If you’ve been following along with us as we explore the beautiful community of Bois de Laurence, Haiti, you know that for $10 a month, you can give a child the gift of a year of education at St. Jean Bosco school in Haiti. What you may not know is that you can also give them meals to eat, clothes to wear, provide much-needed extra income to their mothers and fathers, and stimulate the local job market. Basically, a single sponsorship contributes to the entire local economy of the village of Bois de Laurence.
Fr. Bavon’s dream is to expand St. Jean Bosco to include a high school, which means hiring more faculty when there is already a shortage of teachers. In order to do so, the school needs to be able to hire new teachers and administrators and pay them a just wage. Jobs are incredibly hard to come by in Haiti and especially in Bois de Laurence. The more students who are sponsored, the easier it will be for the parish community to afford to expand the school in structure, increase enrollment, and thus provide jobs for more Haitians.
In addition to stimulating the economy through jobs, sponsorships also provide families with basic necessities: many families can’t afford to have more than one meal a day, or pay for new clothes for their growing children. One of the advantages of school is that the children are given uniforms and fed a healthy meal during lunch time. For some children, this is their only meal each day — especially if the rain has ruined the family’s beans or rice crops (which happens a few times per season).
Many parents give just about everything they earn in a year to pay for their child to go to school. If this expense is covered, they will have more money to spend on things like health care and improving their quality of life, which (at least materially speaking) is often far below what they and their children need to thrive.
For those of us in the developed world, $10 a month seems like nothing; for a family in Bois de Laurence, it could mean everything. Please prayerfully consider sponsoring a child for the upcoming school year, and keep our missionaries and their efforts to expand St. Jean Bosco in your prayers.
Sponsoring a child’s education for $120 a year can change his or her life - and the economy of an entire village - forever. Will you join us today?
