Tag: Partners in Health

In Haitian Kreyol “tout moun se moun” Means Every Person is a Person

Many people look at Haiti and despair. Some say that we have hungry and uninsured in America and that the people of Haiti need to somehow help themselves. Others though, like Dr. Paul Farmer, co-Founder of Partners in Health and United Nations Deputy Special Envoy for Haiti, have worked in Haiti for years.  Paul Farmer has reason to doubt and yet he seems to have hope.

He recently testified to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  The full testimony is here. (Emphasis is mine.)

Beyond hope, he has experience and wisdom and a history in Haiti and that is why I think he is worth listening to and potentially supporting with your financial dollars.

“They say that aid is wasted, that there is no hope for this country.  And indeed there are reasons to be cautious.

I would answer them with the positive experience of building Haitian-led programs in the Central Plateau and Artibonite Valley regions that have createdfive thousand jobs for people who would otherwise have no steady work. I advance this model not because it is associated with our efforts, but because job creation is the surest way to speed up the cash flow that is essential now. It is also the fastest way to make amends for our past actions towards Haiti, which have not always been honorable.  In other words, if we focus the reconstruction efforts appropriately, we can achieve long-term benefits for Haiti. The UNDP is helping to organize programs of this kind, which should be supported and extended around the country.Putting Haitians back to work and offering them the dignity that comes with having a job and its basic protections is exactly what brought our country out of the Great Depression.

Last night I read a New York Times article about the babies being born amidst the tragedy of Haiti.  My heart broke to hear of these mothers giving birth and having nowhere to go, no food or shelter.  Can you imagine?  Having done that three times myself I can tell you that it would be terrifying.

One, nineteen year old woman four days after giving birth was eating her first meal — a can of beans.  Another living in a sheet tent with her 12-year-old and eight year old and few days old infant.  Despondent as she lived outside the rubble of her home, because she does not want other’s charity.  Her husband is dead.  She has three children and nothing to feed them.  No way of providing for them.

“The street where I live, it’s so dirty; there isn’t enough food or water,” Ms. Antoine said. “I’m scared to bring a baby into this awful situation.”

The article said, ” roughly 7,000 who will give birth in the next month” of the 63,000 that were pregnant when the earth quake struck Haiti two weeks ago.

Back to Paul Farmer’s presentation:

“Despite $402 million pledged to support the Haitian government’s Economic Recovery Program in April of last year, when the country was trying to recover from a series of natural disasters resulting in a 15% reduction of GDP, it is estimated that a mere $61 million have been disbursed.

“In the Office of the Special Envoy, we have been tracking the disbursement of pledges, and as of yesterday we estimate that 85% of the pledges made last year remain undisbursed. Many of us worry that, if what’s past is prologue, Haitians themselves will be blamed for this torpor.

So here is our chance: if even half of the pledges made in Montreal or other such meetings are linked tightly to local job creation, it is possible to imagine a Haiti building back better with fewer of the social tensions that inevitably arise as half a million homeless people are integrated into new communities.

Haiti needs and deserves a Marshall Plan—not the “containment” aspects of that policy, unless we are explicit about containing the ill effects of poverty, but the social-justice elements. But we need to be honest about the differences between post-war Europe and Haiti in 2010. Part of the problem, I’ve argued, is the way in which aid is delivered now as compared to in 1946—well before the term “beltway bandits” was coined.

  • We need a reconstruction fund that is large, managed transparently, creates jobs for Haitians, and grows the Haitian economy.
  • We need a reconstruction plan that uses a pro-poor, rights-based approach far different from the charity and failed development approaches that have marred interactions between Haiti and much of the rest of the world for the better part of two centuries.

Our country can be a big part of this effort.  Debt relief is important, but only the beginning. As you consider donating to Haiti relief, remember that any group looking to do this work must share the goals of the Haitian people which are shared by Partners in Health as well.

They need:

  1. access to quality health care, and
  2. social and economic rights, reflected, for example, in job creation,
  3. local business development,
  4. watershed protection (and alternatives to charcoal for cooking), and
  5. gender equity.

Considering all these goals together orients our strategic choices. For example, cash transfers to women, who hold the purse strings in Haiti and are arbiters of household spending, will have significant impact. This is a chance to learn and move forward and build on lessons learned in adversity—to build hurricane-resistant houses with good ventilation to improve air quality from stove smoke; to build communities around clean water sources; to reforest the terrain to protect from erosion and to nurture the fertility of the land for this predominantly agricultural country. It is the chance to create shelter, grow the local economy and incomes, and invest in improved health. This will do much to decrease the risk of another calamity, and to decrease the vulnerability of the poor—especially as we face the second wave of problems, including epidemic disease born of the earthquake

“tout moun se moun” – every person is a person

Won’t you help an organization that has experience in the country.   There are goofy groups popping up that seem to be exploiting the situation in Haiti.  Don’t be fooled into thinking they are helping.   And look, I know we all want to help.  I want to scoop up those moms and babies and take care of them.  Offer them shelter and food.  I want to hold that starving 18 month old in the hospital in Haiti, comfort him with physical contact and food.  (He has since died.)  I would do anything, offering up my blood, sweat and tears if it would help.

