GSF students achieving success despite challenging times

Lots of news this week from GSF projects in Haiti! We’re really thrilled to announce that both our schools achieved a 100% pass rate for the ninth grade in the national exams! Despite COVID and all the other disruptions to daily life in Haiti all through the school year, this is a great advance, and we were the only school in each district to make 100%! Congratulations to all the teachers and pupils!

All our other grades have been back at school for a month now, and so far the only issue is an incredibly wet season which is causing flooding and mudslides Caribbean-wide. On Ile à Vache, where it has rained every day for over a month with no end in sight, this has caused the cassava crop to rot in the fields - a terrible shame for our hard-working farm crew, particularly when inflation has meant that basic foodstuffs for the population are 150% or more of the price a few months ago, when the Haitian government attempted to regulate the gourde against the dollar.

The rainier than normal season has also delayed the finishing of our new Kindergarten building, so the three classes are still all crammed into a single space, which is hard on teachers and small children - but they are getting a hot lunch every day, as always. This year for the first time the middle school classes (grades 7-9) are in the morning session with the younger pupils, so it’s a lot more mouths to feed! We are counting on our regular donors for the end of the year - please don’t forget us, and please tell your friends about us! We really deliver on our programs with minimal expenses and huge community impact - and it’s needed as never before!

Thank you so much,
Mandy