What’s different before and after the Partnership for Learning project? 50,000 more kids get to go to school, and do better while they are there. Getting Jean Jean Roosevelt—a Haitian music star—to write and perform a theme song helped, and so did training teachers and providing shoes.
According to one school director, it helped “to remedy the incompetence problems of some teachers.” “There is a very big difference…. Before, the teachers were not trained for the most part. … The Ministry does not provide continuing education, as they claim they not afford it. When CARE provides this, we are happy because it is a good partnership for the school.”
Partnership for Learning (P4L) ran in Haiti from 2013-2018, with $11.9 million in funding from Educate a Child. It reached 53,059 kids directly and 189,633 indirectly.
What did we accomplish?
- More kids went to school: 53,059 girls and boys had enrolled in school who were not in school when the project started.
- Kids have the right paperwork: It might seem strange, but not having the right paperwork can make it impossible to go to school. 13% more kids got ID cards as part of the project, so it’s easier to enroll.
- Kids spend more days in school: children whose parents are in VSLAs have 33% fewer absences and are 5% more likely to go to school at all than kids who don’t have parents in savings groups.
- Teaching quality went up: 62% of parents say that the quality of teaching in the classroom improved.
- Schools are better managed: 86% of people say that they’ve seen improvement in school management.
- Kids are more successful: most parents say that they think that their children are more successful in school and getting better grades.
How did we get there?
- Train teachers: the project held training for 1,484 teachers to improve their instruction techniques and help them better engage kids in the classroom.
- Help parents save: 12% of the families participated in savings groups, and more than half of the families used their savings from the VSLA to keep their kids in school.
- Make it popular: the project got Jean Jean Roosevelt—a Haitian music star—to write and perform a theme song that about half of the people in the project heard.
- Support the basics: the project helped provide books, pencils, and shoes for kids going to school.
- Get the community involved: the P4L team got communities to raise money to support their schools, and to participate in school management committees.
- Advocate for families: the project advocated for the government to create and fund the National Fund for Education (which passed in 2017) to provide scholarships for poor kids.
Want to learn more?
Check out the evaluation.
Special thanks
In addition to funding from Educate a Child, the project leveraged funding from the Haitian Ministry of Education and Vocational Training, the Inter-American Development Bank, the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR), TOMS, LIV Livres Solidaires, LIDE, GAP Inc, and other institutions.