Accountable Development

One of Pastor Pierre’s policies that seemed a little odd to me is that he charges everyone for school. Tuition is $240 a year, but only two thirds of the students pay tuition, while families in the US sponsor the other third. But every student, regardless of whether or not he or she is sponsored, has to pay an additional fee just to attend school every year. The fee is pretty small, I think its only about 500 GDS*, which comes out to about $12.50. The same is true for the English club, BMSEC (which stands for Bright Morning Star English Club). Every student has to pay 100 GDS, which comes out to about $2.50. The students can also be sponsored in the English club, and just pay 25 GDS, a little more than 50 cents.

This fee is similar to the $50 dollar activity fee I paid every year at Lafayette, after paying over twenty thousand some dollars for tuition. Though most Haitians are pretty poor, $12.50 is pretty minimal amount of money, especially for what they students get in return. Not only do they get to go to school, they also get at least one warm meal a day and a uniform. If the families are especially poor Pastor Pierre will allow them to pay the fee over time, or pay in “sweat equity”, by which the parents or children donate a small portion of their time to the mission. Pastor Pierre is very lenient about how this fee is paid, but he won’t let a child go to school without the parents or students paying something. Pastor Pierre’s justification for this was that he “wanted the parents to be invested in the school”. The same logic is applied to the English club. Edvens and JR, the two English teachers, want the students to put money forward as a type of commitment. This made sense on a rational level, but there was something about it that didn’t really sit right with me.     

Today the English Club had a mid year celebration. There was no specific reason that today was the celebration, other than the fact that the American volunteers currently at the mission felt passionately about the English program and wanted to celebrate the student’s success. It was a nice party, and it brought to my attention just how dedicated the students were to BMSEC. The club is made up of over 60 students, and at least 20 of them performed a song or dance at the party. I thought the party would be packed, but it had about the same number of students that are always there. I realized that this is because almost every BMSEC meeting has perfect attendance.

The most impressive achievement of the English club however isn’t the students attendance, but their ability to speak English. Last fall I worked with the advanced students, and they were able to have coherent conversations with me about relatively complicated topics. Today they’re even better. We aren’t able to debate philosophy, but we can discuss every day topics like education, family, and their personal interests. The Friday after US Presidential election we discussed the differences between Barrack Obama and Mitt Romney. These kids can speak English better than I could ever speak French when I was in high school. 

While I was at the BMSEC celebration today, I realized that BMSEC is every American schoolteacher’s dream; it’s a class of nothing but motivated and focused students. Since I’ve been at La Croix I’ve worked on lots of after school activities, and not just academic activities like BMSEC, but recreational activities like baseball and soccer. All of these initiatives work out well at first, but then peter out sooner or later. The programs peter out not because their bad programs or because they’re poorly run, but sooner or later the kids lose interest and want to do something else. We had a great T ball league going for a while, but after a few weeks the kids lost interest and wanted to play soccer. This hasn’t happened with BMSEC. It was started last January with the help of Reeny Davidson, an American volunteer, and it has kept pushing along at full force ever since. Part of the students’ motivation comes from the enthusiasm of JR Jean and Edvens Milius, the two BMSEC teachers. They are extremely energetic and really motivate the students. But that’s only half of it. The other half of BMSEC’s success comes from the grit and determination the students put in to learning English.

I was talking with Edvens today, and he said that all of the students in BMSEC felt accountable to the club. Edvens felt that the factor driving this sense of accountability was the fee the students had to pay to the club. The fee created an expectation among the students; they invested in the club, and they wanted to make sure they got a return on their investment. Some of this return would come from JR and Edvens’ keen teaching ability, but some would have come from the students. I am sure the same principle holds for the school at large. The La Croix School has been nationally recognized as one of the best schools in Haiti. Because the parents have to invest something in the school, they expect that their children to do well. The expectation is even greater in the school however, because the parents are paying the fee, they make sure their children work hard, even if they aren’t intrinsically motivated.

This fee reminds me a little bit of the time I spent working for a start up last year. Venture capitalists invested in the company with the expectation that the company would make a profit. Their was an expectation between our company’s CEO and the investors that the company would execute the plan presented to the investors. The investors would continue to invest money in the company and the company would continue to produce profits. The parents continue to invest in the school, and the students continue with their education. Though the investment structure is different, the expectation between both parties is the same.

This is another one of those difficult lessons of development. I want to do everything I can for Haiti. I want to educate the people, and I know their poor so the last thing I think to do is charge them for the service I’m giving them. Yet even though this practice may seem stringent at first, it has unseen benefits, and those benefits are the difference between success and failure. Now my next task is to figure out a payment plan for the vocational school.   

*Don’t quote me on that number, I don’t remember the exact number but I know it’s around there.