ACE Haiti joins the Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child
The Institute for Educational Initiatives’ ACE Haiti program, a project dedicated to improving the lives of Haitian children, families, and communities through cutting-edge research and implementation of early childhood, literacy, and community development interventions, has joined the Institute’s Global Center for the Development of the Whole Child (GC-DWC).
ACE Haiti has worked in Haiti to understand the unique challenges of the Haitian education system and develop innovative programming to address these challenges. The team, led by Kate Schuenke-Lucien, has implemented the most successful early grade literacy program in Haiti to date and established a network of 340 partner schools. Additionally, the team engages teachers in a comprehensive training program to equip them with best practices in classroom management and pedagogical approaches.
ACE Haiti began as the response of the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) to the 2010 earthquake that devastated the country. It will now be known as GC-DWC Haiti.
“As ACE Haiti’s work expanded to improve childhood literacy, our team began working with experts such as Dr. Neil Boothby, who specializes in whole child development,” said John Staud, the acting director of the Institute for Educational Initiatives and the executive director of ACE. “When Neil joined the Institute and started the Global Center, with a particular focus on working with parishes to improve the lives of children, it made so much sense to take advantage of the synergy of the Haiti work at ACE and the Global Center’s vast global expertise.”
Established in 2019, the GC-DWC leverages science-based innovations and a whole child development approach to create pathways out of adversity for the world’s most vulnerable children. GC-DWC Haiti will continue to collaborate with ACE and its other peers and programs in the Institute, and this transition will enhance the team’s capacity to leverage the latest in best practices for global development.
Working in collaboration with the GC-DWC since 2019, the Haiti team has been able to extend their programming to adopt a whole child approach in order to address a wider range of children’s developmental needs including health, nutrition, and psychosocial wellbeing. Leveraging the global development expertise and experience of the GC-DWC team, GC-DWC Haiti’s transition to the Global Center will further enable the team to engage a wide range of stakeholders who impact Haitian children’s day-to-day lives and embed the latest in social enterprise and sustainability into their programming. These practices will ensure maximum benefit and long-term efficacy of the team’s programming.
“Our transition to the Global Center marks an exciting moment in our initiative’s history as we embrace a whole child approach to development in which the Global Center’s diverse team has deep experience and expertise,” said Schuenke-Lucien, the director of GC-DWC Haiti. “We will continue to carry with us ACE’s call to serve the most vulnerable children among us and look forward to building on the incredible work ACE has empowered us to do thus far.”
