Almost 80 percent of the world’s population aged 15 years and over is now literate, including more women than ever before, according to new figures from UNESCO.  Encouragingly, the figures also show that although women still make up two thirds of the world’s adult illiterates, in all regions they are gaining access to education and literacy, and at a faster rate than men.

The literacy rate in Haiti is 52,9%.  54,8% of  the men can read and write compared to 51,2% of the women.

We hope to be able to start building our school anytime soon. Meanwhile, classes are being he inld our new building’s dining room.

There are nine children in the Guerriers family. Seven of them live without their parents.  Marica (15) is in charge of the family. Recently, we found sponsors for all of them.  They  have the great privilege of going to school.

During the earthquake, three of the walls of their little house collapsed and the roof came down one or two feet.  To get inside, we have to duck our heads. We have received some donations, which will allow us to start to build part of their new home.

A team from Ontario built them double beds.

To avoid comments from jealous neighbours, we installed the beds at night using flashlights because there is no electricity.  To fit both beds inside, we had to move one of the walls made out of a blanket held by metal bars.

Two brand new mattresses; they used to sleep on a pile of rags covered by a sheet.

« The Good Life »

A team from Alberta led by Pastor Marlo Jenkins visited with us.

They made and painted several benches.

An astronaut costume to do painting. Why not?

On these same benches, the children go to school, they eat and they hear the Word of God.

A team from Cambridge, South Porcupine and Iroquois Falls in Ontario visited with us. Pastor Rick Tozer (extreme left), Pastor Mike Burt ( second row, right) Pastor Scott Corkill (second row, left)

Repairing the greenhouse nets.

Installation of the greenhouse nets at our new site.  Their opacity is 80% and they offer shade to the school yard that will eventually also be used for our feeding program.

Installation of barbed wire behind our new building.

The Taubl family from the USA, who have seven children, came to Haiti to give concerts.  They blessed our assembly with a concert of cello, violins and songs.   The family appeared on America’s Got Talent in 2008 and they have made several CDs.

After sixteen weeks of moving dirt off of our site with picks and shovels, we were pleased to find a backhoe to remove 60 truckloads of dirt.  That mountain we talked about in our last newsletter is surely disappearing.

Thank you with all of our hearts for standing with us in this work that needs more workers.