Haiti blog

17 June 2011: Last week was a promising week for Haiti’s children. On Monday, 6 June, Haiti’s Institute of Social Well Being and Research (IBESR), the Ministry of Social Affairs, UNICEF, Plan Haiti and Save the Children partnered to help President Michel Martelly and First Lady Sophia Martelly launch the National Week and Day of the Child. Street children stood up and sang a rap song for the Martellys. 

On Tuesday, I watched in amazement again as children from these partners’ programmes sat in the oversized, swivelling chairs of the National Assembly (inside the temporary building modules of Haiti’s government), and listened to the new social welfare commissioners - in charge of passing laws to uphold child rights - vow to include the young peoples’ recommendations in the new prime minister’s official work plan. 

Watch video of street children singing for the Martellys

When one of the commissioners asked the young people in the audience what they wanted to be in the future, a girl from Plan’s programmes stood up and said she wanted to be president of Haiti. 

Day of the Child celebration

Then on Sunday, 12 June, the partners held a major National Day of the Child celebration in Croix-des-Bouquets, a community to the west of Port-au-Prince where Plan has been working since 1974. I went with Jo-Ann Garnier-Lafontant, one of Plan Haiti’s and this country’s most ardent supporters and passionate advocates for child rights. She was a key speaker at the first 2 events, and had been selected to be the moderator for the final ceremony. 

At Sunday’s event, I walked into a sea of little children - mostly from orphanages that work with IBESR - wearing red t-shirts and white caps too big for their heads, happily socialising with each other under canopy tents, sitting at long tables decorated with white table cloths and pretty flower centrepieces. There were clusters of colourful balloons everywhere. It was hot, hot outside - well over 90 degrees. 

Smiling again

Watch a clip of youths celebrating at the launch event

While wandering around with my camera, looking for shady spots, I ran into children from the Centre of Action for Development (CAD) - the group home and educational centre that Plan supports for orphans, former street kids and former domestic servants. Some 45 of CAD’s children were sitting on folding chairs under the shade of a tree, quietly eating their sandwiches and cheese puff snacks.

It was good to see the big, bright smile of Venita again, the little 10-year-old girl I met at CAD last month, who’d survived the loss of her parents and the physical abuse of a family member before getting to that safe and promising place. 

Before the main ceremony began in the pavilion, there was about an hour of frenzied dancing by hundreds of youths. The air was electric – and it felt like a real celebration. 

Powerful speeches

After each partner’s representative took their turn at the podium - and one of Plan Haiti’s bright stars from our leadership programme, Daphnika, age 15, spoke powerfully on behalf of children’s rights - it was difficult not to feel that the National Week and the Day of the Child had meant something much more than broken promises for the children and young people of Haiti. 

And as Jo-Ann reminded everyone in her speech, children’s rights - for fundamental things like health, education, clean water and protection - are more than wishes that need granting, they are what was owed all along.

Find out more about Plan’s Haiti recovery work

27 May 2011: When I was in Haiti in February 2010, I travelled to Plan’s programme area in the South-east. That’s when I met a 6-year-old girl in one of the tents that Plan had distributed in the community after the earthquake. Her name was Nicole*. When she smiled, her eyes sparkled like stars. After leaving Haiti, I often thought of her and wondered if she was okay. 

Last week I was in the South-east again - this time with an American film crew on a quest to meet up with remarkable Haitian girls for their feature film and 10x10 campaign about transforming families, communities and countries through educating girls. 

Sparkly surprise

On our first day, we went to one of the child-friendly spaces that Plan had established after the quake near the tent camp that was no longer there - a place where children from the neighbourhood can still sing, dance, play and generally take a break from the troubles of the world. 

Nicole at a camp for people displaced by the earthquake

We met several girls who volunteered to speak about their lives on camera; and then at dusk, a little girl came bounding down the stone steps. It was Nicole, a year and 4 months older, and as bright and sparkly as ever. 

Emotional impact

The next morning, the film producers interviewed Nicole as a possible candidate for their film. They asked her simple questions, like what she had for breakfast. Then, when they asked her if she could tell them something about the earthquake, I watched her expression change. Her eyes grew dark and shifted focus. She couldn’t speak.

The subject was changed, her smile returned, but after the interview, Nicole’s mood was noticeably different. She fought with another girl. She lay her head down on a desk and brooded. 

