Education is the key to building a strong foundation on which to build.

Sionfonds has been working to educate children and support families in Haiti for many years, well before the earthquake. We have done this in a variety of ways we have projects that provide opportunity and nutrition as well as education, but without education, opportunity will not be utilized affectevly and a full belly will be empty tomorrow.

Haiti has long been known as the ‘poorest country in the western hemisphere’  and was ranked 148th of 179 countries on the United Nations Development Programme Human Development Index in 2009; 76 percent of Haitians live on less than $2 per day and 56 percent on less than $1 per day, and that was before the earthquake, the situation in Haiti has gotten much worse since January 12th 2010.

The issues  facing Haiti can be overwhelming.

Everyday life in Haiti is overwhelming, but it is possible to affect change.  The answers are not simple but, if we start at the roots of the issues and build up from there we will create an opportunity for real change to take place. Education first, and then we address what gets in the way of education; malnutrition, illness, everything that is the result of extreme poverty and we work on those, little by little we make a difference.

Education is the foundation on which change will be made possible for Haiti, on which the children of Haiti will grow up and be able to create a country that will no longer be known for what it lacks but for what it has become.