It’s supported by PADELAN, or the Project to Assist Local Development and Agroforestry in Nippes, a collaboration between Oxfam Quebec and the Ministry of Agriculture that uses money from the Canadian International Development Agency to fund projects identified as priorities by local development committees.
And in Anse-a-Veau, this store was one of those priorities--desperately needed.
Several doors down, Mayor Telisme Dutelien sits behind his desk in a small office in the town hall. On a mid-May morning, the room is dim and sweltering. No lights shine and no fan churns: the community’s generator, which provided electricity, stopped working the month before, explains Dutelien. It’s just one of the problems that has plagued Anse-a-Veau in recent years, ever since its population began to drop in the 1980s, dragging the community’s commercial vitality with it.
The decline of Anse-a-Veau is symptomatic of what has happened across Haiti as Port-au-Prince, the capital and hub of opportunity, sucked people from the countryside for jobs, for schools, for a better life—or the promise of one. But in January, disaster struck there: an earthquake leveled great swaths of the city, killing 230,000 people and shaking the nation to its core. That calamity brought into sharp focus the drawbacks of centering so much of a country’s lifeblood in one sprawling place.
Now, the call for decentralization, long a national goal, is again sounding loud and clear. As international donors promise enormous financial resources to help Haiti rebuild, what are the steps it needs to take to answer that call? Some ideas can be found in the initiatives Oxfam had launched before the quake—programs based on the needs of communities, as voiced by the people who live in them.
They are small, but steady steps and the store in Anse-a-veau is one of them. Open since December 2009, it operates six days a week, its shelves of canned milk and crackers, matches and razor blades plugging the household needs local growers can’t fill themselves.
Nearby, in Paillant, Guerline Rubin stands at the entry to her house, carrying a stack of cardboard crates loaded with eggs. They are from the chickens clucking in a henhouse in the corner of the yard—another of PADELAN’s community projects designed to help local families find ways to boost their incomes.
The chickens belong to Rubin’s father, a participant in the egg-production project which has targeted 20 households in the area. Each of them received 60 chickens, whose value the farmers will slowly pay back—at the rate of 500 gourdes a month, or $12.40—to the local development council that provided the birds. They lay about an egg a day.
For Rubin, that means trips to the market at least twice a week to sell her family’s cache. She ports the fragile eggs via tap-tap, a small colorful bus that lurches over the dirt roads between villages. Each egg fetches about five gourdes, netting Rubin’s family about 2 gourdes, or about 5 cents.
Added up, that bit of income becomes a precious resource for farmers trying to put food on their tables, pay for medical care, and have a little cash left over to invest in a hardier variety of seeds that can promise a decent harvest—and give families a reason to stay in the countryside.
A few hills over, Marie Camel Rubin bends over her field of beans, corn, and manioc. Behind her, in the distance, a low building rises from the sea of green—it’s a new mill built with the help of PADELAN to grind corn and sorghum. Open six days a week, the mill saves local farmers the time-consuming trip via bus to another community to have their grain ground.
Rubin is one of the local farmers happy to have their own mill nearby. And while it saves her time, she still struggles to make ends meet. Weeding along with her through the rows is her son, Noel Jolins. He’s 8—and he would be in school if his mother could afford the fees. But he had to quit when she couldn’t scrape together the money to send him.
That’s one of the reasons Laventure Benad is so eager to see a small irrigation system completed in the hills of Colora in central Haiti. The father of seven children, he can afford to send only four of them to school now. But with irrigation—and the opportunity it will provide for three harvests a year instead of just one—Benad hopes he will have not only more food for his family, but enough income to pay for additional schooling.
“We’d like to go forward,” he says as a pair of young men behind him hammer at a heap of rocks, cracking them into gravel to help build the irrigation system. Channeled into a pipe, water from the mountain stream flowing by them will find its way into more than 60 acres of fields below where it will help 150 farmers.
With the help of Proyecto Binacional Artibonito, an Oxfam Quebec-supported project known as PROBINA, the irrigation could eventually bring them a measure of financial independence, say farmers. They expect that within three years they will be doing well enough to b able to buy their own seeds and fertilizer.
For Markens Louidort, a 26-year-old student in Liancourt in the Artibonite Valley, education holds the key to a better future, he says. He has enrolled in a computer-training program offered by APPEL, or Association des Parents and des Professeurs d’Ecole de Liancourt, an Oxfam partner that provides post-secondary vocational training.
“The world is going on with technology and it’s important for someone to learn computers,” says Louidort. In a country with unemployment as high as 70 percent, Louidort is hoping this new, hard-won skill will help him land a job.
Three days a week, for four hours each day, he settles in behind a computer in the stifling APPEL classroom. A series of batteries from Oxfam, recharged with the help of a generator at a nearby radio station, provide the electricity for the computers. Every seat is taken. This is the most popular class APPEL offers and some students share computers. A mood of deep concentration hangs over them.
At the head of the classroom, teacher Dieunel Prince talks the students through the next step of a program that will allow them to format certificates. Later, he explains privately that one of the biggest challenges he faces in working with these students is the fact that so many of them never had the opportunity to learn how to type—a handicap for those hoping to dive quickly into this new field.
That gap in learning is an indication of the struggles Haiti has had with providing a solid education for its citizens—about a quarter of the districts have no schools and 38 percent of Haitians over the age of 15 are illiterate. Education is one of the fundamental services rural regions will need to offer if decentralization is ever to become a reality for Haiti.
Michelle Lisette Casimir, mayor of Saint Michel in Artibonite, knows that well. Many of the families in the area sent their children to Port-au-Prince for advanced schooling, and some of them died in the quake. What Casimir longs for Saint Michel to have is a professional school of its own.
“We can’t talk about the future without being concerned about the youth—they way they are living,” says Casimir, adding that education is her top development wish. “With education...we will keep them.”
]]>As we approach Row 1A—one of the neat lines of white tents that make up the Corail resettlement camp, two figures wave at us energetically. Marceline Philidor and her daughter Sabine are as welcoming as when I saw them last, over a month ago. Their family was among the first group of people to be moved from the Petionville Golf Club—where they faced an imminent threat of flash floods—to this site about 15 km outside Port-au-Prince.