Girls (and boys) in Haiti easily share their extraordinarily beautiful, radiant smiles with strangers like me; but when the film producers sat each girl down individually and asked them deeper questions, such as “Tell us about a happy day in your life,” not many had one to describe. Whether or not their lives had always been miserable, trauma has a remarkable way of filtering out good memories. 

Poverty disaster

After 4 days of interviews with girls, I better understood the profoundly alarming level of trauma that Haitian children are experiencing. Beyond the girls that shared painful stories of physical or sexual abuse, many spoke of broken homes, of parents being unable to find work, or of going to sleep hungry. One girl said she doubted that her future dreams would come true because her large family didn’t have the means to support her education. 

Plan integrates emotional first-aid into its emergency response programmes to help children cope after natural disasters; but for the children of Haiti - and certainly for millions of children all over the world - poverty is the greater disaster. 

Girls’ education key

Nicole with classmates in one of the safe classrooms built by Plan

Poverty puts children in danger of not realising a single dream, not even one as basic as going to high school. This is why I believe so wholeheartedly in Plan’s Because I am a Girl campaign and 10x10, because all of the evidence shows that educating girls is the achievable answer to breaking the cycle of poverty for millions of people worldwide. 

The day after Nicole’s interview, we ran into her again at another location. This time she was at the all-girls’ school where, after the earthquake, Plan built a complex of safe school classrooms to last until the school’s original damaged buildings can be rebuilt. 

Like all of the girls - 600 attend this school throughout the day - Nicole was at her desk, smartly dressed in her blue and white uniform with big blue ribbons in her hair. We were all happy to see her again, and in that setting and context I couldn’t help but feel hope. 

Learn more about Plan's Haiti recovery work

*Child’s name changed to protect her identity.

12 April 2011: Working for Plan in Haiti, I spend a lot of time thinking about water and the efforts people go through to get it here. For people lucky enough to have secure livelihoods and houses, water trucks play jingles like ice cream trucks do in other parts of the world to announce their presence. Water tanks get filled up. The trucks move on to other neighbourhoods. That’s the easy but costly way of getting running water in Haiti. 

For the 800,000 or so people still living in camps more than a year after the earthquake, water is delivered from trucks too - and for free. But now, the charitable funds for trucked-in water have mostly run out, so that option is going away. 

The people living in camps - like most people without means in Haiti - will now have to rely on. either getting enough money to buy water from a vendor or finding the nearest community water well with a manual pump (a borehole). 

Boreholes changing lives

A girl pumps water for her family at a local borehole

Last week I went to Croix-des-Bouquets district with 3 of Plan Haiti’s water and sanitation experts who were checking on the output of some of our boreholes. 

I learned that 80% of the boreholes in the district were built by Plan Haiti - in the years before the earthquake hit. In the commune of Lilavois, we stopped at a borehole and encountered a girl, about 13 or 14 years of age, who we watched pump water, effortlessly using the strength of her legs and bare feet, into a large plastic bucket. 

Girls’ water chore

Girls in Haiti - like millions of girls in developing countries - are more likely to get the water chore. Girls in Haiti, also like so many of their counterparts in the world, are taught how to carry heavy cargo on top of  their heads - such as 40 pounds of water. 

Last week, I asked some Haitian women I know what it’s really like to carry all of that weight - because the girls and women I’ve seen along the roads always make it look so easy. They groaned and said that it was terribly painful, but that there was no other choice. 

Education dream

When I think about water, I wish that all the girls of the world could have running water inside their homes, or at least nearby, so that they could stay inside, hit the books and realise their dreams of becoming doctors, teachers, journalists and police officers. 

But for now, they continue to leave their schoolwork behind, put themselves at higher risk of sexual attack, and physically wear themselves out for the water their mothers need to boil rice. 

Indoor plumbing for the masses in Haiti is a long way away, but for now, I’ll keep my hopes up for more boreholes in the communities. They only take 2 weeks to install, and the more that are built, the closer they will be to each girl who holds inside her mind the key to a better Haiti. 

Find out more about Plan’s Haiti recovery work

17 March 2011: A few weeks ago I travelled from Port-au-Prince to Croix-des-Bouquets to see the site where Plan financed the building of 100 homes for vulnerable women and their children in partnership with Haven, an Irish non-governmental organisation. 

