Haiti Quake Updates

However, having met people from different places, students and professionals, anonymous or famous, who have decided to give their time and efforts to settle in Haiti and help, fills me with optimism. Sean Penn, for example, personally leads one of the largest refugee camps in the country. He has been living in a camp for nearly three months. He sleeps in a small precarious tent no different than those of the 60 thousand displaced people that live there, while he tries to relocate them. He has been able to get a considerable amount of international aid and through his daily work he continues to inspire many people that, like him, have volunteered to help. U.S., Filipino and Indian Marines, as well as many young volunteers, have mobilized to the area to join forces.

Everyday there are more and more people in the world who connect with the needs of those less fortunate. Newer generations absorb these examples and know that in today's world the problems of one group of people are the problems of the whole world. My hope is that through education and communication this message is spread and becomes the legacy we leave our children and our children's children.

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Outlook has been hearing the stories of some of the children caught up in Haiti's devastating earthquake.

Many have lost family members and friends, and most have lost their homes as well.

Even getting back to school is a major achievement in Haiti, with so many buildings destroyed or badly damaged.

At the Christian Light School in Port-au-Prince, children are now having lessons in tents in the playground.

But some of the children have managed to link up for a satellite phone conversation with pupils from a school in West London.

It is all part of the click BBC School Report News Day, a project which brings together British school children with pupils from around the world.

Outlook's Matthew Bannister spoke to three of the children from the school in Haiti - 15 year-old Djeanice, 14 year-old Francisco and 12 year-old Alex.

Djeanice's grandmother died during the earthquake and Francisco lost his younger brother.

Matthew also spoke to Sherrie Fausey - the principal of the school - who only survived the earthquake because she was standing up rather than sitting down, when it struck.

Raymond C. Offenheiser, Oxfam America’s president, recounts his impressions of the ravaged Haitian capital after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck the city leaving 230,000 people dead and more than one million others homeless.

I arrived in Port-au-Prince on the one-month anniversary of the ghastly earthquake that rocked Haiti to its core.  The airport was hectic, full of UN officials, aid workers and military personnel frantically working to move goods and people, struggling to coordinate and manage their own stress in face of the monumental task that confronted them.

Collasped buidlings everywhere

As we left the airport, the scale of the tragedy unfolded: block after block of collapsed buildings and 500,000 people living in ramshackle shelters. Some had tents. Some had the familiar blue sheeting, and others had nothing more than bed sheets. Disposable cups, plastic bags and every other kind of trash formed piles on the perimeter as overtaxed sanitation workers tried to manage the exploding scale of this human refuse.

Much of this story has been told, but I was privileged to witness a new beginning.  An effort by an entire nation to confront and accept an unspeakable level of grief.

Around town, small churches overflowed with men in suits and ties, women in white dresses and their best hats, and preachers exhorting their faithful to sing, chant, grieve and embrace.

Young voices lead the call

At the Oxfam office, I met with colleagues who told me of the many dimensions of the humanitarian response taking place. All the while, a small religious choir two doors down sang, and sang and sang. Their rhythm set the tone for my entire afternoon and evening, never stopping for more than a few seconds. Young voices led the call and a small organ provided a trace of a melody.

It was hauntingly beautiful and seemed to provide the necessary inspiration for our Oxfam team. Not only had they lost two colleagues, but many of them had lost family and friends as well. Still, they did not stop to mourn. They carried on as they had since the minute the quake hit.

At Our Lady of Perpetual Help parish the next morning, Father Fredrick told me that he was preparing to open the front door of his church for a 5 p.m. service when the quake struck. While he was able to flee, another colleague froze in her tracks and did not make it to the door. Like many heroes in Port-au-Prince, he immediately took over an empty lot across from the church and turned it into a gathering place for parishioners to find solace in the company of their neighbors.  In short order, they had organized a community group of 125 families, arranging shelter, water and hygiene services. Families posted their names and new addresses on their makeshift shelters and began to cope with their new reality.