But we must be reasonable — adults — logical and informed.  They don’t need our frickin’ shoes.  Or blankets.  Or old clothes.  They don’t even need us to go, no matter how much we want to help.

This website, Good Intentions Are Not Enough, provides a list of ideas of ways that you can truly help if you are so compelled.

Or you could just send money.

There are a number of online tools available for evaluating charities and making donations to a broader range of NGOs, including CharityNavigator.org and NetworkForGood.org.

Be well friends.

Somewhere in my heart, it’s the end of the world & Satan takes a pass. (Haiti)

I spent last evening from 9pm to 12am watching AC 360 and reading blogs about Haiti. Anderson Cooper, because he is there on site.  And I think he’s an excellent journalist (“Not to mention he’s a hunk and have you seen his muscles?” my 72-year-old Mother said to me recently. Yes, that’s funny.  You can laugh.)

And then, as it does all day long my mind goes back to Haiti.  I just can’t stop dwelling there. I’m vacuuming or making dinner and my mind is with the Haitians who are still being pulled from the rubble four days later.  Alive. Surviving on nothing while I am pulling boiled chicken off the bones for soup.  The fat is clinging to my fingers.

We are so abundantly blessed. If you haven’t yet, I would ask you to give money for Haiti. This blog I follow Blood & Milk: Examining International Development gave practical advice on giving.

“My own suggestion is this – the single most important thing you can do when choosing where to donate is to pick an organization with a history in Haiti. That will make all the different in the speed and quality of their work.”

Photographs (a must see).

Some disturbing and horrifying images from Haiti, six days later in the Boston Globe. Personally I think they are a must see.  For they are seared in my aortas and as I pray I cannot help but remember them.

History I never learned.

Many of us are coming up to speed quickly on this tiny nation.  To be honest I have given no energy or time toward this country.  It has never been on my grid.

This article Requiem for Port-au-Prince is insightful and interesting.  Haitian writers and visitors to the island nation talk about Port-au-Prince before the earthquake.  Also another interesting article with a time line of  the Unluckiest Country. Both articles are from Foreign Policy magazine.

A Personal Story

And then, late last night I read this by Régine Chassagne who is Haitian talking about her week since she heard about the earthquake.  It’s a first hand account and is very touching as the Haitian singer demands that her homeland isn’t once again abandoned by the west.  Heart breaking.

I let out a cry, as if I’d heard everybody I loved had died.

Somewhere in my heart, it’s the end of the world.  These days, nothing is funny. I am mourning people I know. People I don’t know. People who are still trapped under rubble and won’t be rescued in time. I can’t help it.  Everybody I talk to says the same thing: time has stopped.

Simultaneously, time is at work. Sneakily passing through the cracks, taking the lives of survivors away, one by one.

Diaspora overloads the satellites. Calling families, friends of families, family friends. Did you know about George et Mireille? Have you heard about Alix, Michaelle etc, etc? But I know that my personal anguish is small compared to the overwhelming reality of what is going on down there.

When it happened I was at home in Montreal, safe and cosy, surfing the internet, half randomly, like millions of westerners. Breaking news: 7.0 earthquake hits Haiti near Port-au-Prince.

Such emotion came over me. My breath stopped. My heart sank and went straight into panic mode. I knew right away that the whole city is in no way built to resist this kind of assault and that this meant that thousands were under rubble. I saw it straight away.

I ran downstairs and turned on the television. It was true. Tears came rushing right to my eyes and I let out a cry, as if I had just heard that everybody I love had died. The reality, unfortunately, is much worse. Although everything around me is peaceful, I have been in an internal state of emergency for days. My house is quiet, but I forget to eat (food is tasteless). I forget to sleep. I’m on the phone, on email, non-stop. I’m nearly not moving, but my pulse is still fast. I forget who I talked to and who I told what. I leave the house without my bag, my keys. I cannot rest.

I grew up with parents who escaped during the brutal years of the Papa Doc regime. My grandfather was taken by the Tonton Macoutes and it was 10 years before my father finally learnt he had been killed. My mother and her sister returned home from the market to find their cousins and friends murdered. She found herself on her knees in front of the Dominican embassy begging for her life in broken Spanish. Growing up, I absorbed those stories, heard a new version every year; adults around the dinner table speaking in creole about poor Haiti.

