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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For centuries, Haiti has been a country of great inequality, with human rights violations, and endemic and massive poverty. More recently, its governments have been trying to change some of these patterns and address the lack of educational opportunities and lack of health care. It was making considerable progress just as the quake hit.
As we go forward, one of the major challenges for Haiti will be creating a social compact among Haitians of all social and class levels, to commit to re-conceiving Haiti as a nation and taking advantage of the willingness of the international community to support a new Haiti.
What are some of the particular challenges in the short and medium term? There is a tremendous need to address housing and basic services for Port-au-Prince and the surrounding areas. A lot of thinking is going in to how communities can be resettled in temporary housing and whether some of their houses can be restored and made livable.
There is thinking going on about what Port-au-Prince should look like in the future. It may be very much like New Orleans, which now has two third of the population it had before hurricanes Katrina and Rita. There is a sense in Haiti that perhaps Port-au-Prince may have been too big for the geography of hills and wetlands where it is located.
As a consequence of the earthquake, many citizens have moved to other cities around the country. They are seeking educational opportunities, access to health services, and temporary housing with relatives. One of the questions is whether the international community-- and the Haitian government, which has expressed interest in doing this--will assist people in resettling in other locations. Decreasing the overall population in Port-au-Prince would probably be a good outcome for the city.
The other question about rebuilding: Is Haiti going to actually create a dynamic economy and offer the jobs its citizens desperately need? There’s been some effort to build textile manufacturing operations in Haiti that are employing some 25,000 people now. This may be a good start. It may resemble what is happening in Bangladesh, where in the early ‘90s there were 50 garment factories, and today there are 4,000. Could Haiti, given its proximity to the US market, become an export platform for garments?
Could it become a site for a successful tourism industry? Next door in the Dominican Republic you can actually see and feel the impact of tourism dollars on the economy. The restoration of the capital Santo Domingo has been driven by tourism dollars. Haiti has historic monuments and places of interest that could be restored for tourists.
Most importantly, the agriculture sector needs investment. And [Haiti’s] ecology needs to be improved, its hills reforested, and its watersheds protected and improved. The agriculture sector needs better links to markets internally and improved infrastructure, but also links to supply chains in US markets and in Latin America and the Caribbean in ways that will tap in to its potential for producing rice, coffee, sugar cane, rum, and dried tropical fruits. Haiti could produce these and derive great benefits for its citizens—if we can make the appropriate investments.
One of the critical players will be Haitian civil society. Over the last 30 years, civil society and the not-for-profit sector have grown substantially. During the Duvalier years it was very difficult to organize any sort of not-for-profit or small, grassroots peasant organization. But more recently there has been an explosion of these types of organizations and they play a dynamic role in the country. You can see that in the emergency response. Oxfam is interacting with many of them on the ground: Settlement areas have been organized by church groups and Haitian organizations, very effectively.
But going forward, the Haitian people need to be a part of the re-imagining of their country. Tens of thousands of Haitians have struggled for decades to build their country and rid it of poverty. It is going to be critical for their presence to be felt in the way the international community designs the investment programs that are for the benefit of Haitian citizens. There will be donor meetings in the coming months, but there will also be civil society meetings, prep conferences, and comprehensive plans developed by civil society organizations as input to the donor meetings. Civil society needs to organize and prepare the way forward and become a full participant in these events.
]]>In the aftermath of the quake, Oxfam moved quickly to provide emergency aid for thousands of affected people. Meanwhile, supporters like Romanetti also took action, organizing dozens of large and small community events to raise funds and awareness about the crisis.
A few days after the quake, Romanetti contacted Oxfam with an offer to donate a portion of her store’s proceeds for the weekend of January 16 and 17. She then sent an email to the local knitting community, inviting customers to “Shop and stitch this weekend for Haiti.” In two days, they raised $1,761 to benefit Oxfam America’s Haiti earthquake response.
“It doesn’t matter how you contribute … as long as you do what you can to help,” said Romanetti. “Find a charity or an event and be a part of the relief effort.”
One night of bluegrass. One night of hip-hop and reggae. By bringing together eight artists for a two-night series, the January 25 and 26 Oxfam America benefit concert at Pizza Lucé in Duluth, MN, offered something for fans from all over the spectrum.
In addition to music, the benefit featured art, a raffle, and a silent auction, with contributions from over 50 local businesses and organizations. Seventy-five percent of the proceeds—a total of $3,520—went to support Oxfam’s Haiti earthquake response. Those who came to the benefit also had a chance to learn more about Oxfam’s work at an informational table staffed by volunteers from the Oxfam Action Corps.
