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The Foundation Terre des hommes has been working in Haiti since 1989, and now, by an integral approach, is helping the children suffering from malnutrition and is also improving access to clean water and sanitation for families and the communities. In view of the repeated disasters since 2010, Tdh supplies emergency aid and improves the conditions for child protection within families, institutions and communities. This year, Tdh and Clowns Without Borders – USA (CWB) have renewed a fourth partnership in Haiti, whose concept is for the creation of shows by Haitian facilitators, training staff and social workers together with the adults in the communities, so the approach will be sustainable.
Long-term work of training professionals
Clowns Without Borders – USA went to Haiti , to Grand Goave (in the department of the West), with an assignment to train local facilitators, including those from the Socio-Community Centres (CSC) set up in 2010 by Tdh in collaboration with local associations. To do this, CWB prepared a ten-day training programme and showed performances of all kinds with facilitators, training staff and social workers who all work in the field of child protection and assistance.
CWB’s undertaking made it possible for the participants of the training course to put themselves in the position of becoming actors, writers and theatre directors. At the end of the course, the participants had assimilated the technical and pedagogic basics needed to be able to prepare and run a workshop for children independently.
Sensitive subjects approached through clowning
This year, Tdh and CWB wanted to go further in their approach. Work done in the initial stages and the shows themselves were aimed at arousing a spirit of openness to diversity and to the values of inclusion in the Haiti community.
The method of working proposed by CWB made it possible to share the experiences of individual lives within the community. The group of clowns were able to broach sensitive subjects such as the inclusion or exclusion of people who, in another context, are stigmatized for their sexual orientation.
Setting up practical activities
With this partnership, Tdh and CWB share human values and common objectives. In the framework of Tdh’s programme for protection, places for collective activities in the community have been designated with the goal of improving the children’s psychosocial wellbeing in terms of physical, cognitive, social and emotional development.
In 2012 and 2013, actions for mobilization and training to strengthen the abilities and skills of families and communities in terms of child protection focussed on more practical actions such as implementing activities for the prevention of child rights’ violations by the communities themselves. The collaboration with CWB is in line with this same idea.