In the months after the earthquake, these families had been clustered in a small tent and tarp community that grew around a big mango tree and a patch of dirt where children played football.

Taking ownership

The small A-frame wooden homes with porches in the front are located on different parcels of land within about a mile radius of the camp - land that was either previously owned by the beneficiaries or signed over to them after a long, arduous process. The houses are recognisable by their bright red tin roofs. 

In December the women signed papers and took ownership of their new homes. Many had participated in the clearing of their land and in the building process. 

Moving out of the camp

Saint-Therese in her new home

I wanted to visit the house of the mother who I’d last seen carting her belongings in a green wheelbarrow from the camp over a grassy field to her new home. 

Colourful laundry was now flapping in the wind on her clothesline. Her 3 young daughters were playing outside in the yard - the very youngest twirling around in her own imaginary world. It was a windy day. The young girl's nose was running. On her back was a clear see-through plastic and blue trimmed backpack with no books or papers inside. But she held on tight to a yellow pencil in her right hand. 

A neighbour doing her washing on her steps shouted out that Plan was in the neighborhood, and so the mother of these girls emerged from the house, immediately lifting up her T-shirt to show off her big, pregnant belly. She said it had happened while under the tarps. 

Safe shelter

Her name is Saint-Therese, she said. And then she twirled around too in the front of her house and sang a lyrical song - part happy, part sad. Plan and Haven had given her safe shelter with a door that locked and a new life outside of the camps, but not a new economy with plenty of job opportunities for single, pregnant mothers. 

Donor funds fill one gap and another one opens. The needs of people like Saint-Therese in Haiti - an impoverished country without any real social services or safety nets - are so great, that a new home, as much as it helps a newborn baby avoid sleeping under a hot, humid tent, can’t make it all better. 

Pushing for change

Giving to Plan in Haiti helps us to expand our reach in the communities to help more vulnerable people to help themselves, but it also helps us to keep the pressure on the Haitian government -through our youth-led, child rights initiatives - to improve the structural systems that would truly make Haiti a more livable place for Saint-Therese and her girls.

Find out more about Plan’s recovery work in Haiti.

20 December 2010: I've just read ‘Are Heroes Born, or Can They Be Made?’ by Jonah Lehrer on the Wall Street Journal website and learned about the Heroic Imagination Project *, a non-profit recently started by Phil Zimbardo, a psychologist from Stanford University.

Working for Plan, a global non-profit organisation that focuses on fulfilling the rights of children in 48 developing countries - to health, education, economic security, water and sanitation, protection and participation - I found the article particularly relevant to our work.

What motivates humans to give to charities and be heroes for people they have never met?   

Extraordinary courage

According to Zimbardo’s scientific findings, most people are capable of extraordinary acts of courage, but they are often inhibited by prejudices, faulty perceptions that someone else will give all of the help that is needed and the incorrect assumption that victims deserved what happened to them. 

On my 2 visits to Haiti this year, I have seen the end result of such human tendencies living underneath tarpaulins and hot, humid tents. There are 1,300,000 people in Haiti, who through no fault of their own, are homeless - and who, because of complicated land and legal issues, cannot get into secure homes fast enough for them or anyone to believe that all has gone right with the earthquake response.

Earthquakes, hurricanes and cholera epidemics trigger tremendous acts of heroism - even if small acts of courage were needed long beforehand to work out the many structural issues that could have prevented the tremendous loss of life in the first place.

Everyday heroes

Zimbardo’s non-profit teaches people how to become everyday heroes, by making them aware of why they guard themselves against helping, learning the art of empathy, studying the behaviour of other heroes and then by rehearsing simple noble acts in the real world.

In Haiti, heroes are everywhere. They are riding the colourful tap-taps, walking long distances on the side of winding roads, holding up bags of fresh-baked bread and hoping for a sale. They are the children who are laughing and playing again. These are the people who survived what looked and felt like the end of the world and persevered.

Youth power

The day after the earthquake at Plan Haiti’s damaged offices, hundreds of young people showed up in the courtyards to lend their physical strength and offer their input for the emergency response.

They had already seen firsthand the needs of their neighbourhoods. And because of Plan’s leadership training programmes prior to the earthquake, they mobilised themselves alongside Plan Haiti’s staff with pride and confidence.

