UN's Experiment in Haiti

New Zealand Listener, Volume 24, Issue 623, 8 June 1951, Page 7

UN's Experiment in Haiti

EW ZEALANDERS will have a special interest in a new BBC feature, Experiment in Haiti, to be broadcast by 2YC at 8.0 p.m. on Sunday, June 17. It is the story of the Marbial Valley Project, Unesco’s experiment in fundamental education to raise the standard of living of a people, of which Dr. C. E. Beeby, Director of Education, was in charge during the 18 months he spent as assistant Director-General of Unesco. Dr. Beeby told The Listener that when he went to Unesco early in 1948 the Marbial Valley Project had just started. Conditions in the valley were appalling, with over-population, bad farming, serious soil erosion. People were dying of starvation, and seed corn was being eaten. There was practically no sanitation, and illiteracy was widespread. Religious feuds divided the people. The road into the valley was

frequently impassable, and the first Unesco workers who got in went down with malaria. On top of all this, negotiations with the Haitian Government (which had suggested the project) were very difficult. "The situation when I went to Unesco looked hopeless," Dr. Beeby said, "and I don’t mind saying that I didn’t think we could do any ‘sort of job. There was every sort of trouble. I wrote to the President of Haiti saying that until we could get a road, accommodation for our staff, a pure water supply, an end of religious feuds, and a guarantee of continuous assistance from the Haitian Government, we could not go ahead. We made a grant for food and. seed. "I thought that would be the end. But the people had had a taste of something, and a few weeks later we had word that they had got together and used their very primitive co-operative organisation for a communal job. They had built an all-weather road, provided accommodation for some staff, dug a well, and promised to settle their religious differences. They had also started to organise a communal system

of feeding the children." Unesco put 14,500 dollars into provision of staff and some equipment for the project, the Haitian Government promising to pay an equal amount. Before long a new market, a new slaughterhouse and some latrines (all of which were formerly in the bed of the stream) had been built, other conveniences were provided, and a factory that made mats for sale to the Government was working. A school was started and work begun on a community centre, which was now finished. The Marbial Valley Project was one of the first jobs on which the specialised agencies of the United Nations worked together, Dr. Beeby said. The World Health Organisation sent a doctor and a nurse, and the Food and Agriculture Organisation gave advice with farming. Language had been a real difficulty in the educational programme. A stand- —

ard system of spelling in Creole, the language spoken by the people in the valley, had to be worked out before school books could be prepared. The project for the Marbial Valley aimed to use fundamental education as a means of improving existing methods of cultivation and soil conservation, promoting the development of small industries and improving health conditions. It was planned as a pilot project -a concentrated experiment in which new or well-tried methods of community education were to be tested and applied within a small experimental area.

Dr. Beeby said that as a pilot project -in this case a community had been made out of a group of people who were not a community-it was extremely interesting and might be of considerable value from the viewpoint of technical assistance throughout the world. With a very small amount of assistance, a group —

of people had been encouraged to help themselves. Experiment in Haiti is one of two programmes on the Caribbean area by Leonard Cottrell and Wynford Vaughan Thomas. The second, Portrait of Jamaica, may be heard from 2YC at 8.0 p.m. on Sunday, June 24. pte