See Beautiful Grant Applicant: Haiti Now

The feature below is brought to you by Haiti Now, an organization that is in the running to receive a See Beautiful Grant. For more information about our giving initiatives, please click here.​ 

To learn more about the featured organization, please visit their website here.

“mwe capab” means “I can”

We think it’s beautiful to create opportunities for girls in domestic servitude. These girls are referred to by the derogatory term Restavek, stemming from the French “rester avec” or to “stay with”.  Poor and desperate parents, mostly from rural areas, send their children to “stay with” host families with the hope of access to education and a better future. 90% of educational institutions in Haiti are private and require tuition. Due to the tuition and textbooks cost, most hosting families are unable to send their own kids to school. While at the hosting family, is the Restavek parents' hope for their children to have a better life and more opportunity. In reality, a Restavek, is a child with a socioemotional living condition consisting of individual isolation, social marginalization, neglect, abuse, and exploitation. School, food, workload or even where they sleep are all variables out of their control. They often endure emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. Restaveks suffer a terrible subjugation that denies their freedom to develop personally and professionally.

There is always a clear power difference between Restaveks and hosting family members. There is always a clear line that identifies them as servants and inferior to anyone else in the family. The hosting family constantly reminds them that they are Restaveks.

Restaveks are expected to perform difficult house chores that usually young children are not capable of accomplishing. As a result, hosting guardians abuse their Restaveks physically when they do not perform house chores as expected. These girls are beaten every time they do not do something right. The majority have permanent scars on their backs, necks, arms, legs, and heads. Restavek are as young as 6 years old and the majority are 13 years old.

With the “See beautiful grant” we will purchase and add 429 textbooks to our Book Bank program. Haiti Now will provide 33 Restavek girls with access to school, and this grant will equip them with textbooks. The Book Bank, like a library, purchases, distributes, retrieves, and recondition the textbooks together with the girls. The management of the Book Bank instills a sense of ownership, agency, and pride considering that the textbooks are the most valuable possession they have.

Haiti Now’s volunteers log all the textbook distributions and students' information in a database together with a grade book tracking academic performance. Textbooks managed by the Book Bank last 4 to 5 school years. The total number of potential students over the lifespan of the textbooks can be as high as 132 girls. We believe the Book Bank enables access to education to very vulnerable children and also their direct management of the Book Bank contributes to rebuilding their self-esteem and self-worth by participating and collaborating in the decision-making process to ensure the success of the program they and other girls benefit from. In Creole, they say, “mwe capab”, “I can”.

Access to education is an opportunity to level the playing field for Haiti’s most vulnerable girls, the Restavek. Most children in Haiti do not have textbooks. We believe The Book Bank program creates sustainable beauty that empowers them with learning and ultimately facilitates these girls' graduations. 

Submitted by: Alex Lizzappi
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