Haiti (MNN) — The Haitian government ordered schools
reopened and extended the school term by three months through August.
However, Compassion International reports that just 15-percent of the schools
were ready to reopen last month. The quake
damaged or destroyed some 4,000 schools, and many of them were waiting for
tents because of fears of building instability.
Educators say rather than picking up with the regular
curriculum, they will focus on providing emotional support for traumatized
children. Even so, the trauma is hard
to erase with so many classmates missing from their seats.
Compassion's church partners continue searching the tent
cities and account for nearly 95 percent of their program beneficiaries, but
1300 children remain missing.
To complement the ongoing searches in the tent cities,
regionally-based partnership facilitators are searching the countryside to find
children who may have relocated outside of Port-au-Prince after the quake.
Compassion is working to improve the health of affected and
at-risk children and families, while providing supplies for and increasing the
treatment capacity of their health care teams.
They are also trying restart the Leadership Development
Program to assure all non-academic requirements of the program are met as students
receive post-trauma training and counseling prior to universities reopening.
Compassion reports that they are still distributing water and
food kits to affected church partners.
Each food kit gives a family of five one meal a day for two weeks. To date, they
have distributed more than 30,000 food kits.
Keep praying for strength for the teams as they act as the hands
and feet of Christ. May the Lord use the teachers and school activities to
bring a sense of hope and normalcy to the lives of the children and
families.