On foot, bicycles and motorcycles, over the next days and weeks they worked around the clock and delivered aid to where it was needed most.

The acts of desperation and violence that dominate the international news broadcasts and perpetuate the perception that Haiti is merely a hopeless, dangerous place should not cause the global community to withdraw its empathy or support of Haiti’s future - the fabric of which is now being woven from all the many strands of heroism that are infinite and immeasurable.

Read about Plan’s Haiti earthquake recovery work.

*Plan is not responsible for the content on external internet sites.

11 December 2010: The anger and frustration at the election results in Haiti are understandable. And the right to democratic protest undeniable. But the violence and insecurity means the bulk of our work slams to a halt.

All staff, local and ex-patriate, are on ‘hibernation’ – a cosy euphemism for a lockdown state where actually we are ordered to stay in our homes or shared apartments.

Accurate information is sparse and hard to verify. Plan security head Momoh  texts us regular updates from other non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and UN security sources - reports of armed groups of protestors on the move, government and party buildings under attack, cars and buildings on fire. Twitter becomes my new best friend.

Protests and blockades

The capital sounds far worse and intense than Jacmel where we are now stranded, a 2 hour drive away.There are protests here but nothing on the scale of Port-au-Prince. The airport is closed and large sections of the city are impassable with blockades.

Plan’s country director in Haiti, Jim Emerson, tells us to “stock up with water, food and power” and basically to keep our heads down.

For medical NGOs it must be an even tougher call to make. Cholera does not wait around for the streets to become safer. It can kill within 6 hours without the right treatment. Some of our health and public awareness work is put on hold.

Miralda in Jacmel is concerned that the disease is taking hold here. The hospital is filling up.

In the capital people report latrines being tipped over, set alight and used as barricades near the camps – maybe sanitation isn’t such a concern when rocks, bullets and tear gas canisters are flying.

Rock attack

Natasha Fillion who Plan has commissioned to train 22 young Haitian people in photography, tells me how she and a fellow photojournalist were attacked by a crowd in Petionville. She had a helmet on to deflect the rocks but her colleague was struck and needed hospital treatment.

Just days before we had walked the same street with her, chatted with locals and looked at the market. A Haitian fire only needs one small spark.

Jacmel streets are pretty quiet but when we make a swift move between  apartments, there are remnants of burned tyres and a car on the road.

Sometimes NGOs can be over cautious. But the UN police and security advisors holed up here say they have no intention of running the gauntlet. We have no choice but to wait.

Read about Plan’s Haiti recovery work.

10 December 2010: Last weekend Nelly Humbert and Caroline Grandjean from the French government’s humanitarian agency ‘Centre de Crise’ arrived to visit some of the semi-permanent schools that Plan has built in our 2 earthquake-affected programme areas in Haiti - Croix-des-Bouquets and Jacmel. 

To date there are 76 school buildings that have been built between the 2 zones, part supported by Centre de Crise, through a major grant to Plan Haiti. 

‘Semi-permanent’ is a confusing description at first. Why would an international non-governmental organisation like Plan build a school that isn’t going to last? It actually means that while Haiti’s Ministry of Education is finalising their major reconstruction plans for Haiti’s many earthquake-damaged schools, Plan is providing a sensible interim solution to get students out of inadequate temporary classrooms into ones that are even safer and more conducive to learning. 

These semi-permanent classrooms - with Ministry-approved designs - are earthquake and hurricane resistant and could well last up to 15 years. 

Classroom visit

The Sisters showing the group the new classroom structures

The first stop was the badly damaged school, Marie Reine Immaculée. To offer Ms Humbert and Grandjean a progressive experience so that they could appreciate the context and great need their agency had met, we were greeted by 2 Sisters, the directors of the school. They led us through the rubble-strewn courtyard and into a classroom that clearly demonstrated where the project had started. 

We then travelled to a site farther out of town where the initial temporary schools tents were set up back in October. One of the Sisters showed us her office inside an old canvas tent that had been hard hit by the rainy season. 

The next stop was the site of the new semi-permanent classrooms that were nearly finished.  What struck me was not so much what the schools looked like on the land, but how calming and serene it felt to be among them. 