When I was growing up, we never had the money to return. Even if we had, my mother never could go back. Until she died, she would have nightmares about people coming to “take her away”. My mum passed away before she could meet my future husband, or see our band perform and start to have success, and though I have dreamed of her dancing to my music, I know she would have been very worried to hear that I was travelling to Haiti for the first time last year.

It is strange that I was introduced to my country by a white doctor from Florida called Paul Farmer who speaks perfect Creole and knows how to pronounce my name right. He is the co-founder of an organisation titled Partners in Health (Zanmi Lasante in Creole). There are several charity organisations that are doing good work in Haiti – Fonkoze is a great micro-lending organisation – but in terms of thorough medical care, follow-up and combining of parallel necessary services (education, sanitation, training, water, agriculture), there is none that I could ­recommend more than Partners in Health. It takes its work for the Haitian people very seriously and, indeed, most of the staff on the ground are Haitian. PIH has been serving the poorest of the poor for more than 20 years with a ­curriculum that really astounded me, given the limited resources available in the area.

Visiting its facilities, I was overwhelmed by, and impressed with, the high-level, top-quality services provided in areas where people own next to nothing and were never given the opportunity to learn how to sign their own name. I was delightfully shocked to see the radically positive impact it has had in the communities it serves. Of course, during my visit, I saw some clinics and hospitals that were at different stages than others, but through it all, I could clearly see that PIH staff are very resourceful and set the bar extremely high for themselves. I know that, right now, they are using their full ­capacities to save as many lives as possible.

So in these critical times where death comes every minute, I urge you to donate to Partners in Health (www.pih.org) and be as generous as you can. I know from having talked to some staff that they are on the ground right now, setting up and managing field hospitals as well as receiving the injured at their clinics in the surrounding areas.

I realize that by the time you read this it will be Sunday. The cries will have died out and few miracles will remain possible. But the suffering survivors should not be abandoned and should be treated with the best care countries like ours can offer.

Many Haitians expect to be let down. History shows they are right to feel that way. Haitians know that they have been wronged many, many times. What we are seeing on the news right now is more than a natural disaster. This earthquake has torn away the veil and revealed the crushing poverty that has been allowed by the west’s centuries of disregard. That we must respond with a substantial emergency effort is beyond argument, but in the aftermath, Haiti must be rebuilt.

Ultimately, we need to treat Haiti with compassion and respect and make sure that the country gets back on its feet once and for all. Haiti’s independence from France more than two centuries ago should be thought of as one of the most remarkable tales of ­freedom; instead, she was brought to her knees by the French and forced to pay a debt for the value of the lost colony (including the value of the slaves: the equivalent of $21bn by current calculations). We cannot ­overestimate the strength and resilience of the brave people living in this country whose ancestors had to buy their own bodies back.

The west has funded truly corrupt governments in the past.  Right now, in Haiti, there is a democratically elected government.  Impossibly weak, but standing. This is the moment where we need to show our best support and solidarity.

Since Haiti shook and crumbled, I feel as if something has collapsed over my head, too. Miles away, somehow, I’m trapped in this nightmare. My heart is crushed. I’ve been thinking about nothing else.  Time has stopped – but time is of the essence.

So I’ve been sitting here at my computer, food in the fridge, hot water in the tap, a nice comfy bed waiting for me at some point… but…  Somewhere in my heart, it’s the end of the world.

Régine Chassagne is a member of the rock band Arcade Fire.

Obviously a student of CS Lewis, a woman wrote a Letter to the editor in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune:

Dear Pat Robertson,
I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I’m all over that action. But when you say that Haiti has made a pact with me, it is totally humiliating. I may be evil incarnate, but I’m no welcher. The way you put it, making a deal with me leaves folks desperate and impoverished. Sure, in the afterlife, but when I strike bargains with people, they first get something here on earth — glamour, beauty, talent, wealth, fame, glory, a golden fiddle. Those Haitians have nothing, and I mean nothing. And that was before the earthquake. Haven’t you seen “Crossroads”? Or “Damn Yankees”? If I had a thing going with Haiti, there’d be lots of banks, skyscrapers, SUVs, exclusive night clubs, Botox — that kind of thing. An 80 percent poverty rate is so not my style. Nothing against it — I’m just saying: Not how I roll. You’re doing great work, Pat, and I don’t want to clip your wings — just, come on, you’re making me look bad. And not the good kind of bad. Keep blaming God. That’s working. But leave me out of it, please. Or we may need to renegotiate your own contract.

Best, Satan

LILY COYLE, MINNEAPOLIS