Back to the Future
Today I decided to take on the Herculean task of asking, and hopefully answering, the question “What will happen to small charities like PWP with all the donor dollars being focused on Port au Prince Earthquake relief?” For the PWP Canadian Directors and our Haitian staff, the answer is simple and solid. I feel the Herculean part is going to be for me to convince our supporters, and the million more supporters we need, that our answer is also a solution in addressing disaster relief in the aftermath of the January Earthquake. So here goes………
The answer for us is “Relief from this disaster will be found in the empowerment of those who have survived whether they get a new up-to-code building to live in or not.” Already there has been a massive fleeing of people back to the countryside. Back to the small villages, and towns of their roots. This Back to the Future scenario is new, fresh and one that Haiti has not experienced before. For decades there has been an almost mesmeric migration of Haiti’s rural population to the urban centers. Determined that their only hope for employment, education or advancement in any way was in the City. Even when they arrived, and ended up bobbing along in the bloat of a City unable to offer anything but more misery, more poverty, they stayed. There was no thought of going back. Going back to what?
What was once Haiti’s backbone, the rural agricultural sector, perfectly capable of providing for it’s people, has slowly been overpowered and devoured by imports. So, there may be an Auntie or an aging Father or 10 hungry siblings back home, back in the countryside, but there was nothing compelling enough to engender a ‘going back’ of anyone who had left. So, the Cities swelled, the rural areas waited and the Haitians daily counted their losses while the importers daily counted their gains.
I think we are all savvy enough in this day and age to understand how a country’s whole economy can get undermined by our “all about me” and “dollar driven” societies so I am not going to list all that here. Instead, I will offer one example that will be metaphoric of the many concepts and entities that have eroded the very foundations of Haiti. You’ve likely heard on the news lately that Haiti has over 400,000 orphans. Possibly you also heard the one lone news reporter that told the truth that an orphan in Haiti is not necessarily what our concept of an orphan is. A large percentage of that 400,000 statistic are children who do have a parent, usually a mom who simply can’t provide for her child. Our answer has always been to build more orphanages to address that problem. Why has there not been an equal effort to do something to put the mothers in a position to be able to raise their own kids? Again, the simple answer is “it is easier to raise money to build orphanages.” We get stuck in doing the same thing - governments get stuck doing the same thing and the Haitian people get stuck accepting the same old thing. I will never forget the woman a few years back when PWP was researching needs with women’s groups in Northern Haiti and the question was put forth “What do you want?” A very brave mom stood up and stretched out her hand and said “Put something in my hand so I don’t have to call my child an orphan.” You see, they do have the answers. We need to be better listeners. Orphan has become a metaphor for many situations in Haiti and orphanages the metaphor for the all too common solutions ‘we’ come up with to deal with Haitian problems.
Today, PWP is hearkening to the sound of trucks rumbling over the rough roads bringing the precious cargo of people back home. Back to what will now be their future. What a pivotal time this can be for Haiti! What a profound opportunity this can be for us to get it right this time! Yes, they are coming back to the same thing they left years ago. The farmers still can’t compete, the mom’s still can’t feed their kids, jobs are less than scarce, but that can all change if we don’t get stuck building orphanages and we focus on building lives. An email from a friend working with farmers in Northern Haiti encouraged PWP this weekend to stay the course with our focus on the survivors with our education and job creation initiatives. Let me share a quote from his letter.
“When I think about the disaster, I know that the sustainable rebuilding of Port au Prince involves the restoration of the countryside. With the outpouring of help from around the world, the disaster is being triaged, but that must be soon followed by step two, which is to increase the capacity of the countryside to support the needs of more people.”
Sounds like the answer is simple “Haitian owned -Haitian produced –Haitian consumed –equaling job creation for Haitians.” In the nutshell, it is simple. For those of us nuts outside of the protective shell and covering of International aid dollars we know it will not be easy or simple. We will all struggle to convince our supporters to stay the course with us and it will be an even harder job convincing new donors that relief for this disaster is going to come from job creation. Like I said at the top of this letter, it is going to be a Herculean task for all of us small charities working with education and anything to do with job creation to stay on the radar while the big guns pull the purse strings of compassionate supporters wide open. So please hear me on behalf of all of the small charities as I, as they say in Haiti, “Leve. Kanpe. Rele.” – Rise. Stand. Cry out. Don’t forget us. We were linked with Haitians a long time before the earthquake and we will be here long after the rubble is cleared. We are invested at a heart level and we need your investment in us.
Peace,
Julie
Posted on Monday, January 25 2010, at 2:44 PM.