Posts

Vital Increase in Rice Production in Haiti

Vital Increase in Rice Production in HaitiRecently the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization predicted that Haiti would see a 25% increase in its rice crop production between 2012 and 2013. For Haiti, a country that most often receives attention for reasons such as extreme poverty and inequality, this news is a step in the right direction.

Rice is a daily staple food for Haitians, yet they import 83% of the crop, mostly from the U.S. This leaves Haitians vulnerable to volatile world-market prices. Between 2003 and 2008 the price of rice increased fivefold. The price spike resulted in widespread hardship throughout the country. As a result, the Haitian government now aims to be food self-sufficient by 2016.

The increase in rice production this year is good news for Haiti, but the country still has a long way to go. Despite the increase, they will still have to import more than two-thirds of the rice that Haitians will consume. According to a recent Oxfam report, Haiti can become more independent in rice production if they make more investment in programs such as improved irrigation systems, mills, storage, and drying facilities. The report also concludes that Haitian farmers need access to better transportation, credit, and technical advice.

Oxfam works in Haiti to help alleviate the problems by bringing farmers’ voices into the debate, working to change harmful policies, increasing investment, and using agroecological tools that are effective despite Haiti’s lack of resources. Oxfam has already partnered with USAID to produce a pilot program, called System of Rice Intensification (SRI). SRI boosts crop yields with less seed, less water, and uses organic fertilizer. The increase in rice production this year, then, is a move towards a more sustainable and more self-sufficient system of farming for Haitians.

– Chloe Isacke

Source: Oxfam America
Photo: CNN

,

Universal Primary Education

Universal Primary Education
Since 1999, when 106 million children were not in school, much progress has been made. Today, approximately 61 million are out of school, and yet more progress is needed. In the past five years, due to the economic crisis, many nations decreased their foreign aid spending and thus progress was hindered. According to the World Bank and the U.N., the majority of children not attending schools live in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, with at least half living in areas that are politically unstable.

Despite some progress, it is crucial to note that there is a percentage of people/areas that is not accounted for in the statistics of progress and primary education. For example, according to the U.N., 90% of primary aged children living in developing countries are now in school as opposed to that percentage being 82% in 1999. While the rise in percentage sounds great, “broad figures [have the tendency to] mask localized problems,” and thus, in actuality some countries barely have any primary aged children attending school. The children who are most unaffected by the progress and recent advancement are the extremely poor and the minorities. Nigeria, Yemen, Ethiopia, South Sudan, India,  Haiti, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Bangladesh account for half of the world’s children not going to school.

There is a demand for new donors or ‘funders,’ now that many nations have cut back on their foreign aid, from the private sector and through public fundraising. Part of the U.N. 2015 Millennium Goals was to ensure that all children have equal access to primary education and to increase females’ enrollment in schools. However, experts are claiming that education goals are difficult to reach due to issues such as child labor, cultural values, and other reasons. For example, in some cultures, it is valued more that daughters stay home while the sons receive an education. The women assume the housewife role while the men are valued to be the knowledgeable providers.

In addition to child labor and cultural values, there are many concerns regarding harassment and safety of the children attending schools. For example, some female students in Sierra Leone reported being sexually harassed by teachers in exchange for good grades. And it is almost impossible to forget the story of Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl, who was shot by the Taliban for her advocacy of education for girls. Despite the unfortunates, where instituting education does work, it makes an incredible difference. Rebeca Winthrop, the director of the Center of Universal Education at the Brookings Institution in Washington, expressed that there are children who continue to learn even in refugee camps. Where there is desire, willingness, and determination, there is much hope for universal primary education and even further schooling.