At another small empty lot up the street, another 300 parishioners gathered around a woman who led them in prayer, reflection and singing.  Men, women and children swayed to the music with both hands over their heads. As I surveyed the crowd, I was drawn to the sight of a solitary man, probably in his 70s, who stood alone away from the group, hands over his head, swaying in his own private space.   What was his loss, I wondered. A wife of many years? Children? Grandchildren?

Around the city, I witnessed community-wide efforts to come together to cope. But how can an entire nation that was struggling before the quake recover from such devastating collective trauma?  Is it possible for a country to go through a public and collective process of grief management?

The healing has begun

A Haitian psychologist told me about her efforts to initiate some trauma counseling with students at the university that is now a pile of rubble. She told me that many students, laborers and friends she has worked with share the same experience of falling asleep thinking they are in a nightmare, hoping that when they wake up, things are back to what they were. She confessed that this is happening to her as well. She and her husband were still sleeping in the garden in front of their house.  Yet deep down, each of them knows it will not end. It must be endured.

She believes that the experience of processing this trauma will be different for each person, given where they are in their lives and what resources they have. But all of them will count on hope to keep them going.

On the last day of mourning, people took their grief to the streets in a show of renewal and life. Everywhere you turned, there were processions of hundreds of people marching, singing, and waving leafy green branches. Men in suits and ties, 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.

Oxfam has now reached more than 200,000 Haitians with relief, and hopes to reach 500,000 in the first six months of our humanitarian response.

Read more

Oxfam's response to the Haiti earthquake

Map of Oxfam's relief work in Haiti

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HAITI: U.S. Acts Quickly on Debt Relief Ahead of Preval Visit
By Jim Lobe*

WASHINGTON, Mar 8, 2010 (IPS) - With U.S. President Barack Obama preparing to host Haitian President Rene Preval at the White House Wednesday, Congress is moving quickly to show support for far-reaching debt relief and additional aid for the earthquake-stricken Caribbean nation.

The Senate Friday approved a resolution urging the U.S. representative at major international lending institutions to push for the cancellation of all of Haiti's outstanding multilateral debt – about 700 million dollars – or about two-thirds of the country's total outstanding debt of some 1.2 billion dollars.

The resolution also calls for Washington and other donors to provide significant assistance to help the country recover and rebuild from the earthquake, in which more than 200,000 people are estimated to have died.

In early projections based on other recent natural catastrophes released last month, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) estimated that reconstruction costs in Haiti are likely to range from eight billion dollars to 14 billion dollars. The same study predicted that the earthquake "is likely to be the most destructive natural disaster in modern times, when viewed in relations to the size of Haiti's population and its economy."

"While Haitians need our immediate help, they must also be empowered to build their own future down the road – a sustainable physical, social, and economic foundation for a stronger and more stable society," said the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, John Kerry.

Meanwhile, the House of Representatives is planning to vote on a similar resolution during Preval's visit here Wednesday morning, according to Congressional staff members.

The House's subcommittee on International Monetary Policy and Trade approved the pending measure by voice vote last Thursday, and the House leadership has put it on a fast track for a floor vote, which is expected to be bipartisan.

"I have long been a proponent of debt relief for low-income countries to enable them to focus on providing health care, education, and other vital services to their citizens," said Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who sponsored the House resolution and had just returned from a trip to Haiti on the weekend.

"In Haiti's case, every available dollar is urgently needed for short-term recovery and long-term rebuilding and development. Extending complete debt cancellation to Haiti – as well as assistance in the form of grants – will give Haiti a strong chance to put the country on a sustained path to success. I commend my colleagues in the Senate for passing a debt cancellation bill, and look forward to the House acting this week," she told IPS.

Preval's visit, his first here since the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake, comes as U.S. troops have accelerated their withdrawal from the country where they helped deliver humanitarian assistance and maintain security, along with some 10,000 U.N. peacekeepers who were already stationed in Haiti and will remain there.

