Education
Haiti is not only the poorest country of the American Continent but together with many African Countries it is in the last positions of the Human Development Index. Over half of the population lives below the poverty line. The condition of children is particularly worrying, especially for disabled children and adolescents. It is not easy to be a child in Haiti: in the last ten years, natural catastrophes, epidemics and poverty deprived countless children of family care. Protecting and giving a future to orphans and abandoned children from accommodation centres is a challenge which Fondazione PRO.SA has never evaded.
“Welcome to reintegrate” is a project funded by AICS, Italian Agency for Cooperation and Development, which aims at promoting and protecting the rights of vulnerable children, with disabilities and in conflict with the law as laid down in the UN Convention on Rights of the Child. In order to achieve the goal, the project includes the training of the operators of the welcoming centres – so that the quality of educational and counselling services in favor of the minors can be reinforced – and the training of the officials of Child Protection Brigades (CPB), which are responsible for the reception of the minors who committed infractions or are victims of abuses.
It is also fundamental to reinforce the competences of the local partners as well as their influence on the public institutions in order to promote changing in politics concerning the rights of children, especially for those who live in welcoming centres.
The project is carried in collaboration with Comunità Impegno Servizio Volontariato (CISV), Fondazione Albero della Vita (FADV), Progetto Mondo-Mlal (PMM) and two local partners: Solidarite Fanm Ayisièn (SOFA) and Groupe Médialternatif (GM). The activities are run in collaboration with the Haitian institution IBESR (Institution of social welfare and research), which follow us the hosting centres, and UNICEF, which coordinates the exchange of information and experiences among the different stakeholders. An important contribution in terms of competences comes from the University of Padua and the association l’Abilità Onlus.
“Welcome to reintegrate” involved six accommodation centres, five of which are located in the metropolitan area of the capital Port-Au-Prince, and one in Mare Rouge, in the north-west of the country. The beneficiaries of the project are 700 children, while 120 is the number of operators sensitized and trained.