The Rainy Season

Above: Teachers at the child-friendly spaces taught children how to make origami flowers. The kids loved it!

The rains have started to come to Port-au-Prince and it is creating new frustrations and fears amongst the population. Many of our teachers are coming to school in the morning saying they haven’t slept because the rains flooded their shelters the night before. Since the camp is muddy, parents keep their children home.

All of this makes it difficult to support children and families through the child-friendly spaces. We are working closely with other organizations to speed up the digging of latrines for children. It is becoming even more critical for them, the girls in particular, to have a clean and easily accessible place to go to the bathroom.

The Animators (teachers) in the child-friendly spaces are quickly getting the hang of the schedule and structure that is being put into place. Today they separated the children by ages and created specific classrooms for each. We also hired many more teachers to ensure there were 2 for every 25 children.

Some of the Animators have gotten very creative. They are working with the kids on interesting and engaging activities that keep them busy and their minds active until they can go back to school. For example, it was exciting to see the children making origami flowers. This was a very popular activity and we made sure all of the Animators knew how to do it so all the kids could learn.