As we get ready to finish 2022 and welcome 2023, INCE Haiti and its partners are taking the opportunity in this last newsletter of the year to wish all our international partners a very happy holiday season and good health and prosperity for the new year. We wish you all success in your respective INCE initiatives throughout the world and we pray that God will continue to give us the courage, strength, and direction to do HIS works.
The year 2022 was a very challenging year for INCE Haiti. Political unrest, economic pressures, gang violence, and lack of energy (gas and electricity) has rendered the country completely in-operational. Particularly, our education system has faced difficulties to open schools. In the capital, Port au Prince, the richest schools made attempts to provide a limited curriculum via distance learning, because their students have access to internet and electricity. Other schools (private and public) remained closed primarily due to lack of gasoline and gang violence that made it too dangerous to send children to school.
In the rural areas, many schools opened but the low percentage of students attending makes it very difficult to function. On average, the percentage of students attending school is less than 10 percent. Further exacerbating the low attendance in schools is the lack of nutrition and medicine in the country. With the gangs blocking all roads from Port au Prince to the south and north of the country, vital resources cannot reach the population. These problems have caused serious challenges for us to implement many of our programs.
Achievements in 2022
Nonetheless, INCE Haiti has made great strides in the Mother Tongue Bilingual Based Education (MTBBE) project. We trained 25 teachers and principals to begin the MTBBE pilot, we reinforced our proven Home Learning program, and we provide much assistance to the families of our students during the country “lock-down.”
We started work on the renovation of the Knowledge and training center at the University Chretien du Nord Haiti. This knowledge and training center will be the focal point for many different training courses, and as of now, the only major educational training center in the country. Our ambitions are high and our commitment strong.
With the help of our international partner, Woord en Daad, we accomplished a lot for 2022 and we pray to meet all our objectives for 2023.