After her mother died, Manoucheka was forced to drop out of school. “My father could not afford to pay for school tuition,” she explains. “When my mother was alive, my life was much better. She struggled to take care of us and was working very hard to help me. When she died, my life changed completely.”

In Haiti alone, thousands of teens are like Manoucheka: out of school and living on the streets, in domestic servitude, or with families too poor to provide them an education. Manoucheka’s own life quickly unraveled as she followed a path familiar to girls living in poverty, from dropout to vagrant to teen mother.

But Manoucheka has begun to find a way out. With her two year-old daughter enrolled in school, she is participating in the IDEJEN program, and has completed the basic education and life skills component. “My main motivation to come to this center came from the belief that I could learn technical skills and have basic education classes,” she says.

"We start where the young people are," says Melanie Beauvy, IDEJEN Program Manager. "For instance, we don't rely on textbooks to teach literacy—we use magazines and newspapers instead. To teach mathematics, we use real scenarios. For example, many of these kids need to handle money on the street, so we start there." In addition, center staff work with a psychologist to learn about the emotional challenges out-of-school youth face and how best to reach them.

Today, Manoucheka has an internship at a food market where she receives mentoring on business skills. When she finishes the program, she plans to get a job at a grocery store. Ultimately, she hopes to own her own supermarket and become an employer for other young people like herself.