Despite its cheerful name, Cité Soleil is one of the poorest and most dangerous slums in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince. Over the last three years, the area people referred to as “a cross between Baghdad and Mogadishu” has been dominated by armed gangs who favored ousted former president Aristide and opposed the two-year transition government set up in 2004. UN troops stationed in the country were unable to restore order. Donors, many NGOs, and the police quit the slum due to security concerns. Since the peaceful transition to a democratically elected government earlier this year, there have been the beginnings of a return to calm in Cité Soleil. The new government under President René Préval with the support of MINUSTAH, the UN Peacekeeping Operation, has begun a DDR program to persuade groups to lay down their arms with some success. In October, police re-entered the area for the first time in three years and were welcomed by local residents. UN troops are preparing to support a violence-reduction program for former gang members and at-risk youth. Despite this progress, the social needs in the slum remain tremendous. Most of Cité Soleil’s 350,000 inhabitants lack basic services and only about 50 percent of children aged 4 to 16 years go to school. With food hard to find, very poor residents prepare “clay cookies” made from clay mixed with butter, salt, and spices, which they sell in batches of three to four for one Haitian dollar (12 US cents). It is in this environment that the World Bank is supporting a school feeding program for children in Cité Soleil and other poor areas of Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and one of the most disadvantaged in the world, with 78 percent of its 8 million people living below the US$2/day poverty line and where nearly half the population is illiterate. On September 25, the program began distributing meals to 5,600 school children in Cité Soleil, increasing the number receiving hot lunches to approximately 23,906 (43 percent of school children in the area). 2,800 school children in another slum, Bel Air, will soon be getting hot lunches too. The program will also sustain a previous program funded under a LICUS School Feeding Project for 7,500 school children in Plateau Central, one of Haiti’s poorest Departments. "Well-nourished and well-educated children represent one of Haiti's best hopes for a better future", said Caroline Anstey, Country Director for the Caribbean. “The school feeding program will increase the number of children in school in some of the poorest areas in Haiti and improve their nutrition, so they have the energy they need to learn." Parents, teachers, and the children themselves have reacted positively to the program: • Parents welcome the food aid because “the little money we have can now be used for some other priorities like medications and house rent.” • Teachers in Plateau Central say that “the children do not want to miss the early morning snack, which is served right at the beginning of the school day, and so they make sure they get to school on time.” • Children say they love the food, but would like more variety: “not only today: rice and beans and tomorrow: beans and rice”! The school feeding program is being funded by a $250,000 grant from the Post-Conflict Fund and a $300,000 grant from the Brazilian Government. It is part of President Préval’s Programme d’Apaisement Social which aims to help poor areas by creating hope and opportunity particularly in Haiti's most deprived communities. Haiti’s National School Feeding Program will implement the program in Bel Air and will contract services to the Bureau de Nutrition et de Développement (BND) to implement the project in Cité Soleil and in Plateau Central. The BND, which works with the World Food Program and the European Union to obtain subsidized imported food, is currently testing different menus to find the best and most cost-effective way to address the nutritional deficiencies in the children’s diets. “Many more of these children in Cité Soleil, as well as in other slums and poor parts of Haiti, are hoping, like their parents, that the near future will be brighter in this and other post-conflict areas,” said Robert Padberg, Head of BND and Honorary Consul of the Netherlands. With such a high level of insecurity, implementing the school feeding program is only possible with the involvement of BND’s partners - including groups that have been active in the slums for many years and have the trust of the local population. Two organizations will help implement the PCF project in Cité Soleil: Hands Together and St. Jude Medical and Educational Mission. “We will be working to bring in other donors, to involve other parts of the community in cooking and preparing the children’s meals, to combine school feeding with basic health interventions, and to strengthen the capacity of the NSFP to run the program on its own,” said Luc Razafimandimby, World Bank task manager for the project. A steering committee comprised of NSFP, the World Food Program, the Pan American Health Organization, UNICEF, a number of international NGOs, and the Ministries of Health and Education was created recently to coordinate school feeding operations in Haiti under the Bank’ s initiative. The school feeding program will eventually become part of an Education For All project that the Bank is designing. The Bank is also supporting social cohesion in Cité Soleil and Bel Air more broadly through a $1.25 million PCF grant to develop community projects and strengthen community-based organizations. For more information on the World Bank’s work in Haiti, visit:
http://www.worldbank.org/ht |
RSS