– Leen Abdallah
Source: New York Times
Photo: Globalization 101

Haiti Babi: Moms Helping Moms

Haiti_family_orphanage_mom_mother_volunteer_program_babi_opt
When Katlin Jackson volunteered at an orphanage in Haiti, she expected to do a lot of important work.  What she didn’t expect was how her trip inspired Haiti Babi, an organization that aims to keep Haitian children in their homes and out of orphanages.
One in ten children in Haiti lives in an orphanage.  That’s nearly 500,000 kids who don’t live with their parents.  Many of them aren’t even orphaned; their parents just can’t afford to provide for them, so they are removed from their care and placed in orphanages.  As a volunteer, Katlin met and fell in love with one of these “orphans”.  One year old Sterly, like so many residents, had been taken from his parents not because they had died or mistreated him, but because they couldn’t afford a house, food, or basic medical care.
On a second trip to Haiti, Katlin was able to visit Sterly and his family after they had been reunited.  She was able to see firsthand the love in Sterly’s home, and that his parents wanted nothing more than to be able to care for and be with their son.  Katlin left Haiti with her mind made up that a loving family should not be forced apart due to poverty.  So she founded Haiti Babi, an organization that employs Haitian mothers wanting to provide for their children.
Haiti Babi, partnered with Second Mile Ministries in Haiti, enables Haitian moms to earn a reliable income for their family by knitting and crocheting artisan baby blankets.  Mothers around the world have the opportunity to support these women by purchasing their quality, handmade products online.  The sentiment behind the idea: moms helping moms.
So next time you’re in the market for a baby blanket, buy one that can warm your heart; a Haiti Babi blanket, handmade by a mother, doing everything she can for the children she loves.
– Dana Johnson

Source: Haiti Babi

Aid to Haiti: What Lessons Can We Learn?

Aid to Haiti: What Lessons Can We Learn?A controversy with foreign aid does not always relate to misuse but the reality of the numbers and figures after the aid is delivered. A popular example of this has been the $9 billion in donations made to the Haitian government since the 2010 earthquake.

Last week, National Public Radio (npr) interviewed Jonathan Katz, the author of The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster. This new book focuses on the damages to both the Haitian government and its people due to communication issues, lack of coordination, and the general failure of donor countries to follow-through on their promises.

After reading the interview, it is important to keep in mind that foreign aid is not a waste. There have been thousands and thousands of completely successful large-scale and small-scale transactions and projects throughout the centuries. Governments, however, need to really sit down and review their policies. In this review, one would hope they would seriously consider making more use of direct aid. As Katz briefly touches on in his interview, there is the uncommon but possible option of paying victims of the earthquake (or any crisis) and removing the middleman. Perhaps not handing them a band of cash exactly, but focusing the energy and time spent on drafting contracts, debt relief plans, and the such to send volunteers and individuals who are willing and passionate about making small but immediate and tangible changes, such as Syrian-American Omar Chamma has been doing in Syria.

The transcript of the interview follows:

Aid pledged to Haiti — $9.3 billion worth from 2010 to 2012 — is about a third of all global health aid donated in 2012. What happened to the money that was supposed to go to Haiti?

Katz: Money did what money tends to do in most foreign aid situations. That is, rather than being a model in which a rich country gives a poor country a big bag of cash and says, “Here spend this on fixing things up from whatever the latest crisis was,” what actually happens is that very little of the money actually leaves the donor countries. First of all, you’ve got billions of dollars that are promised but just never delivered. You’ve got billions of dollars more that were sort of creative accounting. Donor nations say they’re providing debt relief, yet those debts were never realistically going to be paid back. So some of the money is sort of fictive.

So how much actually made it into Haiti?

Even among the real money, if you look at what was labeled as humanitarian relief, in the months right after the quake, that amounts to about $2.5 billion.
Ninety-three percent of that money either went to United Nations agencies or international nongovernmental organizations, or it never left the donor government.
So you had the Pentagon writing bills to the State Department to get reimbursed for having sent troops down to respond to the disaster.
If we’re talking about reconstruction, it’s really a misnomer to think that relief aid was necessarily going to have the effect of rebuilding a country in any shape or form.

So what was that money spent on?

Band-Aids. Literally bandages. Short-term relief. Tarps to put over your head. Food to fill emergency gaps in supply.
But food gets eaten. Tarps wear out. Band-Aids get pulled off. And ultimately, all that money is spent, but people aren’t left with anything durable.When you hear about all these billions of dollars [in aid donations], the imagination is that they’re going to go and rebuild the country after the earthquake. They were never intended to do so and, lo and behold, they didn’t.

There are often complaints after big disasters about waste and inefficiencies. Was the Haiti earthquake different from any other international disaster or is this typical?

