Академический Документы
Профессиональный Документы
Культура Документы
from Haiti
A Quick-Fire Presentation
13th UKFIET International Conference on Education and Development
Learning for Sustainable Futures: Making the Connections
September 15-17, 2015
University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
I.
Introduction
The Republic of Haiti is a striking country, lying at the heart of the Americas
between Cuba and Puerto Rico. It is a land rich in history and culture, showing a
marked confluence of African, European, and North American influences. The value
that Haitian parents place on education is another notable aspect of the national
psyche and culture. Unfortunately, Haiti is also characterized by high levels of
poverty, weak governance, deteriorated or non-existent infrastructure, and a
struggling education system. Compared with other countries in the region, Haiti is
considered the poorest in the Western hemisphere with approximately 78% of the
population living below the poverty line 1. More than 40% live with food insecurity 2.
Economic disparity is also extreme with 63% of the countrys wealth in the hands of
the richest 20%3. Among the adult population, only 48.7% of adults can read and
write in Haiti4. The education sector overall is marked by acute deficiencies related
to access, retention, quality, governance, and coordination.
In 2013, CARE, with funding from new global partner Educate a Child of Her
Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser of Qatar, began a new initiative, Partners for
Learning (P4L), to respond to these education sector challenges. The program aims
to contribute to increased access to equitable, quality primary education for girls
and boys in Haiti by increasing enrollment and completion of a primary cycle of
education among out-of-school girls and boys (OOSGB) estimated to represent
between 9.8%5 and 23%6 of all school-aged primary children 7. Specifically, P4L has
set out on an ambitious journey to identify, enroll, and retain 50,000 OOSGB over a
1 UNICEF Haiti. www.unicef.org/haiti/french/overview_16366.htm (Last accessed September 2, 2015).
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 UNICEF. http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/haiti_statistics.html (Last accessed September 2, 2015)
5 Phareview. Commissioned by USAID. Study on the Access of Children and Youth in the 6-18 Age
Group to Education Services, 2014, p. 3 **Note that original data from this study was collected in
December 2012 through the Enqute sur les Conditions de Vie des Mnages Aprs Sisme (ECVMAS)
conducted by the Institute Hatienne de Statistique et de lInformation.
7 The national PSUGO initiative was launched by Haitian President Michel Martelly for the 2012-2013
school year. In other words, the first cohort of OOSGB was enrolled through this subsidy program in
September 2012. This may explain differences between the cited EMMUS V and ECVMAS data,
considering the time periods of data collection for the latter two studies: January-June 2012 and
December 2012, respectively.
five year period through October 2018. The program design includes five key
components with related activities:
1. MENFP and partner capacity to identify, enroll and monitor/evaluate retention of
OOSGB within the education system is strengthened and expanded. A primary
activity includes creation of a decentralized education governance and
leadership structure, Municipal Education Commissions (CMEs), in collaboration
with the National Ministry of Education and Vocational Training (MENFP 8).
2. A social movement to address the OOSGB problem across the country is
consolidated and expanded. Principal activities include supporting coordination
of the National Education Commission of CLIO 9 (CEC), contributing to research on
OOSGB, and conducting advocacy.
3. Primary school options created, expanded and/or strengthened, and attended by
OOSGB. Activities include identifying and securing space in public and non-public
schools for OOSGB enrollment and identifying and enrolling OOSGB.
4. Targeted schools receiving OOSGB have improved learning environments. Main
activities include training for pedagogical advisors, teachers, and school
directors, establishment of mini school libraries, and creation of School
Management Committees, commonly referred to in Haiti as Associations of
Directors, Teachers, Students, and Parents (ADPEPS10).
5. Social/economic support to targeted OOSGB is expanded. Activities include
provision of school material and hygiene kits and creation of community/schoolled retention.
