OLPC Haiti

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Haiti is the poorest country in the Caribbean. It is getting XOs from the Give One Get One program. Initially they will use English and standard French, but a localization into Kreyòl has been started. The Haitian people is truly thirsty for knowledge and embraces technological changes avidly.

All Haitian children speak Haitian Creole. French is used by only a minority in casual situations, although it is the language of books. Since 1979, Haitian Creole has had an official spelling and the national education reform has mandated the use of Haitian Creole in elementary grades. Many Haitian families trust tradition and continue to want French books, although educators know that in order to read a child must understand the language. There are many texts and textbooks written in Haitian Creole, but most bookstores in Haiti carry only French books. Since the 6th grade national test requires a Creole text, all schools teach reading and writing of Creole, even when French dominates instruction time. In the majority of schools, even though the books are in French, the teachers themselves are not fluent in French. Since 80% of schools in Haiti are own and run by private individuals and entities, enforcing national reform efforts is quasi impossible.

Dr. Paul Farmer of Partners in Health (Zanmi LaSanté), in addition to organizing health care for a million of the poorest Haitians, has written extensively about the history and development needs of Haiti, and was the subject of a book by Tracy Kidder, Mountains Beyond Mountains.

Haitian Creole is a very dynamic language which is constantly creating new words to adapt to the conjectures of the moments. The Haitian people are known for their extensive oral traditions and oral literature. Knowledge is most often transmitted orally, therefore individual's memories are most adapted to oral learning. For example, while many Americans no longer memorize any phone numbers, Haitians who use phone keep friends and family phone lists in their brain. This is just one example of how people practice memorizing information. Haitian spend a lot of time telling stories, discussing issues, and discussing life. People in Haiti use extensive repertoire of proverbs as cognitive tools to summarize the reasons for actions and events.

The Haitian community is a global community. Because of political persecution and economic hardship, Haitian people have emigrated and settled in the United States, Canada, and several Caribbean islands and nations. They constitute a large portion of the workforce in the Dominican Republic, Turks and Caicos, the Bahamas. There are also many Haitians in France, the French West Indies, and French Guayana. Most Diaspora Haitian keep in touch with relatives in Haiti and provide financial support to some of their relatives. Remittances are the most significant contributor of foreign currency to the Haitian economy, and amount to more than a billion dollars a year. In order to keep communication around the world Haitians use cassette recordings and cellular telephone. The need for cheap communication has brought some internet innovations such as internet phones very quickly to Haiti. Although most Haitians do not own PC's, there are Cybercafés in many towns, where people go to write emails to relatives, surf the internet, and make phone calls. Free internet access is rare but is available in many of the 55 libraries funded by FOKAL, the Haiti branch of the Soros foundation

Progress

InterAmerican Development Bank HA-T1093 : Pilot of the One Laptop per Child Model in Haiti

[Community-news] OLPC News (2008-03-22):

David Cavallo and Claudia Urrea met with Guy Serge Pompilus, coordinator for the laptop initiative in Haiti, and the InterAmerican Development Bank in Washington to continue planning for the initial roll-out schools and to build the team in Haiti to support the project. The bank has contracted a group to perform assessment and we were able gain alignment on how to broaden the framework beyond the school walls. Edith Ackermann, Tony Earls, and Maya Carlson are developing additional assessment instruments.

Links

• Haitian creole encyclopedia Wikipedia : http://ht.wikipedia.org/
• Haitian creole library Wikisource : http://ht.wikisource.org/

These projects below are still discussing (due to lack of contributions, not allocated web domain, in development) :

• Haitian creole dictionary Wiktionary : http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/wt/ht/
• Haitian creole quotes WikiQuote : http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/wt/ht/
• Haitian creole web University Wikiversity : http://beta.wikiversity.org/wiki/Paj_Prensipal