At their peak in early February, more than 16,000 U.S. soldiers and sailors were deployed in and around Haiti. "Our mission is largely accomplished," said Gen. Douglas Fraser in a press call Monday. He said less than 8,000 troops will remain in the area – most of them off-shore – by the end of this week.

Wednesday's White House meeting is designed in major part to demonstrate continued U.S. interest in the recovery of what was already, before the quake, Latin America's poorest country.

"The President looks forward to welcoming President Preval to the White House to underscore his pledge to the Haitian people that they have a friend and partner in the United States of America," read a statement released by Obama's press office late Friday.

"They will discuss relief, recovery, and reconstruction efforts in Haiti, including the important contributions made by the United States and the international community," it noted.

The United States – both through the Pentagon and the U.S. Agency for International Development – has so far spent more than 700 million dollars in humanitarian aid and its delivery, according to the latest government figures released last week.

The administration is currently drafting a supplemental 2010 foreign aid bill that is likely to include hundreds of millions of dollars more for reconstruction assistance, but officials here said it was unlikely the precise request – which must still be submitted to Congress for approval – will be announced at or before Wednesday's meeting.

Such an announcement will likely be made in the coming two weeks and, in any case, before the United States will join Haiti's other major donors at a pledging conference for Haiti at the United Nations in New York City scheduled for Mar. 31, according to administration officials.

In addition to the 700-plus million dollars Washington estimates that it has spent so far on earthquake relief and recovery, private U.S. citizens and companies have donated more than one billion dollars to charities active in humanitarian relief in Haiti, according to the latest tally by the Centre on Philanthropy at Indiana University.

Most of those funds were donated in the weeks after the earthquake as its aftermath dominated the three major national network television news programmes, which draw an average of about 23 million viewers every evening.

The networks devoted about one-third of their total nightly news coverage after the quake to news from Haiti through the remainder of the month, according to the authoritative Tyndall Report.

Network coverage dropped off sharply in February, according to the Report, which found that the arrest of U.S. Baptist missionaries on suspicion of trafficking Haitian children for adoption in the United States actually received more attention from the major evening programmes than recovery efforts.

The Congressional resolutions on debt relief were welcomed by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) which have been lobbying for the cancellation of all of Haiti's multilateral debt since even before the earthquake struck.

"It's a very important signal because the U.S. is such an important stakeholder," said Elizabeth Stuart of Oxfam International. "The fact that the U.S. is promoting debt relief is something that all of the other stakeholders will take note of and hopefully act on in the coming weeks."

The Group of Seven (G7) finance ministers, whose collective membership dominates the governing boards of the key financial multilateral agencies, agreed in principle to sweeping debt relief at an emergency meeting in Montreal at the end of January.

Among the major agencies, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) holds the most debt, at nearly 420 million dollars. It is followed by the International Monetary Fund (165 million dollars), and the World Bank (39 million dollars). Other multilateral agencies, including members of the U.N. system, are owed a total of about 55 million dollars, according to the latest Fund statistics.

Venezuela, which holds nearly 300 million dollars in bilateral debt, announced after the quake it intended to cancel it, while Taiwan, the other major bilateral creditor, has said it would consider forgiving the 95 million dollars it is owed.

Haiti received 1.2 billion dollars in multilateral debt relief last June after the Preval government completed a three-year IMF programme, but over half of that debt had been incurred by Haiti's dictatorships, notably the 1957-86 Duvalier dynasty.

The debt incurred by Haiti since 2004 – much of it to help it recover from devastating floods caused by hurricanes in 2008 - was not covered by that relief.

*Jim Lobe's blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/.

(END)

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(AFP) – 13 hours ago

NEW YORK — A Haitian radio host who used Twitter to inform the world about the earthquake which ravaged his country was among the users of the micro-blogging service honored at a ceremony.

