Special Report: Posted April 12, 2010
Haiti, 90 Days Later: Responding to Survivors' Needs
Country: Haiti
In the 90 days since catastrophe struck Haiti, Mercy Corps has delivered tons of emergency food supplies, created jobs for nearly 3,000 Haitians, and restored a sense of normalcy to more than 8,500 traumatized children.
One of the first parts of our emergency response was the delivery of tons of food — such as rice, beans, flour, salt and oil — to Port-au-Prince's beleaguered main hospital. Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps
Since January 12, our team has grown from a handful of emergency-aid veterans to more than 85 seasoned professionals, including 65 Haitians. Each day, they work in Port-au-Prince's poorest neighborhoods and displacement camps, delivering critical aid to families and communities, to help this devastated country rebuild.
Our cash-for-work program is paying survivors a fair daily wage to clean and repair earthquake damage, putting cash back in households and local economies. Photo: Miguel Samper for Mercy Corps
Our work began with food deliveries to some of Port-au-Prince's neediest areas, including its beleaguered and overcrowded main hospital. Fifteen tons of food provided the first hot meals that hundreds of patients and staff had eaten since the earthquake. We've also fed 30,000 people in one of the city's poorest neighborhoods.
Stephania Dely, 8, was drawing in her house when the earthquake struck Haiti. Her mother was able to grab her and take her to the safety of the front yard. Today, our Comfort for Kids program is helping her heal from the trauma of the disaster and its aftermath. Photo: Miguel Samper for Mercy Corps
We also responded quickly to another pressing need: jobs. We're paying nearly 3,000 earthquake survivors to clean up their neighborhoods, distribute food and build infrastructure that helps with water and sanitation. These workers have been able to use their hard-earned income to support their families, buy much-needed supplies and put money back into the local economy. Ultimately, their work will help result in drainage ditches that will protect neighborhoods against flooding during the rainy season, clean water systems to keep families healthy and latrines that will serve 42,000 people.
In the coming months, Mercy Corps will help survivors like 19-year-old Noulianne St. Juste through job creation and other economic programs. Photo: Miguel Samper for Mercy Corps
Our team also listened to the overwhelmed parents of young children who were struggling with the trauma wrought by the earthquake. And — just as we had in disasters ranging from Hurricane Katrina to China's Sichuan earthquake — we responded with Comfort for Kids, a program that trains parents, teachers and other caregivers on how to meet the unique needs of children who've suffered loss. Three months after the earthquake, we've trained more than 425 caregivers who have already reached an estimated 8,500 children. Our goal is to train 5,000 adults who will reach 150,000 children, helping them heal their post-traumatic stress and resume healthy, happy childhoods.
Food, water and sanitation, cash-for-work and counseling for children have been our four main priorities over these first three months — priorities that survivors helped us identify right away. Today, survivors have an ongoing need for jobs. So we're hard at work with our partners — including Fonkoze, Haiti's largest microfinance organization — to create opportunities for job training and small businesses. This is absolutely critical for reviving an economy that has barely been stirring for years. Together, we can put thousands to work in meaningful, long-term skilled jobs.
When we arrived in Haiti three months ago, we faced not only the challenges that the earthquake brought, but enormous obstacles that have existed for generations. But we're working to turn this crisis into opportunity for thousands of Haitians. It will take years — not months — of work to help this country and its deserving, inspiring people achieve everything they can. But, with your ongoing support, we can do it.
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Haiti, 90 Days Later: Responding to Survivors' Needs:
Blog Post: Posted March 31, 2010, 2:46 pm by Bill Holbrook
Why we should give more
Country: Haiti
Topics: Emergencies
Today in New York, donors will be asked to provide $11.5 billion to help Haiti recover from the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake. Since the U.S. government has already provided more than $700 million in assistance — a number that will likely rise — some might ask: Why should we give more?
To these skeptics, I have two responses. First, more is getting done than you think. And second, more needs to be done than you can imagine.
Nearly two months ago, I left my home in Montgomery County bound for Port-au-Prince to lead the relief and recovery efforts of the international aid agency Mercy Corps. Haiti is near and dear to my heart. I first lived there in 1996, I have been married to the same wonderful Haitian-American woman for 12 years now, and Haiti has become a home-away-from-home for our family.
I've come to know the country well, and even with its many charms, Haiti can be an extremely challenging place to work. The situation was disastrous before this disaster ever occurred; the people of Haiti have been exploited and impoverished for the better part of 200 years.
What do you get when you layer that reality with a powerful earthquake in the country's overcrowded, under-resourced urban core? Logistical chaos. Relief efforts may not have been perfect, but the obstacles — a collapsed port, the serious loss of scarce human resources, collapsed centers of government and response, a scattered population still suffering the effects of shock — have been extreme.
