Changing Lives Through Access: Education
In Haiti, there is no public education. If you want your child to attend school, you have to pay. Considering the average Haitian lives on less than $2 a day, paying a $75 tuition fee would be equivalent to giving up more than two months of your salary to send one child to school. During those two months, how do you feed your family when every dollar needs to go towards tuition? How do you choose which child goes to school when you can only afford tuition for one?
Odelson Dorima, Potter & Clay Ministries’ director, has come up with a creative solution to the problem Haitian parents face when needing to pay such a large amount of money up front. Through Potter & Clay’s School Initiative, we will make the large payments to the school, and then parents sign a contract agreeing to pay the amount back monthly, similar to a loan.
This innovative solution prevents parents from having to choose which children can go to school. It also eliminates the need for parents to skip meals in order to be able to pay tuition for their children.
Haitian parents hold a deep desire to provide for their children, most families simply lack access to large sums of money at one time because there are always needs that need to be met. The feedback we have received from the community is outstanding, and parents are so excited to have this burden taken off their shoulders.