Opening
Eyes, Moving Hearts
“What
the eyes don’t see,” says the Haitian
proverb “can’t move the heart.”
 Like
Haiti’s restavèk children who are
kept from view, the restavèk system that enslaves
as many as 300,000 Haitian children has been veiled in silence,
misunderstanding, and denial. Bringing it out into the open
is the first step to moving Haiti’s heart and mobilizing
Haitian society for change.
Raising
Awareness: The Campaign’s first strategy
is to raise public awareness of the reality, root causes,
and societal costs of child slavery. This is done by organizing
conferences in cities and rural villages, producing radio
programs that reach the most remote corners of the country,
making use of billboards, music, bumper stickers, and T-shirts
to focus attention on the problem, and organizing marches,
street theater, and other events.
Children march against servitude
in one of dozens of activities organized on the
International Day of the Child. |
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In
all its awareness raising activity the Campaign seeks to
amplify the voices of children and adult survivors of servitude.
Not only do they speak with great moral authority about
the restavèk reality, but in speaking out they rediscover
their human dignity and find new courage for this struggle.
Haitian
parents in remote villages are often unaware of the suffering
that awaits a child they send to work in the city. The availability
of schools, electricity, roads and public transportation
makes city life look easy. By raising awareness of the restavèk
reality, the Campaign helps these parents see through the
false promises of brokers and urban families looking to
lure a child into servitude.
Promoting
Alternatives: Rural life is so hard and schools
so rare, though, that many of the poorest families, even
when knowing the risks facing a child in servitude, will
still feel compelled to send a child away. For this reason,
the Campaign is working to give poor rural families more
choices.
BB
funds rural schooling, reducing the risk
that children will be sent into servitude.
BB will be working to encourage other agencies
to do the same. |
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The
Campaign is researching how the lack of rural schools encourages
parents to send children into servitude. We will use findings
from this study to encourage agencies that fund education
in Haiti to invest more in rural education.
The
Campaign is also developing cooperative relationships with
organizations that provide micro-credit, health care, nutritional
support and other services to rural communities. By working
collaboratively, we can better leverage our resources to
help the poorest rural families most susceptible to sending
children into servitude. Likewise we are developing high
quality adult education materials for rural families that
will help them farm more productively and sustainably so
that hunger is less of a factor driving child servitude.
These parents in the village
of Manich met with us to discuss what led them
to send children into servitude. |
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Networking
& Developing Leadership:
Ending child servitude in Haiti requires nothing
less than a broad social movement. And building this movement
requires strong leadership at every level of society with
strong networking and organizing skills. The Campaign is
working to encourage both. We are helping build both national
and regional networks of organizations and leaders committed
to bringing an end to child servitude. These networks, in
turn, give us access to leaders who are offered general
training in organizing and advocacy skills and specific
training related to child servitude and children’s
rights.
 Offering
Healing: The psychological harm restavèk
children suffer from parental rejection and
abuse from families they serve is not widely understood
in Haiti, even among those working to directly
assist these children. Last month the Campaign
helped organize a seminar for national network
members on this subject. Twenty-four representatives
from 13 agencies received training from Judith
Hyde (standing left) of Free
the Slaves with help from BB board member,
Dr. Jean-Yves Plaisir (right).
Participants learned how to better understand
and support these children. |
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