Would anyone pay $25 for a cookie? The answer is yes—if it’s for a good cause. Or at least that’s what students at Oak Grove Montessori School in Mansfield, CT, found out on January 21, when they organized a bake sale to benefit Oxfam America’s Haiti relief work.
Fifth grader Anna Turner, 10, came up with the idea for the bake sale while listening to radio reports of the earthquake on her ride to school. She teamed up with her classmates, Nadia Henry and Emily Broggeman, to bake cupcakes, brownies, mousse cake, and pound cake. They then sold the treats at their school, asking parents and students to donate whatever they could; some gave as much as $25 per cookie. Thanks to this generous support, the girls raised $815 to support the relief effort.
“To help raise money for Oxfam, I am doing a somewhat unorthodox fundraiser …”
So read an email to friends and family from Andrew Chappelle, an Oxfam America CHANGE Leader now based in London, UK. Chapelle’s plan? “On February 27, I’ll be hopping out of a plane at 10,000 feet just north of London. A perfectly good plane… on a frigid day… for a great cause.”
Chappelle used social networking tools like Facebook to mobilize support for his dive, with a goal of raising 1000 pounds (about $1565). As of this writing, he’s still raising funds, with his sights set on supporting Haiti’s long-term recovery.
“When the life-saving needs are met, Oxfam will still be there, helping earthquake survivors build back their lives and tackle the poverty that makes them vulnerable to future disasters,” he wrote.
Nancy Delaney, Oxfam’s community outreach manager, says grassroots events like these help Oxfam build a crucial base of support for responding to emergencies. And even after the disaster fades from the headlines, they educate people about fighting poverty and hunger—issues at the core of all of Oxfam’s work.
“Emergencies—and how we respond to them—can be catalysts for social change,” says Delaney. “When you attend a community event or host an Oxfam fundraiser, you’re witnessing the power of many people working together to make a difference.”
]]>There have been enormous and successful efforts delivering clean water and food to people since the quake hit exactly a month ago. To date, Oxfam has provided assistance to about 100,000 people and continues to scale up operations, planning to reach at least 500,000 people by the end of July.
But the same effort must now be made to tackle poor sanitation. A coordinated effort is needed from the international community, the UN, and aid agencies in advance of the rainy season, due in April.
“Around 230,000 people lost their lives on January 12. It is our priority to make sure that we don’t let that number grow,” said Marcel Stoessel, Head of Oxfam in Haiti.
Oxfam fears that cases of diarrhea and other water-borne diseases could spread given the combination of poor drainage, a limited number of latrines, and crowded living conditions.
Oxfam has so far installed latrines at 11 key sites and many more are planned. Public health teams are also working with communities to reduce the risk of disease by clearing trash and raising awareness. But there is still a long way to go.
“Thanks to the generous public and political response, the aid effort has rapidly expanded to meet people’s needs, but there is still a mountain to climb.
“We now need a surge in effort to improve sanitation facilities for people in Haiti. Let us not kid ourselves that this is going to be easy, it requires a Herculean humanitarian effort from all sectors.
The temporary camps where people have congregated are fast-becoming over-crowded slums and need upgrading to allow easy access to basic services. More ditches are needed to improve drainage in the crowded camps before the rains begin. Oxfam also fears for the safety of people who have moved to areas that are at risk from land and mudslides because of the upcoming rains.
The Government of Haiti has plans to resettle people, but still needs to clarify whether there is government land available or if they will have to take over privately owned land. The Government also needs to ensure people are not forced to move away from their communities, new camps are safe, and there is a plan in place to ensure camps do not become dumping grounds outside the city. These decisions need to be made quickly.
The huge logistical challenges facing the aid effort - communications, transport, loss of key staff, destroyed physical and political infrastructure – are slowly being overcome, but bottlenecks still remain.
While the coordination of the aid effort is going well, Oxfam said it still needs to be improved. Hundreds of agencies now in Haiti - estimates vary from 500 to 900 – are playing their part in the response. The UN has made great strides coordinating the aid effort, but, along with the Government of Haiti, it needs to provide stronger leadership.
As more than 75 percent of Haiti’s capital needs to be rebuilt, reconstruction will take many years and needs the full support of the international community, Oxfam said.
“The vision of the Haitian government should ensure that a newly built Haiti does not recreate the injustices and inequalities of the past.