Still, great strides have been made. The United Nations and international aid groups are providing more than 1.2 million people in Port-au-Prince with clean water each day. Food is being distributed in massive quantities; the World Food Program estimates it has reached more than 4 million people since Jan. 12. The Haitian government announced that schools will reopen tomorrow.
This week, donors will grapple with how to help Haiti use this very tragic but pivotal moment in history to become something better — a viable state with a viable economy. I would encourage donors to read the analysis of the quake's impact prepared by the Haitian government, the U.N. and other international organizations, and prepare to act boldly. Haitians know what they need, and I hope we will keep the faith and listen to them.
Large swaths of the population seek out a subsistence living in the country's vast, informal economy, selling anything they can get their hands on. But almost every Haitian would abandon that hand-to-mouth existence for a real job with a future. They need skills training, jobs and private-sector investment.
Today, Haiti must resurrect a middle economy that was lost many years ago. This would offer hundreds of thousands of decent-paying jobs — transforming a largely unskilled work force stuck at the bottom of the economic pyramid into a skilled work force. But Haitians need international assistance to make this possible. Industries such as apparel production, agriculture and tourism should be nurtured in both the provinces and the capital city so that Haitians can participate formally in a growing, vibrant grass-roots economy.
Perhaps the most difficult proposal to donors will be to bolster the Haitian government. In the last 100 years of Haitian governance, many things have gone very wrong. But no country can make meaningful progress without resourced and functional government institutions. President René Préval's government has had limited capacity, but its vision for Haiti is solid, and it has been working effectively with international partners. While cooperation and progress continue, the Haitian government merits our support.
Haiti faces huge obstacles and a troubled history, but that should not make the international community shy away. If mold-breaking change is ever going to happen in Haiti, it will happen now, with all of us — Haitians, donors, the business sector, aid groups — focused on the end game of building the future that Haitians envision for themselves and deserve.
(Editor's note: This column originally appeared in The Baltimore Sun.)
Haiti, 90 Days Later: Responding to Survivors' Needs:
Blog Post: Posted March 14, 2010, 11:23 pm by Kokoévi Sossouvi
Cash-for-work and planning for the future
Country: Haiti
Two Mercy Corps workers talk with 62-year-old Rosemarie Joseph in her makeshift tent at the Lycée Jean-Marie Vincent displacement camp in Port-au-Prince. Photo: Mercy Corps Haiti
I met 62-year-old Rosemarie Joseph at the Lycée Jean-Marie Vincent, a spontaneous camp for displaced families on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital. Rosemarie resettled on the high school grounds with 80 other earthquake affected families with the six youngest of her eight children on January 25. Now they're living in a tiny tent made of a collection of personal and borrowed bed linens, because her house was severely damaged in the January earthquake.
Like many others, Rosemarie lost all her possessions in the quake, but she’s happy she and her family survived. Her oldest son is 36 and her youngest only nine years old. Her husband died a long time ago — she cannot quite recollect the year.
“We were never wealthy people," Rosemarie comments. "Before the quake, I used to run a small petty trading business selling bread, charcoal and little things that people would need. And with that, we could to get by, even if we didn’t always manage to eat more than one good meal a day. But now, we go hungry for days running. When we’re lucky enough to find something to eat, we have to borrow cooking utensils from another family in the camp, because we’ve lost everything.”
It only takes one glance around to see the level of destitution that is now Rosemarie’s everyday reality. As we sit together in what the place she must now call home, there are only torn pieces of cardboard for them to sleep on. There is one pillow, a small desk and a few empty plastic water bottles. The “tent” is exposed to the heavy sunshine and the rain. With rainy season on its way, it’s easy to imagine how much worse things will get.
Unlike others, Rosemarie has no family abroad who can send remittances to help her. The camp at Lycée Jean-Marie Vincent hasn’t been mapped out by the United Nations yet and no humanitarian aid has reached the communities settled here.
Luckily, the Mercy Corps team arrived here and has started two programs: the Mercy Corps water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and cash-for-work programs, which work hand in hand. So, in addition to cash-for-work, we plan to provide access to clean water and latrines, because the current facilities are now overstretched with the massive displacement.
One of Rosemarie’s sons was selected to take part in the cash-for-work program, which is aimed at supporting the immediate needs of earthquake-affected populations through community work such as rubble clearing and digging of drainage canals. Participants are enlisted in the program for 20 days and paid at the UN-endorsed daily rate of 180 Haitian Gourdes — about US $4.50 — for six hours of work.
Rosemarie and her family urgently need food and improved shelter but, when asked what her household would do with their first cash-for-work payment, Rosemarie immediately replied, “We'll start back my old trading business. We need to get back on our feet you know!”
Haiti, 90 Days Later: Responding to Survivors' Needs:
Blog Post: Posted March 3, 2010, 11:35 am by Linda Mason
Unleashing the Haitian enterprising spirit
Country: Haiti
On my recent trip to Haiti, I was filled first with despair and then hope. Despair for the overwhelming human and physical destruction. Hope because of the quiet strength, resilience, and determination of the Haitian people.