As the name, Partners for Learning (P4L), suggests, partnership at various levels
community, governmental, non-governmental, corporate/private sector, and beyond
is at the heart of the initiative. Specifically, P4L is implemented through formal
partnerships with a diverse range of organizations that include the Haitian Ministry
of Education and Vocational Training (MENFP), the Inter-American Development
Bank, LIV Livres Solidaires, Gap Inc, TOMS, the United Methodist Committee on
Relief (UMCOR), and Lid, a small arts-based education and empowerment initiative
whose founders include Hollywood actor Rainn Wilson and fiction writer, Holiday
Reinhorn, and less formal yet frequent collaborations with over a dozen other
diverse organizations. P4L also established a formal relationship with renowned
Haitian singer-songwriter, Jean Jean Roosevelt, who is now an official ambassador
for the initiative and Haitian children overall.
While all partnerships play important roles in P4L, those at the community and
governmental level are essential for the programs success. At the community level,
mobilizing local actors that range from elected village representatives to womens
associations were essential to identifying and enrolling out-of-school children.
8 Ministere de lEducation Nationale et de la Formation Professionnelle
9 CLIO is the Cadre de Liaison Inter-NGO which serves as a platform among national and international
non-governmental organizations in Haiti.
With identification and enrollment of the first cohort of OOSGB complete and the
process for the second cohort in its final stages, CARE has been able to preliminarily
test these hypotheses and document findings through a variety of mechanisms that
include donor reports, formal lesson learned documents, the P4L baseline study,
and informal interviews with program partners and beneficiaries. The following is
the initial finding around these hypotheses:
Partnership, specifically at the community level, is a powerful and necessary
strategy to address the identification, enrollment, and retention of OOSGB and
achieve sustainable education in Haiti but not sufficient without formal
decentralized government-led leadership in education, specifically through
Municipal Education Commissions, and central government level commitment
to decentralization and sustainable funding.
In the sections below, we will explore our arrival at this conclusion. The first section
will examine P4Ls learning to date around how community level mobilization and
4
II.
The design of P4L contemplated the complexity of identifying at least 10,000 out-ofschool children in Haiti each year: relatively limited staff (only one field agent in
each of the sixteen operating communes), operations in a geographically distant
and difficult-to-access regions of Haiti, and the often mobile nature of OOSGB
whether in terms of moving or starting and stopping school in sporadic cycles. From
the beginning, the design of the program took account the need to mobilize the
government, the communities, and a diverse range of partners because such an
ambitious undertaking is simply neither possible nor desirable for one organization
such as CARE. However, the assumption was that the spirit of solidarity and
mobilization of partners, particularly at the local community level, was enough to
tackle this daunting task each year even without transfer of significant resources to
these partners beyond CAREs minimal support service generally reserved for the
schools and the enrolled children. This, of course, would also rely on the other two
assumptions around the government commitments to education and public school
capacity holding true. P4Ls original project design also contemplated supporting
the creation of Municipal Education Commissions to strengthen local education
governance. However, beyond governance the latter is proving to be a
decentralized education leadership structure by catalyzing the community
mobilization process for identification, enrollment, and retention of OOSGB within
the framework of P4L. Ultimately, the P4L initiative was looking for a communitybased and local alternative to the large-scale subsidies programs that have been
unsustainable in Haiti for reaching OOSGB. While the assumptions generally held
during the identification and enrollment of the first cohort, some evidence began to
emerge showing some weaknesses in our original hypotheses. The identification
and enrollment process for the second cohort for 2015-2016now near completion
further supports this finding.
Affairs (MAST)governmental social safety net program, Kore Fanmi, in the Plateau
Central and a local NGO, Restavk Freedom, through its pastor network in the
GrandAnse Department to identify 4,058 OOSGB (1797 girls and 2261 boys) in
these operating zone. More importantly, the bulk of identification came from: (1)
informal community leaders, (2) community based organizations that included
agricultural networks, religiously-affiliated groups, and womens associations, and
(3) public and private school directors. The participation of these three main
community partners was galvanized in large part by the newly created
Municipal Education Commissions through P4L in the projects operating
zones.
In the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake which gravely impacted an already fragile
education system, the Government of Haiti, political parties, and key civil society
actors came together to form the National Pact for Education and Training to guide
the nations education reform through 2030. In line with the Haitian Constitution
which stipulates in Article 32, The responsibility for primary, secondary, technical
and agricultural schools are the responsibility of the state and local authorities. The
creation of Municipal Education Commissions (CME) was named as a principal way
to this end. Envisioned members included the town mayor, locally elected
representatives who are members of local structures called CASEC 11 and ASEC12,
chief MENFP inspectors, and representatives from schools networks where existing.