Marceline is busy cooking some rice on a small stove, but she pulls up some plastic chairs for us under the awning in front of her tent - one of the few small patches of shade in this vast, sun-baked camp. I ask her what life has been like these last two months.
“Well, life is the pretty much the same here now as when we moved in. Not much has changed. We have our tent. We have enough water from Oxfam to drink and cook and wash. We’ve received food, too, and rice, oil, beans and flour from World Vision. We still have the latrines from Oxfam, and there are enough for everyone, although it would be nice to have our own toilet, or a toilet to share with several families, and keep them clean between us.”
Oxfam has been concerned since the Corail site was selected in April that the area is isolated and doesn’t have markets close by. I ask Marceline what they have been living on and whether they’ve been looking for work outside of the camp.
“I’ve done some work - digging the trenches for drainage here in the camp, making them deeper—so we will have a little money soon. I’ve been the one working, because I had my identification with me when they offered the work, so I signed up. My husband goes out almost every day looking for work. Sometimes he takes the tap-tap (Haitian mini-bus) that goes from here to town, and costs 15 gourdes. But we don’t have much money, so often he has to walk.”
Marceline’s husband, David Deronoil, joins us and tells about his search for work.
“I go regularly into Delmas, to all the old places I used to work before the earthquake. I was a metal worker and then a driver. Often I have to walk, so I leave here at 4:30 in the morning, and I usually arrive around 11.” He pauses. “A man shouldn’t stay at home and not work. He should be able to go out and work to support his wife and child. But there are no jobs.”
Marceline once sold goods at a market stall, and she would like to re-open her business. “But I wouldn’t start it here,” she says. “I would go to one of the markets nearby, in Bon Repos. People say they might create a new market there so people here can work. I don’t know if it’s true. We’ve been asking to have a market and a hospital and a school for the people living here in the camp.”
School is an important topic for David.
“Aside from getting work, our main priority is Sabine’s education. Education is very important. I don’t want my daughter to grow up sitting around here, not learning anything. I want her to go to school and learn. To get an education. There’s a good school in Bon Repos; I would like to take her there, but we would need money. Like before the earthquake.”
I ask David and Marceline what their thoughts are about the future. David shrugs. “I wouldn’t mind having a house here. We like it here; we don’t hate it. And we don’t want to go back to Port-au-Prince. It’s too crowded and there are no homes there. I wouldn’t mind having a home here, or even building one myself.”
He smiles, looking around his tent. For now there isn’t much around their little home—just one or two plants sheltered by the side of the tent—but it’s clear he’s picturing what it could be like.
“We would like a little place to plant trees, so that they could give us shade and we could have mangoes to eat. And some space to keep chickens. Then we could have chicken to eat. We need a real home. We need some privacy. We also need to be able to have fun sometimes, have some kind of recreation.” He laughs. “Maybe watch the world cup on TV!”
He becomes serious again. “But we don’t know if there will be homes. There are rumors that they might be moving us again. So we don’t know.”
Although Corail is designated as a temporary relocation site, nobody knows how long people like David and Marceline will live here. These families need—and have the right—to start earning a living again, to send their children to school, and to have a clear idea when they will finally have a home again. The government of Haiti, with the support of international and national organizations, has the responsibility to develop and implement a housing, resettlement, and job-creation strategy that will get people back into homes and communities, and earning incomes. This is the crucial next step to help Haitians rebuild their lives for the long term.
]]>“Things were difficult right after the earthquake, but we’re Haitian, so we have to get up and move forward,” says Marie Carole Boursiquot. “There was the community canteen, and that work really helped me; I was able to set some money to start my business back up. Now I have my own stall again. Every week I had the canteen, I would put aside some of the profits—1,000 gourdes here, 1,000 gourdes there—and I would send the girls out to buy things for my shop. I also borrowed a little money so that I could buy the rest of the stock. Now I am selling all kinds of things: rice, sugar, beans, pasta, coal…”
I ask her to show us her stock and she is happy to oblige. She shows us the beans and grains first, lined up neatly to one side, in canvas sacks. She scoops up little handfuls of each for us to inspect; kidney beans, black beans, little green beans she calls French beans, Miami beans, wheat, corn meal, and corn kernels. (The corn is for chickens, she specifies, not people.) Then she delves into a box on the floor and pulls out blue sachets of coal, little bags of washing powder, and sugar that she has wrapped in little plastic packages—two sizes: one worth 5 gourdes and one worth 10. For such a small stall, there is an impressive variety of stock.
She puts the boxes back in place and sits down. “I went all the way down to Croix Bossales to buy the stock at the market there. My brother came with me and helped me. With the canteen and now this stall, at least we can all eat. There are ten of us still living together since the earthquake, in the same shelter with a metal roof. But now we have some plastic sheeting—some from Oxfam and some that we bought—so when it rains we don’t get wet like we did before.”
We are momentarily interrupted by the arrival of a customer, a little girl of five or six years, sent to Marie Carole to buy some snacks—chips or crackers of some kind. She is a little shy around us and rushes off without waiting for her change. Marie Carole laughs and lines up the coins on the counter—the little girl will be back.
"The problem now is that this shop is not mine. I have an arrangement with the owners; they have let me set up shop outside the bottom floor [of the building behind us] because they can’t use it anymore, since the top floor collapsed in the earthquake. But the ceiling is cracked and leaks so some of my stock got wet.”
"People from Oxfam [the market support team] came to inspect the site of my old shop. They saw that it was destroyed, and they are going to provide me with a shipping container that I can use as a shop and to store my stock securely. That will be much better for my business. I will be able to buy more, and I will be able to manage my stock better then.”
I ask her what her biggest needs are now, but she is reluctant to answer. She shrugs.
