Fondasyon Limyè Lavi (Light of Life Foundation) is dedicated to ending the restavek (child domestic slavery) system in Haiti. Limyè Lavi is using groundbreaking methods of community dialogue so that people can discuss, often for the first time, the damaging effects of use of children for domestic servitude, and can commit to ending abuses of children’s rights. On a bigger scale, it also broadcasts radio programs and is helping to build a national movement of grassroots activists against the restavek system.
Support Needed for
Emergency Projects in Haiti
"The quake gets pain in our soul, in our body.
But it didn't blow out the candle of our will
to keep on, on and on."
- Josue Pierre-Paul, Foundation Limyè Lavi
Donate to the "Haiti Fund"
Dear Friends,
I want to update you on the situation in Haiti, how your help is making a difference, and critical next steps.
The Latest News:
Since the earthquake, we have been able to contact two grassroots anti-slavery organizations that are supported by Free the Slaves: Limyè Lavi, based in Jacmel near the earthquake epicenter; and KOFAVIV, based in the hard-hit neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince.
I know you'll be relieved to hear that all Limyè Lavi staffers survived the earthquake. We've only learned about the safety of some KOFAVIV staff. Both groups tell us that their families, homes and communities have been devastated. KOFAVIV's office has been destroyed. Our anti-slavery colleagues, like many Haitians, are living in the streets.
"Between what you see on the television and the reality, there is a really big difference," Guerda Constant tells us from Limyè Lavi. "It's much more catastrophic."
Free the Slaves Three-Phased Response:
First, your contributions are already being used to send satellite phones and fuel, which are vital to call for help and reach stranded people. Free the Slaves has partnered with other groups to fly humanitarian supplies to Haiti. These groups have collected food and medicine, and they've organized special flights to deliver this aid directly to the communities where our Haitian colleagues are based. These communities remain underserved by major relief operations.
Second, we are helping to mobilize emergency child protection and trafficking-prevention programs. We are partnering with two networks of community-based groups that fight Haiti's entrenched system of child slavery. Their expertise and local knowledge will be vital to children's safety. Two experts, working for Free the Slaves and the group Beyond Borders, are heading to Haiti to ensure the UN's new child registration and tracing system is effective. Roughly 10 percent of Haiti's children were in domestic slavery before the earthquake, and there's a risk they'll be sent back into slavery now.
Third, we are beginning the effort to rebuild our partners' work. We are increasing assistance for Limyè Lavi's efforts to reach remote regions that remain cut-off. We know that a key school that helps prevent children from falling into slavery has been destroyed and will need to be rebuilt.
How You Can Help:
I know that many of you have already contributed to relief efforts, including our own. But it will take sustained support to rebuild Haiti's anti-slavery movement and protect the nation's children. I'm asking you to join us in this ongoing effort.
You can contribute today by selecting "Haiti Fund" in the designation window on the Free the Slaves online donation page. You can make a one-time or a recurring donation.
I will keep you up to date on our efforts as they develop. Thank you for your continued support.
Jolene Smith
Free the Slaves CEO
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Limyè Lavi's work is the subject of this slideshow. To view the slideshow with captions, click on the "options" button (lower right corner) and select "Always show title and description." To control the speed, use the navigation buttons (lower left corner).
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Limyè Lavi is a Haitian organization dedicated to ending the restavek (child domestic slavery) system. Slavery has been illegal in Haiti longer than in any other nation (Haiti abolished slavery nearly sixty years before the United States). Yet the sending of children to work for other families continued. And as Haiti’s economy collapsed (it is now the poorest nation in the western hemisphere), the system of restavek mushroomed, now affecting as many as one in ten of Haiti’s children, according to the UN. Ideally, the child is enrolled in school by the household he or she is sent to, and treated like one of the family. In practice, this rarely happens: the child’s day is filled with chores, and even the youngest children are expected to fetch heavy buckets of water, hand-wash clothes, carry loads to and from the marketplace, and work in the fields–often working 14 hour days for no pay.
Children in the restavek system suffer a kind of apartheid, reduced to a subjugated and even sub-human status in their household and in society–sleeping on the floor, dressed in rags, eating leftovers, and often beaten. Three-quarters are girls, and many are viewed by men in the family as convenient objects for sexual exploitation. Girls are often abruptly expelled from the household if they become pregnant. Successive generations have grown to adolescence in this atmosphere of shame, neglect and abuse–and Limyè Lavi believes that this is not only diminishing individual lives but is causing uncalculated damage to the development of communities and society as a whole.
Limyè Lavi’s first task is to break the taboo surrounding the restavek system: the practice is so woven into the fabric of Haitian life that it has rarely been talked about or addressed within communities. It is often seen as inevitable. Also, because of the hunger, lack of schools and lack of jobs in the countryside and slums, even parents who are aware of the conditions faced by children in servitude can convince themselves that they are doing their child a favor by letting them go away. For Limyè Lavi, there are no quick fixes: instead they enable communities to face up to the effects of restavek, and decide on their own ways to address the root causes. They match this community-based process with larger-scale initiatives: for example, to raise awareness about restavek, and push for school systems that work for all Haiti’s children.
Since 1993, Limyè Lavi has assisted thousands of children in the restavek system, through its educational support to 57 literacy centers run by a partner organization. Now Limyè Lavi wants to do much more to bring the system to an end. It is:
- Running training sessions for Creole-speaking grassroots leaders (church pastors, health workers, teachers, activists, etc.) where they learn how to raise awareness about child slavery and how to take action together to protect vulnerable children.
- Arranging “Open Space” dialogues and follow-up work in communities most affected by the restavek system. These dialogues are proving to be a channel for genuine and deep engagement, as people start to speak frankly about the impact of the system on their own lives and the abuses they are seeing.
- Linking up with Haiti’s most popular radio station for monthly broadcasts to raise awareness. For example, through former child slaves speaking about their lives, and phone-in discussions about the problem and what communities are doing.
- Leading a national network (based in Port-au-Prince) called Down with Child Servitude, through which over 25 organizations active on education and services to children can have dialogue with the government and share ideas for reducing child slavery and protecting victims. Limyè Lavi is replicating this network in regions where they are carrying out training.
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