Their envisioned role would be:
provided refreshments during these community meetings which went beyond any
expectation or agreement made with CARE.
For the enrollment process, another aspect of this community level partnership was
solidarity-building with private schools. While by design public schools form over
two-thirds13 of all P4L partner schools, CARE secured space for 3514 OOSGB in these
private schools primarily by appealing to the school directors sense of we are all in
this together and offering a modest package of services that includes teacher
training, development and training of school management committees (ADPEPs),
and creation of mini-libraries with related training. The CARE/P4L field staff
accomplished this by having one-on-one meetings with the school administration to
discuss the initiative in detail and explore together the social and economic benefits
of having all children in school. CARE experienced a few cases where private school
directors approached the P4L field staff to be partners with the program knowing
already that P4L was a non-subsidy program; these school directors had a sincere
desire to be part of an initiative that worked to get all children in school.
Another element of mobilizing community was the signed MOU between the MENFP
and CARE. This agreement reinforced and validated our presence in the field; it also
prevented possibly resistant local Ministry representatives and public school
directors. This agreement was an important part of the P4L strategy as it outlined
the Ministrys commitment to ensuring enrollment for the majority of identified
OOSGB in public schools and guaranteeing provision of uniforms, school cantinas,
and school manuals to all public schools in the nation.
In the end, the P4L initiative enrolled 12,859 OOSGB (5,886 girls and 6,945 boys 14),
exceeding the first year target by nearly 3,000 in 191 public and 89 private schools.
At first glance, it appears our assumptions were holding true with these great
results for the first year, principally associated with community mobilization,
partnership, and solidarity-building, catalyzed by CME leadership. However, the
process of identification and enrollment for 2014-2015 was not without challenge.
The various obstacles revealed the first cracks to the foundation of our
assumptions:
13 220 of a total of 322 partner schools. P4L had 280 partner schools (191 public and 89 private) for
2014-2015 and have added an additional 42 partner schools (29 public and 13 private).
14 CARE is in the process of verifying the sex of 28 children with schools currently.
7
largely linked to a childs appearancehow clean is the child, how shined and
nice are the childs shoes, how cleaned and pressed is the childs uniform and
does it match the others, how well done is a girls hair with ribbons, how
much ruffle does the girls socks have, does the child have the same books,
notebooks, and supplies as the others. Although we anticipated some related
resistance, we didnt realize it would be so great. Additionally, oftentimes
the parents themselves did not allow their child to attend school if
he or she does not have the right uniform, shoes, and books. Given
this reality as well as the MENFPs inability to honor its commitments to
providing material support (see below), P4L is working to establish messaging
around the importance of school participation versus the importance of
uniforms without also overstepping our bounds on this cultural aspect of
Haiti. While not the only organization to advocate this message vis--vis the
MENFP, CARE contributed to the Ministers official announcement on
September 1, 2015 that all directors must allow children to attend school
without uniforms. P4L has also secured two partnerships to at least cover
some of these needs: UMCOR for minimal school and hygiene supplies and
TOMS for shoes.
Fifth, the MENFP committed to concentrating donor (e.g. USAID, UNICEF, and
others) support for uniforms, student school kits and canteen services in
public schools nationwide. This decision was intended to further strengthen
15 Programme de Scolarisation Universelle Gratuite et Obligatoire (Program for Universal, Free, and
Compulsory Education)
public schools and was an important motivating factor for P4L public schools.
However, MENFP resources have been sporadic and scarce which in
many cases has hampered schools ability and diminished their
commitment to enrolling large numbers of OOSGB. Despite this being a
national commitment and one found in the CARE-MENFP MOU and the triparty agreements that are signed between CARE, the respective MENFPs
Departmental Director, and the partner school director, without a sustainable
funding structure of their own, the MENFP will likely be unable to honor these
commitments in a systemic way.
