Rebuilding Haiti
On 12 January 2010, a devastating earthquake hit Haiti. ‘Viv Timoun’ helps to rebuild a destroyed school and orphanage in Port-au-Prince named MEVA (maison des enfants du village de l’avenir, children’s home of the future village) in an improved, larger and earthquake-resistant manner. In the meantime, the 200 children and 15 orphans continue to go to school in a provisonal building and get a free meal every day.
The Montessori Method
The school’s learning method is unique in Haiti: the Montessori method. This is a developed pedagogical education concept with the following principle: “help me to do it by myself”. From an early age the children are taught to autonomy. Maira Montessori and other pedagogues developed the Montessori method in 1907 as a pedagogical education concept which covers the timeframe from a toddler to a young adult. The concept bases on the approach that a child is the architect of his or her own existence. For this very reason the Montessori method used open tuition and individualized learning as learning modalities for the first time. The method can be characterised as ideological-experimental because the observation of the child by the teacher shall result in using appropriate didactic techniques which promote the learning process to a maximum extent. According to Maria Montessori her pedagogy is “a complex, pedagogic and social movement which has arisen from the child’s true normal nature.
The area of Carefour feuilles
Carrefour Feuillies consists of small stone houses built close to each other on a hill. The houses are hardly furnished and there is almost no access to electricity or a functioning wastewater system. Beginning at the Rue de Dalles many side streets and streets lead to the top of the hill, which are full of people, young women and men are carrying water buckets on their heads. Other people are trying to sell their goods to customers. It is a loud and chaotic athmosphere. Carrefour Feuillies is a very lively quarter, most of the people earn their living by selling goods, the market stalls are close together. The M.E.V.A. project offers a new perspective for the parents and children.
Partner foundation ‘Haiti Care’
The foundation ‘Haiti Care’ established the project MEVA in 2004. It was founded by Michael and Barbara Kaasch in 1993 and has helped many Haitians since. Natacha Marseille-Kaasch, who was sponsered by family Kaasch when she was a child and who has recently been adopted, is the head of the projects in Haiti. ‘Haiti Care’ runs an orphanage, a nursery, a kindergarten, a Montessori school as well as a computer and sewing school.
The association has been explicitely recommended by the organisation ‘Charity Watch, Germany’. In addition, the Haiti Care foundation won the award ‘Die Goldene Henne 2010′ in the category ‘Charity’ at a televised gala of the German TV station NDR on 15 September 2010.
Natacha Marseille, head of MEVA.
