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Current State
BUILDING COMMUNITY ACROSS THE BORDERS
KoFAT Compassion Project was started because the children need assistance with homework in order to succeed in school. These children, though, are living with people that never attended school and cannot help them. The Compassion Project provides tutoring 3X/week to yield success. We also provide food (1/2 of children exhibited physical symptoms of malnutrition on admission to the program.) At this time, this has significantly improved.
Our goal is to get kids in school to keep them from being "RESTAVEK."
Who are the "vulnerable" children?
A restavek (or restavec) is a child in Haiti who is sent away by their parents to live with a host household as a form of informal adoption because the parents lack the resources required to support the child. The term comes from the French language rester avec, "to stay with." Parents unable to care for children may send them to live with wealthier (or less poor) families, often their own relatives or friends. Usually, the children are from rural areas, and relatives who host restaveks live in more urban settings. The expectation is that the children will be given food and housing (and sometimes an education) free of charge in exchange for helping with chores. Although most honor their commitments, some host households do not fulfill their promises to the restaveks' parents; these children live a standard below others in the household, may not receive proper education, and are at grave risk for physical, emotional, and sexual abuse.
The restavek system is tolerated in Haitian culture, but not considered preferable. The practice meets formal international definitions of modern-day slavery and child trafficking, and is believed to affect an estimated 300,000 Haitian children. The number of child domestic workers in Haiti, defined as:
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Living away from parents' home
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Not following the normal progression in education
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Working more than other children is more than 400,000
25% of Haitian children aged 5–17 live away from their biological parents.
Enso, 10, was found by his host family on the street when he was a year old. He began working for them when he was two and now does all the chores in a household of six. ©Vlad Sokhin / endslaverynow.org
Edeline, 14, who became a restavek after her parents died in 2004, washes clothes for the host family of 13 people while one of her "masters," Jules, sits nearby with two of the children. ©Vlad Sokhin / endslaverynow.org