In response to these four challenges, members of the created CMEs frequently
acted as a facilitator between CARE and these partner school directors to ensure
continued collaboration. They took the initiative at times to organize and lead
meetings between CARE and the directors or simply approached the directors
directly. In this way, they showed a clear leadership on education and provided
solutions for community mobilization and partnership challenges at the municipal
level.
for children as well as refurbishment and material for the schools, despite
communications about the limits of P4Ls resources. The latter is compounded
by the MENFPs continued delays in national commitments that would have largely
fulfilled these needs. It is also likely compounded by the CMEs inability to operate
autonomously without the financial and technical support of CARE given their still
informal status in absence of legal framework that would provide a governmentmandated operating budget. Unfortunately, this frustration based on unmet needs
has impacted the community partners motivation for supporting the identification
process to some extent this year.
The identification process also faced a unique challenge this year: parliamentary
elections. Notably, this political activity which is often volatile in Haiti
undermined the CMEs capacity to function and subsequently their ability
to participate in mobilizing communities in the OOSGB identification
process. As mentioned previously, CME have no formal legal framework, leaving
them particularly vulnerable to whims of political parties and campaigns of
individual members. In absence of formal institutionalization, the CMEs are often
seen more as individual members particularly during times of electoral activity. This
further sheds light on the potential and current limitations of the CMEs to act as a
catalyzing force to mobilize communities and partners around education at the local
level.
10
11
III.
Decentralized education leadership in the form of the CME is in its nascent stage.
While P4L experience has shown this structure to be effective in mobilizing the
community around identifying and enrolling OOSGB in school, our experience has
also revealed obstacles to their achievement of full autonomy and consolidation.
The obstacles are primarily linked to the absence of a formal legal recognition. In
other words, their existence has to date not been passed into law. CMEs are facing a
deeply entrenched centralized education system where are types of decisions
generally come from above in Port-au-Prince. This may likely explain why despite
requirements for decentralized education leadership found in the Haitian
Constitution, the National Education Pact 2010-2030, and the MENFPs Operating
Plan for 2010-2015, parliament has neither passed the existence of CMEs into law
nor made significant progress towards this end.
The absence of any legally binding framework limits the CMEs ability to take
binding decisions related to education at the local level. Operating without an
institutionalized legal framework also leaves them vulnerable to political changes.
This was seen clearly with the disruption caused by parliamentary campaigning and
elections during the OOSGB identification process for 2015-2016. It also limits
needed support both financially and technically from the central level. CMEs will
only receive an annual budget once passed into law.
During the CME creation process in P4L operating zones, P4L has provided the
needed technical and financial support in absence of a government-sponsored
budget. Conscious of unsustainability, CARE has been working in collaboration with
the MENFP at the central level on CME development to document the successes of
the experience. In turn, the idea is to use learning gained through P4L to conduct
evidence-based advocacy with parliament and other decision-makers to pass the
CME structure into law. A larger movement around this issue has already begun,
evidenced by the following:
In March 2015, the MENFPs Directorate of Support for Private Education and
Partnership (DAEPP17) sought an experience sharing meeting with CARE on
P4Ls establishment of local management structures or as the Ministry calls
it, proximity management, which entails both CMEs and School
Management Committees (ADPEPs18). According to the Haitian Training
Institute on Education Sciences (IHFOSED), Proximity management is a
reorganization of the division of responsibilities and powers in education,
from being top to bottom to bottom to top for more efficient mobilization
and cohesion. The establishment of local management structures is a
12
IV.
Conclusion
13
This paper has shown the power of partnership, community mobilization, and the
overall role of diverse actors to ensure access to education for out-of-school children
and the nascent potential that CMEs show in leading these education efforts linked
to OOSGB in a manner that is more sustainable than previous subsidy-based
approaches. However, our experience also has illustrated that acute material and
economic needs of community and governmental partners coupled with the overall
drastic backdrop of extreme poverty and education expenses versus overall
household expense act as significant challenges to the full success of locally led
community mobilization for education. For decentralized education leadership to be
consolidated in such a way that favors sustainable outcomes for children in Haiti,
commitment at the central level to institutionalize and fund structures such as the
CME is necessary. Such commitment will likely need to be tied to a larger
commitment to sustainable education funding, specifically the National Education
Fund. P4L will continue to push forward with garnering collaboration at all levels to
create a powerful enough movement to secure the needed engagement by
decision-makers in Port-au-Prince.
14