"I dedicate this to my country Haiti," said Carel Pedre after receiving a special "humanitarian" award at the second annual "Shorty Awards" in New York on Wednesday, an event which recognize excellence on Twitter.

"May we continue to use Twitter to save lives and change the world," said Pedre, who "tweets" as @carelpedre.

Winners at the awards ceremony hosted by CNN anchor Rick Sanchez, who "tweets" as @RickSanchezCNN, were under orders to restrict their acceptance speeches to the 140-character limit of Twitter.

Not everyone managed although the Reduced Shakespeare Company did.

"Brevity is the soul of twit," said a company member accepting the award in the art category for @reduced.

Winners were selected by a popular vote on Twitter and by members of the Real-Time Academy of Short Form Arts and Sciences, a body whose purpose appears to be limited to choosing winners of the Shorty Awards.

Its members include actress Alyssa Milano, rapper MC Hammer, New York Times technology columnist David Pogue, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, all of whom are Twitter users.

The winner in the government category was Cory Booker, the mayor of the struggling city of Newark, New Jersey, whose Twitter handle is @CoryBooker.

"Newark is rising thanks to the power of people working together," Booker said. "Thank you Twitterverse."

@WholeFoods and @SesameStreet were jointly honored in the brand category.

Sesame Street puppet Grover accepted the award and began reeling off the names of 140 characters -- Hamlet, Tarzan, Superman -- before being cut off.

Australian cell biologist Rachael Dunlop was the winner in the health category for her twitter feed @drrachie while the humor award was shared by David Thorne of @27bslash6 and the creator of @MrsStephenFry.

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow was a joint winner in the journalist category for @maddow, declaring in an acceptance speech delivered by video that the award had "renewed my faith in the future of the ampersand."

Brazilian journalist William Bonner, who "tweets" as @realwbonner, was the other winner in the journalist category while another Brazilian, Ivete Sangalo of @ivetesangalo, shared the award in the music category.

Another winner was Janis Krum, the ferry passenger who uploaded a picture on Twitter of a US Airways flight after it landed in the Hudson River in January of last year.

The Shorty Awards, which do not have any official link to Twitter, were produced by Sawhorse Media and sponsored by the Knight Foundation and several corporations.

Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved. More »

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In a spontaneous camp, a group of young leaders rises to new challenges.

February 24th, 2010 | by Coco McCabe

Stephan Durogene, left, helps distribute goods at a camp at Delmas 62. Photo by Kenny Rae/Oxfam America

Read part one.

Together with Jennifer Banessa Destine and a few other young adults, Stephan Durogene formed a committee to begin lobbying for aid for families who had taken refuge inside a once-private compound at Delmas 62. By day, 300 people were squeezed together under a few tarps and ropes draped with bed sheets. But at night, the numbers soared to 1,000.

“I just wanted to help people out,” said Durogene, who knew that aid organizations would be flooding into the city and could provide assistance. “People don’t know where to go, so I decided to go forward.”

The small committee visited every aid group it could reach, including Oxfam, whose office was about half a mile from the camp.

“I explained to them there are injuries. They don’t have water. They don’t have anything to eat,” recalled Durogene.  Sometimes, the committee went back to make its case a second time.

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.

“I always have a head on my shoulders and come with bright ideas,” said a matter-of-fact Destine, 29, about the role she plays as the only woman on the committee. And because she’s a clear-thinker (and studied management for four years at university), the others embrace her ideas—like the one about recording the names of each head of household and the numbers in each family so the committee can keep track of how many people are in the camp.

During the evenings, the committee also works to keep order in the camp.

“At night, when everybody is back and ready to go to sleep, I take the megaphone and explain this is a private yard, and this is how we’re supposed to behave,” said Durogene.

Occasionally, the stress everyone is living under boils over and both Durogene and Destine have found themselves on the receiving end of a barrage of vitriol.