“Oxfam is the only organization helping this whole community. Many things would help me, but I don’t want to ask for too many things. You can’t constantly ask for others to give and give. I am satisfied with what God gives me. But with more money or the container from Oxfam, I would be able to get on even better than now, expand my shop, sell more, and make more money to improve our shelter and to improve our life.”
“There are always needs, but as long as we are healthy, and we have two hands and two feet, we can find things to do, and we will continue living. Things will get better.”
]]>Oxfam staffers and partner groups have been working non-stop to provide water, latrines, emergency shelter, and other essentials for earthquake survivors. We have witnessed remarkable progress, but recovery in Haiti remains one of the most complex humanitarian development challenges in recent history.
Oxfam has produced a media brief, which provides a progress report on our response in Haiti over the past six months: how our programs have reached those affected by the earthquake, the type of services and assistance we have provided, the cost of these programs, as well as our plans for the next six months as our recovery work in Haiti continues. Please click here to download the media brief.
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Like hundreds of thousands of other survivors, they fled the ruins of Port-au-Prince to seek shelter in the countryside, squeezing in with family and friends and relying on them for support in the weeks—and now months—after the disaster.
It’s early May, and the girls are among the 17 relatives and friends Jean Claude and Rose Marie Perard are hosting in their house in Saint Michel, a four-drive from the capital. The household numbered nine before the quake. Now, 26 people—many of them children—crowd the Perards’ small dark rooms and courtyard.
“Day by day we cope,” says Rose Marie Perard.
It’s a refrain repeated across the rugged provinces as Haitians, living in the poorest country in the western hemisphere, open their doors and share what little they have.
But here, on a sweltering afternoon in the main room of the Perards’ house, the strain for some of the family members is beginning to show and the target is NGOs, the non-governmental organizations that offered a patchwork of basic services—education, health care, agricultural support—before the quake and have now ramped up, with billions of dollars at their disposal, to help meet the needs of some of the three million people affected by the disaster. Some locals charge that the NGOs have long been in Haiti to help themselves more than they are to help the Haitians—and they question whether there are lasting benefits to the projects aid groups launch.
Oxfam’s goal is to make a durable difference, one that leaves people with the skills and knowledge to ensure their own growth and success, and that means a long-term commitment that empowers communities to meet their own needs.
Cereste Perard has been waiting, grim-faced, for his turn to talk. He’s 27 and was in Port-au-Prince when the quake hit, along with some of his siblings who were studying there. About 81 percent of Haiti’s schools are private, and many of those at the upper levels, including universities, are concentrated around the capital. Parents often send their children there for better opportunities, which means covering the added expense of room and board along with school fees—a commitment that can severely strain finances, forcing kids to drop out until their families can marshall the resources to allow them to return.
Sinking into an empty spot on the sofa, Cereste Perard offers his opinion about Haiti’s recovery.
“What we need is for us to be independent,” he says, with bitterness in his voice. “The international community is giving us orders on how to live our lives.”
Cereste is pretty clear about how he wants to live his: his goal is to go to university and study industrial engineering, like an older brother, Jean Rodney Perard, who is now working toward a medical degree.
In the long hot months ahead and it’s up to their mother, Rose Marie, to manage the crowded household on a budget stretched by borrowing and pleading with friends for help. Rose Marie collects a small monthly salary from the ministry of public health for which she works five days a week as a technologist in a lab. Her husband serves as the municipal director for Saint Michel, an appointed post.
Having jobs puts the couple in the minority among Haitians who, by some calculations, face unemployment rates as high as 70 percent. But with 26 mouths to feed and a crowd of children to help educate, the Perards’ salaries don’t stretch far.
“I buy food on credit and whenever money comes in, I pay it all back,” says Rose Marie, adding the household eats just two meals a day. And when night comes, everyone stretches out wherever there is room: some in the beds, some on the floors.
As full as this house is, it’s not the only one in Saint Michel packed tight since January. After the quake, more than 11,000 people reportedly made their way to the town and the smaller communities that surround it, and a survey conducted in a month later found that 5,000 of them were still there.
A sudden downpour hammers the metal roof of a small mill in Verrettes, a few hour’s drive from Saint Michel. The rain drowns the voices of 13 men and women sitting in the hot gloom, but their raised hands tell the story: all but one of them has been supporting people from Port-au-Prince and the rice, and all the other seeds, the farmers had hoped to plant have gone, instead, to feed the newcomers. Rony Charles has four of his wife’s relatives staying him; Pierre Riguens had five, now four—sisters and a cousin; Simadieu Descombes is hosting seven.
With planting season upon them—and no seeds to sow—the farmers are hoping they can get access to some microcredit to tide them over. Raising agricultural production levels is the first thing people in his community need, says Charles. And creating jobs for the newcomers is also near the top of the list.
While some people appear to be returning to the capital, Anouce Myrtil predicts that plenty of others will find it easier living in the countryside.
“Even if Port-au-Prince had golden streets, no one’s going to live easy in Port-au-Prince because of fear,” he says, sitting on the site of a new sugarcane mill Oxfam is helping to build in the community of Lacedras, near Saint Michel. It’s part of a range of small-scale initiatives designed to support economic development and improve agricultural output in the region—objectives that are more important than ever as Haiti struggles to overcome the devastation caused by the earthquake and rebuild itself on a stronger foundation. In a country where agriculture employs two-thirds of the workforce yet produces only 28 percent of its gross domestic product, modernizing farm work and expanding production opportunities will be crucial for Haiti’s reconstruction.
And for farmer Elcida Estinat, the chance to learn new skills and expand her earning power are vital now that she is caring for young relatives displaced by the quake. Recently, she participated in an Oxfam-supported training on beekeeping. Equipped with a modern hive, she could potentially produce six times the amount of honey that she could using traditional methods.
And every gallon of honey that Estinat harvests from her hives could fetch as much as $24 at the market. Converted into school fees, that honey is better than gold: it will help her buy a brighter future for her kids.
“I know the value of a good education,” says Estinat.
]]>With the crack of a sledgehammer on concrete, Oxfam's water and sanitation program in Delmas, Haiti, got underway.
