The first challenge a child must overcome to receive an education in Haiti is to live long enough to attend. Child mortality in Haiti is the highest in the Western Hemisphere. Eight children out of every 100 die before their 5th birthday, mainly for lack of food, clean water, and access to health services. Each year, over 22,000 children under 5 die from preventable causes including malnutrition, pneumonia, diarrhea, and malaria.
If a child does reach school age, a good education in Haiti is very difficult to obtain. Due to severely limited government funds, the public education system in Haiti barely functions. To put this in perspective, Haiti's 2007 budget for the Ministry of Education was approximately $122 million for a school-age population of 2.8 million. The 2009 budget for Boston Public Schools is $827.5 million for 56,000 students.
Fifty percent of Haitian children do not attend school at all, and among those who do, the vast majority (80 percent) attend private and parochial schools like La Promesse. There is a shortage of qualified teachers and there are virtually no standards imposed on private schools regarding the number of students in a class, student evaluation, or curricula. Still, people in Haiti place great value on receiving an education, even if just to the point of basic literacy.
Unfortunately, school fees put basic education out of reach for millions of people. Spending $70 to $80 per child on school fees or supplies and uniforms is impossible for a family earning Haiti's per capita GDP of $480 per year. Given the increased financial stresses worldwide, Haiti too finds itself at the mercy of large fluctuations in prices of basic commodities. Food prices have soared and sparked riots in a nation that is so starved as to need a new phrase to describe their hunger pains - it is like drinking bleach, they say.
In addition to the food crisis and this terrible tragedy, the country is still reeling from the devastation following four hurricanes earlier this fall.