“Sometimes I find people cursing me,” said Durogene who speaks—always—with a quiet, calm voice, a voice that most in the camp seem to respect,” but I stay strong.….I didn’t know it was so hard, so difficult. But I’ll stay until everything is stable.”

Commitment is at his core.

Ulrich Bien-Aime, the retired school teacher who was living in his sister’s house in the compound, told me that Durogene was close—for the second time—to achieving his dream of becoming an engineer when the quake hit. A bullet shattered his university hopes the first time.

“One afternoon he was standing on a corner with friends when Aristide was going down,” said Bien-Aime. “Soldiers were shooting.” A bullet grazed Durogene’s head, destroying the vision in his right eye, and setting him back in his studies.
But he didn’t give up, said Ulrich.

Durogene is 27 now. He had just one project left to complete before the degree was his. Then, his world crashed.

“There is no building. No university. No staff,” said Ulrich.

Durogene said he’s not sure what will come next with his schooling or even with job prospects—which are nothing if not extremely challenging in Haiti. But of this he is certain: His commitment to the camp and the people it’s sheltering is paramount.

“I cannot go out and look for a job now,” he said. “I want to be sure the structures are in place in here.”

The camp is just a beginning. As Haiti starts the long, arduous process of rebuilding itself, the social solidarity born from this tragedy, and all the potential of people forever shaped by it, can become the rocks from which mountains of good may rise.

This entry was posted by Coco McCabe on February 26th, 2010 at 10:11 am and is filed under General, Humanitarian, News Blog,

In part one of a special two-part report, Oxfam America’s Coco McCabe meets a group of inspirational young leaders helping people get the supplies they need in one of Port-au-Prince’s many makeshift camps, following the earthquake that destroyed so much of their city.

Members of the Delmas 62 camp leadership committee including Stephan Durogene (left) and Jennifer Banessa Destine (second from the right). Credit: Coco McCabe/Oxfam America.

An estimated 230,000 lives lost, huge swathes of the capital destroyed, more than one million people left homeless. Where in the sea of turmoil left by the January earthquake does Haiti begin to right itself? What are the first steps?

Whenever I asked those questions during my recent field visit there, the answer was often a long sigh. So much in Haiti - its infrastructure, its educational system, its job markets - demanded attention before this disaster. Now the need is hyperacute. Where in the world do you start?

Reconstruction starts with the people

One answer seems clear to me. Reconstruction starts with the Haitian people - like the committee of young leaders who emerged at Delmas 62 to help the hundreds of people camped in the yard of a private compound. They needed food and water, shelter and medical care. And they needed to be organised. It was through the efforts of twenty-somethings like Stephan Durogene, Jennifer Banessa Destine and a handful of others that sorely needed assistance began to flow over the tumbled walls and into their makeshift camp.

“Stephan, since the first time I met him, has always shown good potential,” says Ulrich Bien-Aime, a retired school teacher who was living in his sister’s house in the compound when the quake hit and has known Durogene since he was a high school student. “He believes in doing well, doing good, doing what’s right.”

In the month since the quake leveled much of Port-au-Prince, the opinion of Haitian civil society has gone largely unheard. But at the end of February, a coalition of civil groups is planning to hold a conference on reconstruction. Wouldn’t it be a perfect opportunity for new leaders, rising to the myriad challenges in the camps, to have their voices heard? Encouraging their participation in the decision-making that lies ahead can only make for a stronger Haiti.

Enormous personal strength

Already, some of these leaders have shown enormous personal strength. When the buildings at Ruben Leconte University crashed around him, Durogene, an engineering major, helped pull students from the wreckage before heading off to find his parents and siblings. They were safe - and deeply relieved to see him. They had heard the university had collapsed and feared that he had died in the rubble. But when they urged him to move with them to a safer part of the city, Durogene refused. He saw the need at Delmas 62 and decided that’s where he had to stay.

“I didn’t know I had this in me,” he said, sitting still for a rare moment in a patch of hot shade at the camp. It was about ten days after the disaster struck. “It’s during the earthquake I realised I can be a good leader.”