The earth was still shuddering with aftershocks when survivors began to dig, carving out latrine trenches 10 feet long, 10 feet deep, and three feet wide through every kind of soil and pavement. Others did their part by quickly shaping platforms out of rocks and earth to support their new source of drinking water: Oxfam water bladders.
It was a race against time, and against deadly water-related bacteria like typhoid, hepatitis, and cholera that can thrive in crowded, unsanitary conditions. And it is a race that—so far, at least—we are winning. After the quake, hundreds of thousands of people had no access to toilets, and the water available wasn't fit to drink; yet, thanks to an all-out effort on the part of the displaced communities and aid agencies like Oxfam, there have been no outbreaks of waterborne disease.
But there is more to water and sanitation programs than health.
"We build latrines not only because they help prevent the spread of disease, but because they should help protect the dignity and safety of disaster survivors living in camps," says Oxfam engineer Kenny Rae, who led the first phase of Oxfam's water and sanitation effort in Delmas.
There is a special focus on the safety of women and girls, because in the chaotic aftermath of disasters, they are particularly vulnerable to harassment and assault. The structure of a latrine—like the firmness of its latches and whether its doors open toward or away from the general population of a camp—has implications for safety, so Rae and his team listened closely to the concerns of women residents.
Shower construction was another important issue. Haiti's weather is so warm that shower stalls can be open to the sky, but where they were installed within view of multi-story buildings, women in Delmas had understandable concerns about privacy—which Rae and his team quickly addressed by adding roofs.
"When it came to sanitation facilities," says Rae, "women in the camps had the first and last word."
Helping survivors recover after disasters is not as simple as doling out goods and services: it requires attention to the many facets of community well-being.
For example, working for pay can help disaster survivors meet a range of needs, both financial and psychological. Oxfam offered wages to residents to dig latrine trenches, cover them with slabs of molded concrete or plastic, and build structures of wood and plastic sheeting around them for shelter and safety.
"We ended up employing more than 300 people to build latrines in Delmas," says Rae. "Their communities benefited from the project, and their families benefited from the income."
But in some cases, the need for community-building trumped the need for money. When it came to constructing platforms for water bladders, everyone worked for free, says Rae. "They treated the work as a contribution to their communities."
Caring for Haiti's fragile environment was another key consideration for the water and sanitation team, which needed wood for construction.
"From the outset," says Rae, "we determined that we weren’t going to use local timber poles because of the impact on deforestation."
The team found a source of timber imported from the US. It was more expensive than local wood, and at first it was hard to find enough of it. But, says Rae, in a country as deforested and as vulnerable to landslides as Haiti, the environmental cost of harvesting timber is tremendous.
When Rae and his team assessed the local water and sanitation situation, they found settlements where thousands of displaced residents had gathered. But Delmas is also dotted with tiny camps and informal schools, and it took time to understand the full extent of the needs. Oxfam staff kept their eyes—and their office—open, continually updating their plans and assessments.
"We had an open-door policy," says Rae. "Pastors, school directors, and other community leaders would bring their requests and concerns to the Oxfam office on a near-daily basis, and we were almost always able to respond."
After helping create water and sanitation facilities in 21 sites, serving 40,000 people, Rae has returned home for a rest. Sort of.
"Of course, I was pleased to get back to the people I love," says Rae, "but I was torn because the needs on the ground in Haiti are so enormous."
When he goes back to Haiti, it will be to work on another key issue in the recovery: shelter. His focus will be not only the homeless in Port-au-Prince, but also the tens of thousands of rural families that are hosting relatives who fled the capital and are now living in very crowded conditions. Rae will be looking for efficient ways to build temporary housing and house extensions to reduce the stress on families.
"Shelter is—and will remain for a while—a huge, huge need," he says.
As for the water and sanitation program in Delmas, says Rae, "I'm confident that the Haitian engineers I helped to train will be able to carry it forward."
]]>The bill allows Haiti to increase its apparel exports to the United States duty free and extends existing US trade preference programs with Haiti for 10 years.
“Trade can be an important part of Haiti’s recovery, and the HELP Act will be instrumental in making this a reality,” said Stephanie Burgos, Senior Policy Advisor for Oxfam America. “The United States is Haiti’s primary market for apparel exports, and this bill will help generate much-needed jobs for Haitians working to rebuild their lives.”
Less than four months after the greatest disaster Haiti has ever seen, Haitians are ready to start working for the reconstruction of their country. An in-depth Oxfam survey of more than 1,700 Haitians last month shows that the number one priority in the reconstruction effort for Haitians are jobs, followed by schools, shelter, and a strong agricultural sector
“Haitians aren’t looking for a hand-out, they want a leg up,” said Burgos. “With income from jobs in the apparel industry and elsewhere, they can feed and care for their families, send their children to school, and build lasting shelter.”
Before the earthquake, the garment industry employed about 25,000 people – nearly 10 percent of formal sector employment and accounted for nearly 80 percent of export earnings. Now, the garment sector could be a source of economic growth and more jobs.
"Companies are ready to invest in Haiti; they need incentives to invest in Haiti to expand exports, and that requires dropping the barriers we have to Haitian apparel products,” said Burgos. “The HELP Act provides these incentives by significantly increasing the amount of Haitian apparel products that can be imported to the US duty free.”
“In times of such partisanship in Washington, it’s heartening to see both parties in the House and Senate come together to help our hemisphere’s poorest country," said Burgos. “By passing this bill, Congress can help Haiti rebuild through trade and not just aid.”
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Feeding your family - or even just yourself - can be a big challenge for those who survived the quake, but some people, like the elderly and disabled, face nearly overwhelming obstacles. In the chaotic first weeks after the disaster, Oxfam and our local partners identified 4,500 residents of Carrefour Feuilles who were in particular need of assistance, and offered them a hot meal every day.
The cooks? Entrepreneurs who lost their businesses in the disaster but who have the know-how to operate small restaurants. Oxfam and partners provide money for provisions and fuel, and the canteen operators take care of the rest.
