Solidarite Dame-Marienne Ecole Communautaire's Story
Solidarity Dame-Marian Community School
https://www.gofundme.com/textbooksforhaiti
Please support our fundraiser to purchase all the textbooks that were destroyed in category 4 Hurricane Matthew on October 4th, 2016
Some of our dedicated Solidarity Dame Marian volunteers and board members meeting in Miami.
Three years ago Solidarity Dame-Marian took over operating Solidarite Dame-Marienne Ecole Communautaire, formally known as Ecole Notre Dame du Perpetuel Secours. It is situated in a small fishing village school on the outskirts town of Dame-Marie, Grande Anse, Haiti, where Solidarity Dame-Marian have been working since 2005 assisting children attend school with generous donations from all around the globe.
The school has been in operation since 1972 opening with just three students. It is now an accredited government school with an enrollment of approximately 160 underprivileged children ranging in age from 4 – 26 years old. The founder unfortunately became ill and passed away. This is where Solidarity Dame-Marian assumed the responsibility of keeping the school open and changed the name to Solidarite Dame-Marienne Ecole Communautaire, a French version of Solidarity Dame-Marian Community School. The school's location makes it virtually impossible for most of the families to send their children to school due to cost. Most of the families live off less than $2.00 per day.
Since the hurricane in October, 2016 many of our children now have to walk long distances to the school as the community school bus service has been discontinued, but they still show up everyday!
The school is a bare bones building, with unfinished walls, no paint, no bathrooms, not enough desks for all the children, no desks for the teachers and no storage of any kind. The teachers make do and have faith in what they are doing and believe in the children and their education for a brighter future!
It has been difficult to pay staff due to lack of donations, and some parents have found it challenging to pay the 100gds ($1.50 USD) annual tuition fee for various reasons. For the 2016-2017 we had to reduce the staff by half and also cut the monthly salary by half. This has been a great hardship to the teachers and after a meeting I had with them recently I am told several of them go all day without food or water. This is unacceptable to Solidarity Dame-Marian. Safe drinking water is now delivered to the school for the teachers on a weekly basis.
Due to the large expense of a traditional Haitian uniform, we will be supplying the students with a Solidarity Dame Marian t-shirt as a part of their uniform for January 2017.
A successful fundraiser was done in the summer of 2016 to purchase text books for all the students, unfortunately they were all destroyed by Hurricane Matthew on October 4th, 2016.
On October 4th, 2016 the school was destroyed by hurricane Matthew, we have been blessed are now starting to rebuild!
Education for All!
All the text books we purchased we either washed out to sea or badly damaged by Hurricane Mattthew on October 4th, 2016
https://www.gofundme.com/textbooksforhaiti
https://www.gofundme.com/textbooksforhaiti
Thank you to our donors and Life Through Learning for helping building a new school... We are truly blessed!
