There is an old Haitian saying: “Sak Vid Pa Kanpe,” (An empty sack cannot stand). Likewise, it is very difficult for a child with an empty stomach to “stand up” in the classroom and excel in his or her studies. Recognizing this, the Salesians in Haiti are partnering with Salesian Missions of the United States to administer a USAID grant to provide nearly 12,000 students with a hot meal each day.
Of the six Salesian centers to participate in the Hunger for Education program, five were unable to provide daily meals to students before the program began, and one did not even have a working kitchen. Today, each of the centers is fully equipped with cookware, plates, and spoons, and each month the centers receive shipments of food from donors in the US.
The schools report that they see better learning, better behavior, and happier children now that the program is in place. The children in Cité Soleil wait with anticipation while the buckets carrying food are being brought to their one-room schools, and the agricultural students in Fort-Liberté depend on the meal after they finish a hard morning of practical education at the school’s working farm.
However, the program is not just meant to just end there. The project seeks to serve as a support for Salesian school feeding programs while long-term efforts toward sustainable food security are put into place. The Salesians in Fort-Liberté and Cap-Haïtien look to expand their agricultural schools; CDAM in Les Cayes is promoting entrepreneurship in the processing of food-products, and a project is underway to begin cultivating twenty acres of Salesian-owned land in Gressier.