"If I hadn't got this canteen I would probably have left for the countryside,” says Marie Carole Bourslquot, a former shop owner who now cooks 80 meals a day for her clients. “I don't know what I would have done."
For many of the people who depend on her canteen, this is the only cooked meal they’ll see each day. Bourslquot tries to make sure it’s a good one. “I vary the meals - sometimes it's rice, beans and vegetables, meat and a sauce."
There are now more than 50 community canteens in Carrefour Feuilles, and the program is set to expand to other urban areas. The canteens rely on outside aid so are a temporary fix, but soon those who are cooking food will be integrated into our micro-enterprise program, which is aimed at helping them restart their original businesses.
“I want a lasting solution for all the beneficiaries,” says Philippa Young, coordinator of the Oxfam program. No one, she says, should be left empty-handed when the project comes to a close.
But for now, says Bourslquot, “I really like it. Before I had this canteen things were really bad.” Since then her life has changed in the most fundamental way: “we are no longer hungry.”
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“The $5 billion headline figure is impressively generous and what is needed for Haiti.
“However, this must be new, not recycled money taken from other humanitarian crises. The poor and vulnerable of other disasters should not be paying for this.
"The last time the region was hit by a natural disaster of this scale, Hurricane Mitch of 1998, only less than a third of the $9 billion promised materialized. This cannot be allowed to happen this time.
“Almost every country exceeded in its financial obligations to help Haiti. Soon these pledges will need to turn into concrete progress on the ground. This cannot be a VIP pageant of half promises.”
“The amounts pledged today should be made a reality for the tens of thousands of victims as soon as possible. Mechanisms will need to be put in place quickly for the Haitian civil society, the private sector and local authorities to be able to have a say and watch over the spending of these funds. The government must also immediately start communicating the options people have in advance of the rainy season. Without this, NGOs and the UN might be put in the difficult position of doing it themselves."
]]>In a survey of more than 1700 people, carried out by an independent Haitian polling consultant and funded by international agency Oxfam, Haitians most pressing needs are jobs (26 percent), schools (22 percent) and homes (10 percent). Haitians in the survey also expressed little confidence in their government’s capacity to unilaterally lead the reconstruction plan to be agreed upon in New York this week. Instead, they believe a combination of the central government and Haitian civil society or a foreign government is best placed to implement the reconstruction plan.
These opinions are the result of an extensive one-on-one survey of Haitians of different age groups, socio-economic status, and location, the full results of which will be available in April. Haitians shared their views on issues ranging from aid effectiveness, leadership of the reconstruction effort, and what should be prioritized for the New York conference. The consultant conducted the study between March 9-12 in various neighborhoods in Leogane and the capital Port-au-Prince, including Pétion-Ville, Delmas, and Carrefour.
“Haitians are telling us loud and clear that they want to get back on their feet and start working for the reconstruction of their country. Ensuring that the people of Haiti can return to work must be at the top of the list for the New York conference and beyond. Haitians are not expecting charity; they want to get jobs, to educate their kids, and to make sure they have a roof over their heads at night. As a community, we should be able to do this,” said Marcel Stoessel, Chief of Mission of Oxfam International in Haiti.
Haitians also expressed their opinions on the relief effort following the January 12th quake and the overall performance of agencies on the ground. Despite recent criticism on the effectiveness of their overall response, over 60 percent of people surveyed thought the quality and efficiency of aid distribution by international NGOs was positive. Over 70 percent praised the actions of foreign governments during the post-earthquake relief period. Many people did not give an opinion on the effectiveness of aid distribution, showing the gaps and misunderstandings about such a massive aid operation.
“It’s understandable that people feel anxious about their own government response. The international community should do everything it can to help the Haitian government back on its feet. There can be no durable reconstruction without the government," said Philippe Mathieu, a native of Haiti and Country Director of Oxfam-Quebec in Haiti.
In a separate report published last week, Oxfam recommended that the Haitian government and its people be central to the reconstruction effort. Oxfam says the strengthening of the central government will be essential so that all levels of Haitian society, ranging from media to local charities to farmers associations, can participate openly in the decision-making and implementation process.
In its report “Haiti: A Once-in-a-Century Chance for Change,” Oxfam calls on governments and international lenders to urgently prioritize sanitation and shelter needs.
With heavy rains arriving next month and with more than one million people still living in extremely precarious conditions, Oxfam gives a sobering assessment of the immense challenge that awaits the country in the weeks ahead. In the report, the aid agency notes that a full registration of displaced people has yet been done. Also, neither the government nor the international community has yet to truly engage and consult with local groups – in displaced camps or within city neighborhoods – that have shown tremendous leadership following the January 12th quake.
Oxfam says the overall coordination and leadership of all agencies, including NGOs, on the ground must improve, including between the central government and the United Nations. It calls on the New York Conference to give all stakeholders involved a clear direction for the future of Haiti.
“The funding mechanism that will be decided cannot hamper efforts to get Haitians back on their feet. We want a system guarantying that the reconstruction and recovery processes are on track effectively,” said Stoessel.
]]>EXCERPT: “At Impasse Fouget, our first task was to build a large platform with rubble, rocks, and earth on which the bladder could rest. A bladder like this filled with water weighs ten tons…. A flexible pipe running to a set of five outdoor faucets carries the water from bladder down to where people can draw it. Chlorinating water ensures its safety. Oxfam is working in camps of many sizes. Our team’s focus is on 35 smaller encampments in the Delmas district. Working at this scale makes our community-based approach for chlorination effective.”
EXCERPT: “But the most important and admirable humanitarians are the Haitians: they have shown incredible courage, resilience and solidarity: many have rescued people with their bare hands and many are still housing strangers. And these are not middle class families: most lived on less than $2 (US dollars) a day before the quake. Some of our Haitian staff do not even have a place to stay, yet there is no day of the week when they do not come to work.”
