One of the questions we get most often is what will our students do after they graduate. After all, Haiti’s economy is chronically difficult, employment in the formal economy is notoriously bad, and getting an education certainly doesn’t guarantee a person a job afterwards.

One of the ways we deal with this at The Children’s Academy is to offer students the opportunity to learn different skills; skills that can provide them some options to make money once they finish school.

With this in mind, when the school hired Mackinson, a trained Montessori teacher, the fact that he also knew some masonry – how to install tiles – made him that much more exciting of a hire.

Recently, The Children’s Academy took advantage of his skills in order to offer some of our older students the opportunity to learn how to install tiles. It was a part of a two week “Learning for Life” summer session, where students also had the opportunity to learn other salable skills like cutting hair, soap-making, giving manicures/pedicures, and hair braiding.

The session was a great success and we aim to do it again next year, hopefully adding even more options for students to learn new skills.