I spent my time in the sprawling tent camps in Port-au-Prince. It's estimated that 1 million people now live in these camps — with no water or sanitation and where people sleep under bed sheets tied to sticks in the ground. The city is now populated with amputees, orphans and the homeless. This was a desperately poor population before the earthquake. What little they had is now gone.
Let us not forget that this is a disaster of extreme poverty. This earthquake did not need to result in such devastation. The Northridge earthquake that took place in southern California in 1994 similarly struck a dense urban area and was nearly as strong as Haiti's quake (a 6.7), yet its toll of human misery wasn't nearly as high. Sixty people died in California; as many as 230,000 people have died in Haiti. People died because they lived in shanties perched on hillsides, because they were in buildings that were poorly built in a crowded city of three million on a fault line with no building codes.
As I spent time in the tent camps, I thought, 'How are Haitians going to survive, let alone rebuild?' The answer became clear to me as I watched how Haitians live their daily lives. Everywhere I went, they were making the most of meager resources — washing a shirt in a plastic bottle of water, taking scraps of food and stretching them into a meal, scavenging through rubble to find material to rebuild a hut. Their enterprising spirit and drive for survival sprung quickly to life after the earthquake.
In one small tent, I met Charlene Malebranche. There she lived with her husband and two little girls, Dahlia and Sahina, and a 16-year-old friend who had lost her entire family. They had retrieved cinder blocks from the rubble to make an uncomfortable floor that would keep them off the mud when the rainy season begins. Charlene invited me to sit in her tent. She talked about how they all sleep holding each other since they are afraid of another earthquake. Her two girls never leave her side. She takes some of the rice she has received in distributions and makes a traditional dish, akasan, to sell for a bit of cash on the street. She smiled warmly throughout our conversation and showed a quiet but fierce determination to ensure her family's survival.
Charlene Malebranche and her daughters. Photo: Linda Mason/Mercy Corps
I witnessed this same strength and resolve when I met another mother, Haiti's First Lady, Elisabeth Delatour Preval. The earthquake was a great equalizer. Like so many others, her home and place of work were destroyed along with most government buildings. I met with the First Lady in the government's makeshift headquarters in a small police station near the airport.
First Lady Preval is passionate about the needs of Haiti's children and parents. Half of Haiti's people are under 18. Madame Preval echoed the sentiments of Charlene. The half-million children living in the tent camps are frightened and clutching their parents, who are equally as afraid. I went to Haiti on behalf of Mercy Corps and Bright Horizons. They have created a Comfort for Kids program, implemented after 9/11, Hurricane Katrina and the Sichuan earthquake in China to help parents and caregivers effectively respond to children's emotional needs and symptoms of trauma. Collaborating with First Lady Preval, Mercy Corps is now conducting this training program throughout the day in some of the city's massive tent camps.
Prior to the earthquake, 70 percent of the population survived on less than $2 a day. This extreme poverty existed despite, or perhaps because of, the massive amounts of aid that have been pumped into the country for decades. Yet I marveled as I saw street vendors and markets spring back into life within days of the earthquake. There is a deeply embedded positive, entrepreneurial spirit in the Haitian culture.
There is hope that now Haiti can be rebuilt stronger and better. Aid agencies should build on this enterprising spirit and give people the tools to help themselves. One effective approach is the cash-for-work programs that are being introduced by forward-thinking relief agencies. Residents can decide what is most needed for their community, and workers are paid a daily wage to clear rubble, dig drainage ditches or build latrines. With their daily wages, families can buy the things they need most with money they have earned — restoring dignity — while also pumping money into the Haitian economy at a time when it is most needed.
Aid agencies should creatively support and encourage local initiative and enterprise. Cash grants or loans should be made to small and medium size entrepreneurs and business people. A street vendor can use a small grant to purchase a push-cart for her wares; a small business person can use a loan to refurbish an apparel production facility. Technology can be used to provide banking through cell phones, which nearly every poor family owns.
As international donors prepare to gather this month in New York City, they must remember that Haitians, both poor like Charlene Malebranche and powerful like First Lady Preval, will ensure the country's recovery. There is hope that Haiti can be rebuilt out of its ruins, but it will take both a long-term commitment from the donor community and a resolve to build on Haitians' own initiative, rather than imposing our own.
(Editor's note: this story originally appeared on The Huffington Post.)
Haiti, 90 Days Later: Responding to Survivors' Needs:
Blog Post: Posted February 19, 2010, 6:51 pm by Miguel Samper
Video: Helping Haiti's children laugh, play and sing again
Country: Haiti
Today I visited a daycare where Mercy Corps' Comfort for Kids program is helping dozens of young earthquake survivors to celebrate their lives and friends again. Here's a video I took that shows just how amazing the spirit of these games and this music really is.
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