There was no rubble in sight. Nothing tattered or worn from overexposure to the elements. Only solidly constructed wooden structures positioned together in a way that made sense. It was Sunday but a curious little boy who lived in the area appeared. It looked right to see him there. 

Exploring the new

In February, I wrote a blog about the road to Jacmel  and seeing children on the side of the road who were out of school and bored. This time, the road to Jacmel, had given me something new and different to consider: the milestones of change that - especially in Haiti - must be celebrated and honoured.

Watch a video to see how Plan is helping children with disabilities return to their studies.

Find out more about Plan's Haiti earthquake recovery work.

08 December 2010: It’s been 11 months since I was last in Haiti. I’m not entirely sure what I expected to have changed. Some sights are dramatically different – others depressingly familiar.

For starters I land safely at a functioning Port-au-Prince airport, rather than be forced to drive over the border from the Dominican Republic. First impressions of the capital are of its improvement. The stench of immediate death has gone; though the memories and grief have not.  It is busier. There are gangs of workers everywhere, clearing ditches, rubble and roadsides. The markets and restaurants have re-opened and there is a new, giant supermarket.

Elbow brushing

I meet and embrace familiar Plan staff not seen since January. There are many new faces. Reports I read of people bumping elbows as the new cholera-proof greeting, prove true. The beaming cook I meet brushes arms rather than take my outstretched hand.

Bad magic

Jean-Kency – a former young Plan volunteer being filmed in Haiti.

That afternoon I watch  Jean-Kency – a former young Plan volunteer now working as a supervisor at the Child-Friendly Space (CFS) at Rosenberg, near Croix-des-Bouquets, being filmed. Little faces soon appear, grinning to see us back there. The boisterous kids drown Jean-Kency out in enthusiasm.

I lure the gaggle away, with a promise of magic tricks. My skills second in quality only to my French, neither are very convincing but they generally do the job with anyone too young to vote.

A wide-eyed boy screams when I ‘vanish’ a pebble, convinced it is inside the skin of my palm. A teenage boy asks me to show him how it’s done and 5 minutes later he impresses his peers with the new tricks.

I’m a foreigner, I bring cholera

Plan is teaching the children songs about hand-washing in classes and CFS, however one boy shares a less positive, but popular new song. The jist is that ‘I’m a foreigner, I bring cholera, people die.’ The other kids are horrified and chastise him. I tell them that if they always wash their hands, it’s not a problem. They agree and a junior diplomatic incident is averted.

The healing power of dance

As my first day draws to an end it’s comforting to hear the streets full of booming compas music, a brash Haitian fusion of latino, dance hall and Afrobeat. Four ex-pat Plan staff are leaving. A party is thrown at one of the apartments. I am apprehensive.

What followed was one of the most enjoyable nights I have experienced. Local staff from cleaners and drivers to senior management arrive in droves. And wow, Haitians know how to party. Everyone is dragged to the dance floor, new friends are made, old ones bid ‘au revoir’, moving speeches are made.

I speak to Plan’s country director in Haiti, Jim Emerson, he concurs that such an event would have been inconceivable a few months ago. We agree on the healing power of gatherings like this and  look across at the crowded dancefloor. If people are dancing away the heartache, it’s certainly not showing in their faces.

Read more about Plan’s Haiti recovery work.

7 December 2010: Last Wednesday I travelled with 3 of my Plan colleagues to Parc Olympia, a camp in Croix-des-Bouquets, Haiti, where Plan is responsible for the water and sanitation activities for the people who are still without permanent homes.

Plan has built bathrooms and showers with walls and doors. We’ve also installed 2 water tanks there. Just recently we distributed water buckets with spigots, soap, oral rehydration salts and information to hundreds of families about how to prevent cholera and treat it if necessary.  

With me was Pierre Willems, our Belgian-born disaster risk reduction manager; Sheila Ramaswamy, a cholera consultant from Bangalore, India, and Saintil Brice, Plan Haiti’s education advisor, who I’d met one month after the earthquake on my first trip to Haiti.

Rebuilding education

Saintil Brice speaking with Parc Olympia’s camp manager

Over the last 10 months, Saintil has attended countless meetings to help shape the Ministry of Education’s plan for Haiti’s future education system. He’s organised hundreds of trainings for educators so that they can better support their students learning and emotional needs after the earthquake.

