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Agriculture and Rural Development Update - June 17, 2010
The tremendous devastation and loss of life from the January 12th earthquake validated our belief that agricultural promotion and development can help Haiti’s people make huge strides toward decent living. Port-au-Prince and other major cities are sorely overcrowded and cannot support the tremendous needs of such a huge concentrated population. Far too many youth from small villages are leaving their homes and families and migrating to Port-au-Prince looking for work.
In the past few years HT invested a great deal of funding and energy into educating and training young people to care for the environment and honor and respect agriculture and farming vocations. Here is the latest news on these projects and our work outside Port-au-Prince:
HTG Gonaives Office
Our office in Gonaives is the focal point for all our outreach to the poor outside of Port-au-Prince. The primary ministry of our HTG Gonaives office is a combination of education (schools and training programs), intervention (relief and charity efforts), Environmental protection (training and reforestation), Agricultural & development (credit coops, farming, irrigation and water resources) and nutrition in rural villages.
HTG Office in Gonaives - June 2010
News on current HTG projects:
The population in and around Gonaives, where we are located, increased by 20% after the earthquake and forced us to increase our feeding and charity outreach from this office. This creates a real strain on our outreach activities so we’ve increased the funding and are looking to involve more volunteers in water well drilling and agricultural management.
Rebuilding and Post Earthquake Update - June 16, 2010
After four months of steady rebuilding we now have a fully functional headquarters. We transformed our old vehicle storage area into a seven room headquarters, storage depot and pharmacy. The final phase will be the installation of a solar power system.
Volunteer Residence Construction
Workers clear rubble newly purchased property
Now that we have a functional office HQ, we may begin reconstruction of our volunteer center. The torrential rains, poor sewage situation and stifling summer heat make tent living extremely unpleasant. We began clearing the rubble from the recently purchased adjacent plot and will construct a large volunteer residence. This complex will include volunteer quarters, dormitories for Oblate associates, Fr. Tom’s residence, a chapel, meeting rooms, dining area and space for vehicle storage and repairs.
Opening Schools and Making Progress - April 19, 2010
Three months have passed since the January earthquake and in that short time we’ve made a great deal of progress toward restoring our schools and we continue helping thousands of people through water, food, and medical outreach programs.
Fr. Tom sent me an email in late March summarizing the progress, “Doug, I just finished visiting the four schools. At St. Francois, the third floor auditorium is already down. The new kitchen is almost finished and looks good. They have 15 new classrooms constructed of wood panel and tin roofing and they look good. The school is open. Visited St. Margaret and the kitchen is almost finished....building a new wall and almost finished. They too are building classrooms. Visited St. Ann and the kitchen there too is almost finished. I have an official list of 1675 elderly who have received food. We arranged for 300 elderly to receive food this Friday and the following Thursday. It was all good to see.”
Life for Fr. Tom at our temporary HQ has not changed much. We are still in tents, still using makeshift latrines and showers, and eagerly awaiting the completion of our office buildings and small living quarters. There’s a serious rat problem, probably caused by the neighboring, overcrowded tent cities and the large sewage canal behind our compound.
Update - March 10, 2010 News
“It is not normal here,” Father Tom said to me over the phone. “It is just so unnatural, living on the ground without much space, or security or even bathroom facilities… it can wear on you. There is this constant stress, constant tension.”
Of course there is nothing normal about the post-earthquake life in Port-au-Prince, and the strain and demands created by the deaths, the collapsed buildings, the tent cities, the fights over food and materials, and the desperate need for incomes and stability. Fr. Tom and our limited crew in Port-au-Prince are doing all they can to move forward and help the people of Cite Soleil and the Delmas area.
Food buckets ready for distribution
We’ve made a bit of progress and we can feel good about some of the outreach in the past weeks:
Rebuilding Efforts - as of June 2010
Rebuilding and Recovery Plans – Revised – June 25, 2010
Our recovery plan is based on a “humility of action” philosophy that emphasizes a realistic acknowledgment of our size, strengths and weaknesses. It means that we are not controlled by the situation or the huge amounts of aid and volunteer labor entering Haiti; rather, we proceed with humility, directing our help to the “HT universe” in an efficient, direct and meaningful way.
Thanks to tremendous support from our friends, we’ve built a healthy recovery fund. Collaboration with partners such as Mary’s Meals in Scotland, Holy Family parish, and donations from many schools, parishes and foundations help us cope with the huge task facing us. We need to rebuild our schools and HQ so that they can withstand future disasters. Recovery will take years and every gift we’ve received will contribute to the painstaking rebuilding of our schools and programs.
We cannot house short term volunteers at this time, but hopefully by September of 2010, we can create a volunteer community to mentor our Haitian staff and assist with our daily operations (go here for more info on our volunteer community). Meanwhile, there is so much we must do and we are trying to keep the work in the hands of the people most damaged. We will channel resources and expertise, but not deny Haitian residents the chance to earn income and rebuild their own homes and neighborhoods. We will use local residents and workers in all our projects. We will seek out special skill sets – i.e., engineers, medical people, mechanics, water well drilling technicians, solar engineers, and others to help train our native staff teams.
We established an efficient shipping and storage mechanism without expanding our size or depending too heavily upon imported goods and supplies.
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