“Ask questions” may not be the most comfortable thing that comes to a teacher’s mind when she or he is in the front of a classroom of 60+ students. But that is part of what 58 secondary teachers discussed in their four-week program of professional training this summer in Jérémie, Haiti. The program surveyed child-centered approaches to teaching – encourage students to ask questions, solve problems, work cooperatively, and integrate information relevant to the children and to society, such as communication, health, civics and the environment. Read more »

If Joseph Heller where to write Catch-22 today, I often think that Haiti would make a pretty decent setting for the story. Imagine that you had to choose between providing ecological stability for your children or cooking their dinner. Now, I’ll admit that it really isn’t that difficult of a decision, but it is one that countless Haitians face on a daily basis, and is the reason why merely ‘educating’ Haitians on the evils of deforestation will never effectively address the environmental disasters facing the country. Read more »