EXCERPT: “What Préval probably means, Mr. Cohen adds, is that seeds and fertilizer should be provided quickly, and that food aid ‘already in the pipeline’ be allowed to ‘taper off’ so that Haiti’s next harvest early this summer is bountiful but does not encounter a glutted market. Longer term, Cohen says, Préval’s plan will require more than seeds and fertilizer and can work only if better job opportunities, schools, and services are provided so that rural areas become as attractive as the capital as a place to live.”
EXCERPT: “Everywhere you turned, there were processions of hundreds of people marching, singing and waving leafy green branches. Men in suits, women in their finest, children in fluffy dresses of all colors. Renaissance on the streets of Port-au-Prince. The work goes on but the healing has begun.”
EXCERPT: “Groups such as Oxfam are scrambling to get 30 more toilet-sanitation trucks shipped in from abroad. Sanitation specialists are exploring more exotic methods, such as toilets that can separate liquid and solid refuse. In the short term, plastic bags may have to suffice in certain places -- but with a more reliable system for collection, said Nicholas Brooks, an Oxfam sanitation and hygiene specialist.”
EXCERPT: “Paul O'Brien of Oxfam America says the lessons of the harm of flooding a country like Haiti with subsidized rice should have been learned a long time ago. ‘The days are gone when we can throw up our hands in terms of unintended consequences; we know now what these injections can do to markets,' he said. 'The question we want asked is what is being done to guarantee long-term food security for Haitians.’”
EXCERPT: “The persistence of the committee members paid off. First they got water delivered to the site. Then, when it started to rain, they appealed for tarps, and got some of those, too. Deliveries of kitchen supplies--pots for cooking, utensils for eating--followed from Oxfam, with the committee organizing an orderly distribution the following day. And soon, Oxfam was also digging latrines at the site and setting up a more permanent water supply in the form of a large collapsible bladder.”
EXCERPT: “The earthquake has turned some Haitian citizens into civic leaders, who are helping individual neighborhoods recover, writes Coco McCabe, a writer with Oxfam America. On the aid group's blog, she says these people should be an integral part of the country's rebuilding.”
EXCERPT: "I have a tentative plan for the next two weeks: to identify priority sites for additional water tanks, and start to set these up, to have one of the engineers trained in how to properly chlorinate and test water, to continue assessments to identify priority sites for more toilets and have these built."
EXCERPT: "Port-au-Prince will need 18,000 latrines by the end of April to beat the rainy season, says Jacobo Ocharan, disaster risk reduction manager at Oxfam America. So far his group has built about 5 percent of that number."
EXCERPT: "Oxfam officials in Haiti also fear diarrhea and other waterborne diseases could spread because of the poor drainage, crowding, and lack of latrines. They urged the government to quickly decide when and where to relocate the homeless, and called on the United States to provide stronger leadership for the hundreds of nonprofit agencies with operations in Haiti."
EXCERPT: "The government has said for weeks that they have identified sites, but time is getting short and there has been little progress."
EXCERPT: “But the need remains enormous, especially as the rains approach and threaten to slop human waste into temporary settlements and crowded camps where there is little room to improve the drainage."
EXCERPT: "I dread to think what would happen if we had an early sustained tropical downpour. There's a great risk of flooding. If there's a lot of run-off, the latrines would overflow…People use alternative means. Some go back to their homes, they use plastic bags and throw them away or they just find somewhere else to go."
EXCERPT: “As well as providing latrines and water, we also distribute hygiene kits, buckets, basins, soap, sanitary towels and underwear so that people can maintain at least a basic level of personal hygiene. We are starting our distribution in one of the first camps we visited. Security at distributions takes a lot of organizing so our strategy is to concentrate on distributing our kits to the smaller camps and communities where there are less people to manage who are less likely to receive aid from other organizations.”
EXCERPT: “Justine Lesage, an Oxfam relief worker, said the group recently removed 7,000 cubic feet (200 cubic meters) of waste created by 45,000 people at one of the city's camps in just a week. ‘We're also working very hard to make plans for relocating people, but the Haitian government's plan for this is not clear yet.’”
EXCERPT: "For kids not affected by the devastating earthquake that rocked Haiti in January, schools re-opened the first of this month. But few students in the North-West and South departments have shown up -- not a promising sign for the government's intention to open the rest of the country's schools by March 1. What's been interrupted now is the certainty, order and measure of opportunity that the school day brought to the lives of Haitian kids who had managed to secure themselves a place in a classroom -- even if that classroom lacked both amenities and rigor."
EXCERPT: "'(While) the international community has acted rapidly and generously to provide for Haiti's immediate emergency needs,' said Emma Seery, Oxfam's campaign manager, 'The G7 must now also make sure that Haiti is not left saddled with crippling debts as it recovers and rebuilds. They must agree to all new financial support being in the form of grants, not loans, and commit to a clear plan to cancel what remains of Haiti's debt.'"
EXCERPT: “Oxfam America, an international relief and development agency, said quickly renewing the trade benefits would give companies the confidence they need to reinvest in Haiti.”
EXCERPT: “Every day, around 1,000 kits are assembled and distributed to needy communities. Oxfam buys the items from local companies to try to help the Haitian economy; and around 50 people displaced or affected by the earthquake have been hired by Oxfam to help get the kits ready and out to communities as quickly as possible."
EXCERPT: “'We’ve learned from experience that people prefer money to goods or food. That way they can buy what they need, and who better to decide that than the people themselves?'"
EXCERPT: “Mike Delaney, director of humanitarian response for Oxfam, says there are practical reasons why it’s important that Haitians oversee the reconstruction plans, including specifics, such as the design of houses. '…I’ve seen housing projects in many places where in the end houses are built for people after an emergency and they don’t end up living in it. They end up putting their farm animals in it just because it wasn’t the kind of housing they needed.'"
EXCERPT: “Dario Arthur, an Oxfam staffer leading part of the emergency response, says he could have ordered pre-assembled kits to distribute in the camps. But that would have been a missed opportunity to give people jobs. The assemblers, who need to work fast and will be employed for just two weeks, are earning 500 gourdes (about $12.25) a day: a rate substantially above the local minimum wage. Warehouse workers will likely stay on the job for two or three months, as different supplies pass through."
