Thursday 21st January, 2010
Save the Children sets up temporary schools in Haiti
Appeal tops $500,000
Save the Children has established temporary schooling areas in child friendly spaces for children
affected by the Haiti earthquake.
“From our experience of responding to emergencies all over the world, education is crucial in
the aftermath of an emergency,” said Mike Penrose Save the Children’s Director of Emergencies.
“Children want to be in school because school is a safe place where they can play with their
friends, speak to their teachers and be in an environment that is totally focused on their needs.
But most importantly, education can save lives.”
During and after a disaster, education is a crucial part of the emergency response. School can
protect children from physical harm, exploitation and violence, and offer psychological support
and healing during and after the disaster. Providing temporary schooling for children also helps
parents to begin to recover from the earthquake, bury their dead, and start to rebuild their lives.
“Children are suffering from emotional distress from the earthquake as well as from living the
daily hardships of life amid the destruction,” said Mr Penrose. “With school, they can get the
support they need to recover from what has been a terrifying ordeal.”
Haiti’s schools have been closed since the earthquake, and it will be crucial to children’s
recovery to ensure that they have opportunities to learn once the official closure has ended.
The longer term rehabilitation of Haiti’s education system, which has ‘totally collapsed’,
according to Joel Jean-Pierre, Haiti’s education minister, is a crucial part of Save the Children’s
five-year “build back better” initiative.
Save the Children was running education programs in Haiti before the earthquake hit, as part of
the Rewrite the Future campaign to get children in conflict-affected fragile states back in school.
Before the earthquake there were already 706,000 children out of school in Haiti. This number
is set to increase as many schools have been damaged, and teachers killed, injured or bereaved.
The earthquake also offers an opportunity to get all of these children back to school, including
the most vulnerable children, and address the long-term developments needs of the country.
To Donate to Save the Children’s Haiti earthquake emergency appeal:
call 1800 76 00 11
donate at National Australia Bank nationally
For more information, or to arrange an interview with Mike Penrose call
Ian Woolverton on 0437 355 096
NEWS 
