The Restavek Freedom Foundation Blog

Great meeting with parents, from Francoise.

Francoise, one of our Child Advocates in our Port-au-Prince office, writes about a recent meeting with host parents.

> Last Thursday, Nadine and I organized a meeting with some of the host parents of our children. The main goal, it was to talk them about the exam results of the kids. We believe the children can do better and wanted to motivate the parents to take their own responsabilities about the kids and give them time to study at home and do their homework.

We were very encouraged by the meeting. In addition to talking about the academic situation of the children, we also talked about the system of restavek. I asked them to think about two 8-year old children, one that was their own and one that was not. I then asked them to think about why one should do all the work, while the other child played and had freedom. Each of the parents gave their opinion. They all agreed, abusing a child is a terrible thing and they promised us, they are going to do their best to ameliorate the situation of the kids. I suggested to them that they could become leaders in their community and stand up against abuse and for the kind treatment of all children.