-depth evaluation. BB is providing financial, material and technical support, with the Mayor’s office leading the effort.

Your generous support makes partnerships like this possible. Thank you!

Your Generous Support Made Even More Child Protection Work Possible

Here’s a look at some of the other Child Protection work that your support helped make possible this past quarter:

• 15 children liberated among them 14 were reunited in their families; 1 was placed in a welcoming family
• 105 children benefited from child protective support services (interrupting violence, liberating children from domestic servitude, accessing interim care, legal support services, psychosocial support, family reunification, ensuring reunified children attend school)
• 410 participants in the ESK Child Rights Dialogue Groups in urban and rural Lagonav neighborhoods and communities take part in Open Space Sessions to further explore child rights questions
• 402 participants in the ESK Child Rights Dialogue Groups being implemented with partner RJM in Gros Morne with technical support from BB
• More than 550 people are participating in 42 ESK-Child Rights Dialogue Groups on Lagonav
• 21 ESK group facilitators and 4 supervisors) attended the refresher training on ESK Child Rights Dialogue Group facilitation
• 12 communities (8 in Lagonav and 4 in Gros Morne) validated their social maps with 147 and 410 community members participating, respectively
• 4,386 people participated in awareness-raising activities, such as door-to-door “Zero Restavèk” Campaigns, Open Spaces and conferences organized by Adult Survivor of Restavèk Branches and Child Protection Brigades on Lagonav and in St. Raphael
• 38 members of partners PDL and RJM staff/collaborators received technical support for conducting Knowledge, Attitude and Capacity (KAP) surveys in 38 communities in Sen Raphael and Gros Morne
• 56 Child Protection Brigades on Lagonav and in Gros Morne conducted organizational capacity assessments
• 13 Branches of Adult Survivors of Restavèk designed their own action plans to increase their advocacy capacity
• More than 130 adult survivors participated in multiple Psycho-Social Group Therapy Sessions

Community Members Talk About Beyond Borders’ Impact

“Before we minimized the practice of restavèk here. We did not pay much attention to it. We considered it normal. In fact, there were children in this community who were suffering in restavèk. But, when our community started working with Beyond Borders, we participated in some training. We learned for several months about the consequences of the restavèk practice. We came to see that staying with another family is often not a good thing for a child. Today it is different. We see things differently. Today in our community of Mon Chadel, it would be hard to find a child suffering in restavèk thanks to the knowledge, training and skills we received from Beyond Borders.” ~ Seme, Adult Survivor, 59-year-old mother of three, Child Protection Brigade Member

“If I had not participated in the [psycho-social] Groups Therapy sessions, I could have died already or could have become a major criminal. I believed that whenever someone looked at me, they were talking badly about me – I was ashamed of myself. I became very aggressive.

Today, because of this program, I have begun to know myself, I began to learn to manage my emotions. Today I am able to identify the good things in my life and have learned to value myself. Despite all I have lived [through], today I feel proud of myself. I would like to thank Mathania [BB’s Psycho-Social Support Officer and trained Psychologist] for her patience, her understanding and her willingness to talk with us. May God continue to bless you, and enable you to keep coming to sit with us.” ~ an Adult Survivor on Lagonav, participating in adult psycho-social therapy groups

Thank You Again

I am grateful for all the good work that you are making possible through your support for the Schools Not Slavery initiative – especially in these challenging times in Haiti. Thank you again for your extraordinary generosity and solidarity. If you have any questions about what you read in this report, please call or write to me anytime at (305) 450-2561 or b.stevens@beyondborders.net.

Links:

• Visit the all new Beyond Borders website!
• Get the latest from Haiti in our Spring Impact Report.
• We are committed to Financial Transparency: read our 990s.