“The country’s reconstruction should be led by Haitians for Haitians,” Stoessel said. “With more than 80 percent living below the poverty line before the earthquake, the needs of Haiti’s poor must be central.”
Though the focus of the aid effort centers around the capital, where the majority of needs are, there is a growing concern about conditions in the countryside where nearly 500,000 people have fled. Vigilance is needed to ensure that their needs do not fall off the radar, and support must be provided to those hosting them.
]]>“The destruction across the capital was stunning, and the sight of countless camps crowded with families gave me a powerful sense of how devastating this earthquake has been for people,” says Oxfam writer Coco McCabe, who recently returned to Boston from Haiti.
The camps are spontaneous, makeshift neighborhoods, marked out by plastic tarps, cardboard, and bed sheets strung between whatever’s there. Posts to hang materials on are in short supply, so people are scavenging wood from the wreckage of buildings.
“I saw one man with a flat, wide board, working hard with a small hand saw to cut the board into narrower pieces that could serve as poles for sheets, plastic, scraps of clothing—anything that might offer the semblance of a wall or roof to give families privacy,” says McCabe.
Plastic sheeting strung from poles may seem like a minimal shelter solution, and it is. But at this moment in the emergency, it’s something that works. Colored tarps keep off the sun and rain and, unlike tents, can be made to fit whatever space and terrain is available – or whatever other purpose they’re needed for on a given day.
Over the next two months, Oxfam aims to boost the supply of sturdy plastic sheeting, providing enough for at least 4,000 families (20,000 people) – a project that includes a cash-for-work component: we are employing local people to cut giant rolls of the material down to size. Families will get two pieces, each six meters by four meters, along with two 10-meter lengths of rope.
Meanwhile, we’re making plans to assemble and distribute home-repair kits to help those whose houses need patching up, not rebuilding.
But when it comes to figuring out if what’s left of your house is a danger to your family, no one should have to rely on guesswork. Oxfam will assemble a team of structural engineers to survey the damage to homes in Haiti and share their knowledge and suggestions with local residents, builders, and officials.
How long will it take for survivors of the quake to make their way from camp sites to temporary houses to real, permanent homes? For many, it will be years. But if donors continue to support the aid effort generously, Haitians will get the support they need every step of the way.
“Building back all that was lost in just a few seconds,” says McCabe, “is going to require a sustained commitment from us all.”
“The ‘Hope for Haiti Now’ telethon was an outstanding example of the outpouring of support for Haiti. Since the earthquake, Oxfam has witnessed widespread devastation, but also the startling resilience of the people of Haiti who began rebuilding their lives the very next day.
“Oxfam has been supporting rescue efforts, assessing the damage and responding with public health, water, and sanitation services. We continue to work serving nearly 100,000 people in temporary camps with water distribution sites, safe sanitation supplies, and temporary shelter needs. This includes our cash-for-work program, which provides cash compensation for earthquake survivors in exchange for public service jobs in temporary camps where hundreds of thousands of people are now living.
“Haiti has a painful history of political instability and humanitarian disasters. We look forward to applying these funds to help people of Haiti determine the course of their future and not only rebuild their homes and livelihoods, but rebuild better.”
With the funds from “Hope for Haiti Now,” Oxfam America has raised more than $20.5 million for Haiti relief and recovery work. The agency is keeping the appeal open for people to donate toward longer-term plans to help Haitians recover and rebuild their lives, over approximately the next three to five years.
]]>Oxfam intends to ensure that the people who were most severely affected by the earthquake have clean water and basic sanitation services. The agency will prioritize this support by serving cities and new camps to be set up outside Port-au-Prince, as well as medical facilities.
Working with community members and local authorities, Oxfam will provide support and equipment to help clean up solid waste and develop a long-term approach for solid waste management.
International standards for emergency shelter require 17.5 square meters of shelter space for a family of five; most families in Port-au-Prince are living in one-third that area. Oxfam will work with local partners to provide safe temporary shelter materials such as plastic sheeting, and help construct temporary housing. Initial plans are to distribute plastic sheeting to about 4,000 families (about 20,000 people) in February and March. In addition, Oxfam will distribute roughly 1,000 tents, and home repair kits to owners of damaged buildings that can be repaired.
Food is becoming increasingly available in affected areas. But survivors don’t always have any money to purchase the food. Oxfam is starting a cash-for-work program that will target particularly vulnerable survivors including women, support alternatives to food aid, and promote purchase of food produced in Haiti.
To promote availability of local food, Oxfam is working with farmers affected by the earthquake to stimulate local agricultural production.
