Location: Caraballo Education Center, Batey Caraballo, Dominican Republic
Number of children participating: 95 children ages 3-6
DREAM Staff: 4 Montessori teachers and 1 cook
Important Donors: The Centro Franklin, US Embassy
In the Dominican Republic, the word “batey” (bah -- tay) denotes the neighborhood of resident cane cutters on land belonging to a large sugar company. The isolated town of Batey Caraballo lies among the abandoned sugar cane fields of Montellano in the province of Puerto Plata. It is made up of Dominican, Haitian Dominican and Haitian residents living in varying conditions of poverty on low-lying, overcrowded land that is prone to flooding. The first step to eliminating these conditions of extreme poverty and racial divide is to bring the community together through its most critical need: quality education for its children.
The Caraballo Montessori Preschool introduces disadvantaged young children to Montessori education while offering a daily food program to combat malnutrition. The program offers morning and afternoon classes and is run by four full-time local Montessori trained teachers, a DREAM Volunteer, and is overseen by the Montessori Program Director. These local teachers will continue to learn new methodologies and techniques guided by a certified Montessori trainer throughout the year, who will work side by side with them in the classroom and offer workshops to expand their skill. The families of enrolled students donate two weeks of volunteer hours per year to assist in the preschool, giving parents a chance to see firsthand how their children are benefiting from the program, while offsetting staffing costs for DREAM. The Montessori Preschool is free to all members of Caraballo and they have embraced it as their own. This historic initiative has provided one of the poorest communities in the North Coast the opportunity to pull itself out of extreme poverty and create a higher quality of life for its children.
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