What is interesting about Haiti is the extremes.
There are lots of places that have weak governments, but Haiti’s government is weak in a special way. It’s the product of so many years of aid going around the government and international efforts to undermine the government. Presidents being overthrown and flown out on U.S. Air Force planes and then reinstalled and then overthrown again. That left the Haitian government in such a weakened state.
Then the disaster itself was also so much more extreme. It was so concentrated. It hit the capital city. Whether your estimates for a death toll is in the 80,000 range or closer to the government’s estimate of 316,000 — in a city of 2.5 million people — it’s just an extraordinary number.
It was an incredibly horrific disaster. It hit the country right at its heart and destroyed a government that was already weakened.
But beyond that, the attitude that so many foreign aid groups have regarding Haiti is that you can basically come in and do whatever you want. So there was no accountability, no coordination.
People were just running around doing what they thought was best or what they thought was best for them. And it really created a mess.

– Deena Dulgerian

Source: npr

Haiti’s Plan to Eliminate Cholera

Haiti's Plan to Eliminate CholeraThe World Health Organization (WHO) hopes to help the Haitian government in its fight against cholera. The Haitian government has proposed a plan that would require an estimated $2.2 billion in investment over the next ten years to eliminate cholera.

The recent cholera outbreak can be traced back, to a large extent, to the 2010 earthquake that toppled buildings, destroyed infrastructure, and killed more than 250,000. The devastation also ruined irrigation systems, wells, sanitary plumbing, and sewers. Those damages to water security and cleanliness are thought to have contributed to the recent spread of cholera that the country has been experiencing.

Haiti’s plan will focus on repairing sanitation and providing greater access to clean water as well as rebuilding other water facilities. Before 2010 Haiti was reported to have the lowest rate of sanitation coverage in the Americas. A true sign of promise for this program is that it has been designed by the Haitian government and they are reaching out so openly to the international community. As previous programs around the world have shown, local ownership is a huge factor in the success of any aid program and Haiti’s ownership and openness are both good omens for their National Plan to Eliminate Cholera in Haiti.

– Kevin Sullivan

Source: SKYN Vibes, The Telegraph

UN Refuses to Compensate Haitian Cholera Victims

UN Refuses to Compensate Haitian Cholera Victims
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), there is no evidence that anyone in Haiti had ever gotten cholera before 2010. However, since the outbreak began that year, almost half a million Haitians have gotten the disease, and nearly 8,000 have been killed by it.

Cholera is a horrible disease with a surprisingly simple treatment. Victims suffer from extreme diarrhea, but if they are constantly supplied with oral re-hydration in order to replace lost water and electrolytes, they will almost always survive. Unfortunately, poor infrastructure and a lack of water sanitation systems has resulted in many Haitians not getting the treatment they need.

As a result of these deaths, the Boston-based Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti has filed a claim against the UN, stating that evidence demonstrates that the UN was responsible for the outbreak in the first place. Allegedly, UN troops from Nepal were carrying the disease as they were sent to Haiti to assist after the 2010 Earthquake.

On Thursday, February 21, 2013, the UN rejected the Institute’s claim on the basis of diplomatic immunity. Although there are many efforts at the international level to eradicate the cholera epidemic in Haiti, the U.N.’s official decision states that “the claims are ‘not receivable’ because they concern ‘a review of political and policy matters.'” As the UN refuses to compensate Haitian cholera victims, thousands more may suffer until enough money can be raised to implement Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon’s plan for eradicating cholera in the region.

– Jake Simon

Source: U.S. News
Photo: The Guardian

,

New Proposals for Development in Haiti

New Proposals for Development in Haiti
In an ambitious goal to help other nations help themselves and possibly shift the paradigm of foreign aid forever, Canadian aid worker Hugh Locke has started a forestry program aimed at fostering a sense of independence in the Haitian citizenry. Lock, critical of the current state of NGO and government involvement in projects, is employing his aptly titled “exit strategy aid” to change the scope of development in Haiti.

The country of Haiti, still emerging from the destruction wrought by Hurricane Sandy and previous natural disasters, has had no shortage of challenges involving their crippled infrastructure and forecasted food shortages. However, Lock, armed with his forestry background, noticed that the Caribbean nation was lacking key ecological resources and decided to embark upon a re-forestation program dependent upon native farmers to encourage development in Haiti. When questioned about the efficacy of such a program, Lock remarked: “A road that is built by donor money using foreign contractors is never going to be fully a part of the national transportation system,” before clarifying that such a project, because of its foreign ownership, would need foreign aid to maintain it, which is neither sustainable nor helpful to empowering local projects.

