Haiti: Blue Helmets Raise Funds

Haiti: Blue Helmets Raise Funds And Help Rebuild Schools Damaged In Hurricanes

New York, Dec 16 2008 6:10PM

The United Nations peacekeeping mission in Haiti, known as MINUSTAH , collected over $20,000 and put its muscle behind renovation work on four schools in the storm-battered island.

Personnel from the Argentine military contingent of the UN force got behind a fundraising effort to rehabilitate the schools which were battered during four back-to-back storms that struck the impoverished nation from mid-August to mid-September.

The 54-year-old Lheerisson Carius public school in the poor Martissant neighbourhood of the Caribbean country’s capital, Port-au-Prince, was among the schools selected for restoration work. The other three schools were in the northern town of Gonaïves, the city hit hardest by the devastating storms.

The Lheerisson Carius school had become a real threat to its 2,176 students and almost 60 teachers, as the roofs and walls had deteriorated over time leaving 22 aged classrooms in a desperate state of disrepair, according to the mission’s website.

“We were afraid the whole time that the walls would give way and roofs fall on the children and us,” the director of the institution, Claude Pierre Manneville, told MINUSTAH.

The repair work, costing around $4,500, was entrusted to the Sri Lankan blue helmets at the peacekeeping operation, who after three weeks had completely rebuilt three classrooms and the school yard.

MINUSTAH officials and personnel, government officials, students and faculty attended a ceremony on 4 December, in which the school was handed back to its authorities.

ENDS

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