To encourage involvement of civil society organizations in decisions about the initial relief and recovery process, Oxfam will help Haitian organizations recover from the earthquake and assert some control over how the government and international donors design and carry out the rebuilding of Haiti. This will help ensure that the billions that will be spent in Haiti will actually help the poorest communities recover from the earthquake. This will help build a Haiti that is stronger than it was before the quake.
Every project to rebuild homes, rehabilitate water systems, and help people get back to work will also include measures to reduce vulnerability to floods and earthquakes. This will help communities become more resilient in future calamities.
Ongoing assessments by staff working in earthquake-affected areas will help Oxfam refine this initial strategy for the reconstruction and long-term development phases of Oxfam’s post- earthquake assistance to Haiti.
]]>“While Haitians still need help on water, food, shelter and other emergency needs, we also have to help them rebuild their lives.
“We applaud Senators Wyden and Nelson for introducing a bill that will help contribute to Haiti’s recovery by facilitating access of Haiti’s exports to the US market over the long term, and we urge Congress to move quickly to pass it.
“Haiti was facing extreme poverty before the earthquake, with more than 85% of the population struggling to survive on just two dollars a day. Trade can be part of the recovery by helping to spur economic growth.
“Haiti’s apparel assembly had been the country’s core export industry and a source of fairly quick employment growth in the formal sector, providing some 25,000 jobs or 8% of the country’s formal sector employment before the devastating earthquake. Because the US is the primary market for Haitian apparel exports, this bill will help generate much-needed jobs for Haitians by extending the favorable market-access rules granted to Haiti through existing trade preference programs.
“One of these programs, the Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act (CBTPA), would otherwise expire in September, a reality that is deterring investments and importers in the region. This bill will provide the certainty that businesses need to make the necessary investments and plans by extending CBTPA as well as the Haitian Hemispheric Opportunity through Partnership Encouragement Act (HOPE).
“Haiti needs enormous amounts of foreign assistance to not only rebuild but to address the country’s huge development challenges. The people of Haiti must have the central role in the process of reconstruction, and generous US foreign aid is needed. But we can also help the people of Haiti through trade policies that enable them to help themselves, by expanding exports to their largest market over the long term. This bill will help Haiti on its road to recovery and development.”
]]>For nine days after a catastrophic earthquake struck Haiti, the Hôpital Universitaire de l'État d'Haïti had no water for laundry or cleaning. Karine Deniel, a public health specialist for Oxfam who works on preparedness, discovered just how bad the situation was when she went to offer help. In the confusion at the site, someone grabbed her hand and led her into a building where suddenly she found herself inside a room where amputations were underway.
"They said, ‘We have just two buckets to clean the floor, and we need water for casts,’" recalls Deniel.
She noticed a woman washing the operating room floor: the water in her bucket was black with grime.
We need clean drinking water to survive, but it is easy to forget how critical water is for maintaining sanitary conditions. Before Deniel arrived at Hôpital Universitaire de l'État d'Haïti, another aid group had hooked the hospital up with clean water for drinking, but there was none for cleaning. Deniel immediately arranged to have a bladder—a collapsible tank, like a giant plastic bag—installed near the back of the hospital.
During the installation, an agitated man approached Deniel and begged her to come see the morgue. The unwashed cobblestones outside were a grim reminder of the human toll the quake took on this sprawling city. Inside, the space was filled with bodies. More lay on hospital beds outside. Like their colleagues in surgery, the workers were desperate for water to clean the site.
A few days later, conditions are much improved. A truck comes daily to fill the water bladder, as plump and yellow as an egg yolk, and now Oxfam is also trucking water into the kitchen facilities, where a large cistern at the back holds the supply.
The workers at the morgue and the laundry are very happy with Oxfam’s quick response, reports Deniel. "It's so important."
Hencia Josena is one of the women who is doing laundry—all by hand in massive metal bowls with water from the bladder—in a yard behind the hospital.
"It's the culture in Haiti to wash by hand," she explains.
There are, in fact, industrial-sized washing and drying machines suited to the hospital’s volume of laundry near the yard. The washing machines, however, haven't worked for a couple of years. A large hot water heater also stands idle. There's no gas to warm the water, explains the man in charge of the facility.
Nearby, the morgue is empty late in the afternoon. A sign on the door says no bodies are to be brought to the site after 3:30 p.m. Outside, two dusty hearses are parked—reminders of a time when burying the dead was a far more dignified event than it has become in the chaos following the earthquake.
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