EXCERPT: “'We're not only looking at the now and present,' [Alex Yiannopoulos] says. 'We're also looking at four years down the road and further. So these activities have to be linked into our longer-term effort. And we're trying to be creative about making sure there's an overlap in our immediate response and our more long-term programs.'....Oxfam already has a few hundred people earning cash for clean-up work, and hopes to eventually hire 5,000 Haitians. Other broom-and-shovel brigades are cleaning up trash, debris and rubble for other aid groups throughout the Haitian capital, and even more cash-for-work programs are ramping up this week."
EXCERPT: “So far, good shelter is in short supply. Oxfam has distributed some plastic tarps and more are on the way. We're negotiating with an orphanage in Port-au-Prince that has the space to allow us to cut large pieces of plastic down to a household size. People can use the tarps in a variety of ways to meet their individual requirements--and our goal is to get those tarps into the hands of people before the wet season arrives. But still, the need here is enormous. The Haitian government has appealed for 200,000 tents."
EXCERPT: “'There are people who have lost five children,' [Pharisien Marcaise] said quietly above the hum of the camp around him. 'I have to keep going with my life.' For now, that means keeping a small generator chugging so he can charge the batteries on the cell phones everyone here carries. Without a regular source of electricity, people depend on small vendors like Marcaise to keep them connected with their friends, their families, and the world."
EXCERPT: “Oxfam worked in the neighborhood before the quake, helping people access food when prices sky-rocketed. It has now begun a new project this week -- paying community members to start cleaning up the area; removing rubbish and waste. The cash-for-work programs mean that not only do communities begin to improve their living conditions, but people can earn desperately -- needed money so they can buy food and other necessities."
EXCERPT: “Many of those who have set up shop along both sides of the road that runs through this teeming camp have lost everything--homes, small businesses, and worst of all, family members. But there is a tenacity and determination here that, with the right support, could be the foundation for a thriving economy as Haiti begins to rebuild itself. But what's needed, said many, is money--money to rebuild homes, make communities stable, and invest in small enterprises so they can grow."
EXCERPT: “…But how do you distribute tons of goods to small camps scattered across a city snarled by traffic, earthquake debris, and roads more pothole than pavement? With human sweat. Lots of it. That's the awesome thing about all of this: The flood of good will, pouring in from round the world for the people of Haiti, stacked next to the tangle of challenges in making sure the help gets where it needs to go--as fast as possible."
EXCERPT: “At a time when a nation is facing such a dramatic calamity, and is, in effect, faced with rebuilding its national institutions, its state institutions, as well as its civil society institutions, debt forgiveness is a first step and an important step. We’re hoping the IMF will lead and others will follow."
EXCERPT: One of the main worries in Haiti now is health and sanitation. One agency that works directly on those issues is Oxfam. Yolette Etienne is Haiti's country director for Oxfam. She has been working long hours to just to make the places around the tents clean. At the same time Yolette is dealing with her own tragedies. Her mother was killed, her house was destroyed, and now she's responsible for two orphans. Yolette joins Dick Gordon to talk about the realities of living and working in Haiti after the quake.
EXCERPT: Radiohead raised more than $500,000 for Haiti earthquake relief at a special weekend concert that attracted celebrities and die-hard fans... Attendees bid online for tickets, with proceeds going to Oxfam International, a group that works with developing countries.
EXCERPT: "If we move too quickly, we fall into the trap of rebuilding the Haiti that existed two weeks ago. The Haiti that existed two weeks ago we do not want to rebuild," Robert Fox, executive director of Oxfam, said. "It was a country of inequality, and of poor infrastructure."
EXCERPT: "The first step in an emergency will be getting clean water to people who need it as we know from experience that shocks like this disrupt water lines, and transportation is completely broken down," said Michael Delaney, director of Oxfam America's humanitarian response department. "As we've seen time and again, in emergencies the poor are hit the hardest… Given the severity of this earthquake and the poverty of the country, our response will be long term."
EXCERPT: Oxfam America organizer Sophia Lafontant has been in touch with family and friends in Port-au-Prince. She said, "The scene described was something out of a movie or war zone. Gray filled skies, dust debris, and broken structures and bodies."
EXCERPT: "It's going to be hard to recover, but hopefully we will," says Rooby Pierre, who lingers briefly in the shade of a tree, recounting the urgency of the minister's sermon: to help people find a place to sleep, food to eat, medicine to get better. "We have to do anything we can to rebuild our community--and our country. It's our job as a church to give hope back to the people."
EXCERPT: Haiti’s Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others will take part in closed-door talks today in Montreal to map out key priorities for rebuilding Haiti. Oxfam is calling on foreign ministers attending the talks to cancel Haiti’s outstanding $890 million international debt.
EXCERPT: “The camps must not become warehouses of people waiting for permanent homes that never materialize,” said Rick Bauer, a shelter expert for the international aid agency Oxfam.
EXCERPT: “It was probably easier in the first few days, then it got a bit complicated in sense of the logistics especially with the airport,” said Claude St. Pierre, Haiti country director for the aid group Oxfam, in a telephone interview from Port-au- Prince. “We’re now sort of better at this so a lot of the material and the resources that we need and a lot of the people have been coming through Santo Domingo over the border and in from the border to Port-au-Prince.”
EXCERPT: “I don't know much French, but I know enough to hear gratitude and the thrill of being alive. A man dashing across the street had spied our driver--a friend--and a smile of wild joy shot across his face. ’Nous vivons!’ he shouted. We live!”
EXCERPT: Organizers for the all-star "Hope for Haiti Now" telethon say the event raised $57 million -- and counting... Among the organizations who will receive funds from the telethon include Oxfam America, UNICEF, and the Clinton-Bush Haiti Foundation.
EXCERPT: "What can you say?" said Louis Belanger, a spokesman for Oxfam Great Britain. "It is very often the case that the strongest and fittest get help. ... Those left behind are the elderly and the women with children, so we are working hard to make sure aid is coordinated."
EXCERPT: As buildings crashed to the ground around her after Haiti's earthquake, Yolette Etienne reacted as any longtime relief worker would.
