In Qui-Croit, children are capable, motivated, and ready to learn. What they lack is stability.
Your sponsorship provides the steady support that keeps them in school and on a path to a brighter future.
In Qui-Croit, families have been displaced. The community's only school was shut down and occupied by a gang. Words In Action has secured a safe place for children to learn — but safety alone does not guarantee education.
On February 1, 2025, armed gangs stormed Qui-Croit, killing innocent people — including children. Nearly 600 students, from kindergarten through 9th grade, were forced to flee with their families. The community’s only school was seized and occupied by gangs. Homes were burned. The families of Qui-Croit, mostly small-scale farmers, lost everything: their land, their livestock, their livelihoods.
Today, these families live as displaced people. Parents who once fed their children from their own farms now have no income and no way to pay even modest school fees. Children who were already walking for over an hour through mountainous terrain to reach a classroom are now walking even farther, many of them almost barefoot, with shoes that have holes in the soles or with the uppers completely detached.
Words In Action secured an empty complex in Fort Jacques and reopened school operations so these children would not lose the year. What started with under 100 students has grown to nearly 300 children, ages 3 to 18, showing up every day despite everything they have been through. But safety alone does not guarantee education. Without sponsorship, there is no tuition. Without tuition, there are no teachers. Without a daily meal, often the only meal these children receive, hunger makes learning impossible.
Every sponsored child receives a complete “Learning Continuity Package” — tuition, books, uniforms, a hot meal every day, and a safe space to study — because removing even one barrier can be the difference between a child who stays in school and a child who disappears from the classroom forever.
It means a six-year-old learns to read instead of working the fields. It means a teenager discovers she can become a nurse, an engineer, a leader. It means a community that lost nearly everything begins to rebuild itself — not with concrete and steel, but with knowledge, confidence, and purpose.
When a child stays in school, the ripple effect reaches far beyond the classroom. Families gain hope. Teachers gain reason to stay. And a generation that was told their future was over begins to prove otherwise.