Part 2 will be published tomorrow, Saturday 27 February

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, 22 February 2010 Sanitation is among the most urgent concerns in Haiti following Januarys earthquake. UNICEF estimates that overall, 1.1 million displaced people require emergency latrines. The agency and its partners plan to install over 10,000 latrines in the short term and another 20,000-plus within six months.

To help achieve this goal, UNICEF has enlisted its non-governmental partner, the Haitian Out-of-School Youth Livelihood Initiative (known by its French acronym, IDEJEN), to construct 1,000 sanitary blocks, which include latrines, showers and handwashing facilities. The initiative has enlisted 1,200 young participants to build the sanitary blocks.

"What you are seeing here is a sanitary block made by IDEJEN youth," she said, pointing to a unit with three latrines, which will also have a hand-washing station and a shower. "We'll take care of everything, in terms of management of the sanitary block, in terms of management of the excreta and in terms of evacuation of used water.

Alexandros Yiannopoulos, Oxfam's coordinator of food security and livelihoods in Haiti, is blogging for Channel 4 News Online.

It is a strange life being a Humanitarian worker.

The funeral of two of Oxfam's workers who died in the earthquake got me to look back over this last month in Haiti. I started to think about the different perspectives people may have of humanitarian workers and what we are doing.

Friends, family and many people I meet believe you are doing something worthwhile - helping save lives and improve the way Haitians live.

"They seem to do a good job"

On the other hand, I remember an interview that was reported on the UN news service IRIN: where an old lady was asked her perspective of aid workers, she said (as far as I can remember) "Yes they seem to do a good job, they claim to help people but all they do is drive around in their 4x4 and don't even give me a lift when I am carrying a heavy load!"

As you see from this statement, we might be seen by the people we have come to help as: wealthy and possibly arrogant driving around in white 4x4s, always in a hurry, never time to stop and listen to each person's issues. Unfortunately sometimes that is the case: often security rules prohibit us from carrying non-staff members; the time pressures of our work in an emergency; and also the fact that we have to been seen as fair to everyone, not showing any sign of favoritism - which is difficult with so many people in need around you.

The conundrum we face

This is part of the conundrum we are here to 'help people' whilst at the same time we are limited by our resources, our rules and the fact we are also human. So we have to make choices between who will receive something and who will not. Even our actions have to be calculated carefully, for example I remember in Sri Lanka we helped a number of shopkeepers with a grant to build a small shop and to buy some goods. This was a great idea however in one area we funded too many shops for the amount of demand, resulting in 2 out of 3 going bankrupt. Even with the best intentions we can still do harm.

There are a number of social and moral pressures that are put on us both by the outside world and by our selves, to the extent that you would feel guilty in going to a restaurant or to the beach on the Sunday to relax. Which is very much a normal thing done by Haitians and people back home. It is a fine line that we tread when living in an urban area where you are living in the 'affected zone', where all groups of people from the poorest to the wealthiest have been affected, and we have come as strangers to help. How do we keep our morale up, in a responsible manner, whilst at the same time surrounded by the consequences of the earthquake?

Taking a step back

Why the funeral got me to think about these issues was because I felt empathy for the loss of two colleagues but at the same time I was alien and a stranger to the two people who died and to the society in Haiti. I am a visitor, and to many, a stranger.

Sometimes when you are in an emergency, trying to get your work done as quickly as possible, you have to take a step back, realize that you are working with fellow human beings and treat them with the level of respect and dignity they deserve. This can be as simple as a greeting, asking how they are or having a chat. At the same time we are not different to anyone else.

Read more

Alexandros Yiannopoulos: Time to think big in Haiti

Oxfam's response to the Haiti earthquake

Map of Oxfam's relief work in Haiti

Follow our latest updates

Another shot of the "Hear to Help" Haiti CD on the big board in Times Square (by american_eagle)