Lock, along with his Haitian counterpart Timote Georges, were able to bring together a group of farmers in a forestry cooperative whose primary goal is both the growth and sales of trees. The Haitian forests, a natural resource that once afforded certain energy and topsoil advantages, has since been stripped from much of the countryside, devastating crop and charcoal production levels.
Subsequently, by having farmers plant trees, Lock hopes to encourage greater internal participation in the development of Haiti. Thus, by establishing a strong ecological and agricultural foundation, the people of Haiti can look forward to a much brighter, more independent future for years to come.
– Brian Turner

Source: World News
Photo: Trees for the Future

Haitian Vacation

Haitian-VacationThe Caribbean has and will continue to be one of the most visited vacation spots. The beaches of Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, and Jamaica remain quintessential examples of the perfect island getaway with clear blue waters and continuous sunshine. One country, however, has fallen off its throne as a Caribbean hot spot: Haiti. Haitian Vacation has become one of the destination for people.

Along with the homes and lives the 2010 earthquake in Haiti swept away, it also took away the luxury and lure that once attracted tourists from around the world. Recently, however, the Haitian government has been focusing its efforts on revamping the country as a vacation spot. President Michel Martelly boasts of the dynamic music and the yearly celebration of Carnaval. “It’s probably the worst organized Carnaval…but it’s the best Carnaval…it’s fun, it’s crazy.” He is not blind to the issues facing this new campaign. The streets in and around Port-au-Prince are in horrible condition. Security warnings alerted visitors of the lack of medical care, high risk of kidnapping and theft, and overly expensive hotels.

Despite these issues, Martelly seems to be focusing on what the Haitians have been able to hold onto since the earthquake: their culture. Although it will take some time to establish basic amenities and safe traveling, tourists still have many reasons to visit Haiti. Many of the beaches offer the ultimate seclusion and beauty. For Stephanie Villedrouin, Haiti’s minister of tourism, visiting Haiti can actually serve as the best form of humanitarian aid. “Don’t just send money through a wire or through an NGO for us. Come and experience Haiti because we have so much to showcase.” It may be an extremely inappropriate time to use this phrase but in essence, people can kill two birds with one stone. The first bird being experiencing the island lifestyle and the second, but most important bird, knowing that every dollar you spend is going towards improving the country’s economy. Yes, even that delicious Piña Colada is in some way helping save a life and revive a once broken country.

President Martelly doesn’t seem to mind using the appeal of Haiti’s current situation to attract new tourists. And why should he? It is not a secret that Haiti has a long way to go, but being upfront about it all may ease the worries people have. The most noteworthy aspect of this entire campaign is that Haiti is using its natural and preexisting resources to revive itself. Yes, the revenue is coming from travelers, but the main point is that it is an internal effort on behalf of the Haitian people that are drawing them to the island.

The ministry of tourism, however, must prevent touristic spots from becoming too secluded and overprotected. The Royal Caribbean liner “Allure of the Seas” is ported in clear visibility to the struggling Haitians only a few miles away from the docks. The area is completely fenced off, limiting tourists’ interaction (read: spending money outside the private beach) with the rest of Haiti. Even worse, it eliminates the opportunity for many local vendors to reach a new market, especially for those who are not able to be ‘pre-screened’ by the government and Royal Caribbean. Although praised as a multi-million dollar source of revenue for the government and for building a local school, Royal Caribbean must seek to incorporate the entire surrounding area and give Haitians the opportunity to work alongside them.

All the work cannot be done by external sources though, and the Haitians must come to realize this quickly. One cannot begin to understand the daily obstacles and hardships they must go through to make a living, let alone survive. As much as the appeal of adventure and exploration of a third world country may entice some visitors, there can be no denial that most vacationers are not going to visit a country with “gray sludge overflowing from open sewers, piles of trash burning in ditches…[and] roads pocked with jagged potholes”. With what little energy and must are left, the Haitian government must figure out these glitches. Once the city becomes presentable, a Haitian vacation will no longer be based on sympathy but a true desire to experience a wonderful culture and its breathtaking beauty.

– Deena Dulgerian

Source:npr
Photo:Paradise in the World