"I had the idea to say to people: 'Don't panic. We are Oxfam. We help people,' " the group's Haiti director said …
But about 7 p.m., when she finally walked home, she found it a mountain of rubble. In the back yard, she came upon her mother's body.
Etienne grieved for two hours. Then it was time to try to find out what had happened to other family members and friends.
"I said: Tomorrow I have to inform my children, bury my mother -- but find out what happened to my colleagues," she recalled.
Etienne was at work by 8 a.m.
"I know, as an Oxfam worker, an aid worker, I can help people. I've got the resources to help people," she said in Haitian-accented English, fighting back tears.
EXCERPT:
MARINA GIOVANNELLI: … activists point to a similar disaster not long ago as an example of what’s possible. Mike Delaney of Oxfam says that parts of the Indonesian province of Ache have made remarkable progress in the five years since it was pummeled by a tsunami.
MIKE DELANEY: Many of those communities ended up with new homes and water actually going into their homes for the first time.
MARINA GIOVANNELLI: Delaney says the progress in Ache was the result of collaboration between local and foreign governments, the United Nations and private aid groups. But he says that only worked because local people had a say in key decisions. Of course Haiti is not Ache and Haiti faces its own challenges. But Delaney says if done right, the attention suddenly focused on Haiti could help make the disaster a turning point in its unhappy history.
MIKE DELANEY: We’ve said it countless times this week: you know Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Well, you know, maybe it won’t be in a couple years.
EXCERPT: "The infrastructure in Haiti is, more or less, zero. We are, for all practical purposes, planning on the basis that we're starting from scratch.Our staff can be fairly resourceful. When you're in that situation, you think a little bit more outside the box than you'd normally do..."
"We're making sure we have secure distribution points where we can give out supplies in an orderly fashion. People have been heavily affected by this; they are traumatized, they are hungry, they are tired..."
"Initially we'll make sure we get the right life-saving materials to people in Haiti. From then on, we'll start a massive rebuilding process, coordinated by all of the people on the ground."
EXCERPT: Eleven broadcast and cable networks will show a two-hour telethon next Friday night to benefit the victims of the Haitian earthquake, MTV Networks announced on Friday ... The telethon will be hosted by Mr. [George] Clooney in Los Angeles, the Haitian-American musician Wyclef Jean in New York and the CNN newscaster Anderson Cooper, who will be broadcasting from Haiti ... Donations raised during the telethon will benefit the organizations Oxfam America, Partners in Health, Red Cross, Unicef and Yele Haiti Foundation.
EXCERPT: Although it's too early to do more than estimate the dollar amounts, aid officials agreed that for a variety of reasons -- including the extent of the devastation, the depth of poverty in Haiti before the earthquake, the proximity of the country to the United States and the large number of Haitians with family members who live here -- Americans have responded with swift generosity.
"You would not have any idea that we're in this economy," said Stephanie Kurzina, a vice president at Oxfam America.
EXCERPT: Headquartered in Boston, Oxfam America has a staff of about 200 people on the ground in Haiti and a 15-member emergency specialists team that is responding to the public health, water and sanitation issues that are unfolding as a result of the crisis. In addition, the organization is taking more donations and gearing up in the event more Oxfam staff need to fly into Haiti and assist with relief efforts.
"There’s been a nice trend in the donor community over the past 20 years around understating the importance of cash over goods," said Mike Delaney, director of humanitarian response, Oxfam America. "Ten or 15 years ago, there was a trend of people gathering old clothes and canned goods and shipping it somewhere. And what that did was clog up ports and no one was there to accept the donated goods and sort them out. Now people understand the importance of cash donations, so we can buy the right materials and the right goods and get them to the right places."
EXCERPT: … "what we're trying to do now is assess the situation as best as we can, bring our best people together to make sure that the assessment needs right away, so that we can move as quickly as possible … It's the poorest country on the Western Hemisphere. And the regions, especially some of the slums that have been hit around Port-Au-Prince, are extremely poor. You‘re talking about people are living on a dollar day, and colleagues have told me that everything has collapsed. And it's a very, very difficult situation, not only of human suffering, but of, you know, the level of—just a level of chaos that is happening right now in some of the parts of the cities."
"And last night, he was telling me that people were just standing around with no shelter and nowhere to go, just looking for some fresh water, looking for someone to take care of them, whether they had injuries or what not. So it's a very desperate situation."
EXCERPT: "Right now what we’re trying to do, Keith, is just regroup, make sure that, you know, we talk to one another, make sure that the aid is delivered in the most efficient way. I think your reporter was right, if it’s not done in the right way, it can be chaos and that’s what we want to avoid. So once we have that communication system fully back on, we can talk to one another, coordinate."
"I mean, we all know what we have to do. Oxfam, you know, is an expert in delivering water. The World Food Program is obviously an expert in delivering food. I mean, we all know our roles. We have the staff. We just need to sort of coordinate it better and just get in on the way. I think you can expect the next 48 hours to improve drastically."
Watch the complete interview.
EXCERPT: "We're mostly focused on the issue of water and providing clean water. We know, even prior to the earthquake, in many communities there was no access to clean water. The earthquake has devastated even the existing infrastructure around water ... Initially we're going to be providing stations where we can have water [accessible] to communities. People can go to these stations and get clean water for their short term needs. That's going to be vital in these next few days. And time and time again, in these these types of emergencies, it's the poorest of the poor that are hit the hardest."
EXCERPT: As you know, there was a terrible earthquake in Haiti yesterday evening. Oxfam has a staff of about 200 people on the ground in Haiti and a team of 15 highly-experienced emergency specialists based in the capital that are responding with public health, water and sanitation services to prevent the spread of waterborne disease.
"The first step in an emergency will be getting clean water to people who need it as we know from experience that shocks like this disrupt water lines, and transportation is completely broken down," said Michael Delaney, director of Oxfam America’s humanitarian response department.
..."Given the severity of this earthquake and the poverty of the country, our response will be long term."
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