Under his watch, Plan has built some 30 earthquake- and wind-resistant school structures out of wood and tin at public and private school sites (with 40 more being built) that will last the many years to come until the permanent schools can be constructed.

Cholera TV report

We were at Parc Olympia with a correspondent and cameraman from TVE, the largest media outlet in Spain. They’d come to Haiti to report on cholera and they wanted to see some of Plan’s water and sanitation activities and interview Spanish-speaking staff.

The crew captured footage of children singing inside one of Plan’s child-friendly spaces and captured some video of the truck with giant speakers mounted on top that Plan has been using to spread Ministry of Health-approved cholera-awareness messages throughout the neighbourhoods.

When the 4 of us were back in the car and on our way back to Port-au-Prince, I asked Saintil to tell me about his earthquake experience. He said that he’d been in the port town of Jacmel with some Plan Haiti colleagues for a training session.

When the earthquake hit, they were on the road heading back to Port-au-Prince. They were forced to turn around and go back to their hotel, which was so badly damaged they had no choice but to sleep outside on the ground for the next 4 days. The hotel owner fed them and gave them drinks.

Amazing Grace

With the money they had, Saintil and the others from Plan bought food and started distributing it to the people of Jacmel. He said while they were totally cut off from the world - no radio, TV or newspapers - they sang songs.

“What did you sing?” I asked. “Amazing Grace,” he said, among many others. I could just imagine him leading his team with songs.

That’s when - with all of Haiti’s great vibrancy, humanity, tap-taps, motorcycles, humanitarian aid worker vehicles, stray dogs and rubble all around - Pierre, Sheila, Saintil and I -brought together by an earthquake and cholera - sang Amazing Grace.

I couldn’t remember all the words of the third stanza, but Saintil knew them by heart, and he carried the song for us all the way to the end. The sound was sweet.

Learn about Plan’s Haiti recovery work.

26 November 2010: I’ve just travelled with my Plan Haiti colleague Jo-Ann Garnier-Lafontant and our communications assistant Mackendy Jean Baptiste to meet a TV crew from Canada at one of the largest resettlement camps outside of Port-au-Prince. 

In a partnership between the government, the United Nations and other non-profit charities, Plan is responsible for the camp’s health activities.  

The camp has been home to about 10,000 people since the spring. In the camp’s centre - not far from where Plan has recently set up a cholera treatment unit with cots and oral rehydration salts - UN officers from all over the world walked up to shake my hand and say hello. 

Building new homes

There we were in the middle of a hot, dry desert, meeting new people from faraway places, while little Haitian children wandered by and pulled on the officers’ legs for more chewing gum. 

I heard the sound of hammers pounding in the distance. I was almost afraid to look. Was it real? Jo-Ann said it was the permanent housing going up for the people that were living in all those hot and humid tents. It doesn’t get reported often enough, I thought, but changes are happening in Haiti - and I was glad Lisa Laflamme from CTV was coming. 

School session

Heidi adding sanitiser to the school children's hands

In the distance, we heard little children singing. I followed the sound to one of the many Canadian HousAll units that was donated to Plan after the earthquake. That’s where inside I saw about 30 little children seated around brightly coloured tables with Plan logos painted on them. It made me smile. So this is what Plan’s Early Childhood Care and Development programme looks like in real life, I thought. 

When we walked inside the school, the children were playing with moldable coloured clay - rolling it around on their tables. One little girl wrapped it around her wrist and tried to make it turn into a yellow bracelet. 

Washing hands song

A little boy noticed the travel-size bottle of hand sanitiser clipped onto my belt - my own small precautionary measure against the cholera bacteria. He asked if I’d put a drop of it into the palm of his hand. At first I wondered if I should. Would a 4-year-old child know what to do? 

But I couldn’t hesitate for long. At least 10 little palms were held out and waiting. As I dropped in the little clear-liquid pearls and told them to rub their hands together fast, I wondered what these 4-year-olds knew about bacteria and staying healthy. 

I didn’t have time to ask. Instead I got mobbed with more hands. The room got noisy with laughter. Then I put the hand sanitiser away and asked the children if they would like to sing. They knew what to do: they clapped and sang a rousing song about washing their hands with soap. 

Read about Plan’s Haiti recovery work

Donate to the Haiti appeal