A family survival kit, some cooking oil, rice and beans

7 March 2010: The crowd has been gathering from first light on the outskirts of the local basketball stadium, clutching the all important blue ticket which will let them enter to pick up the package of basics I have used as the title for this blog.

It is well-organised by Plan and the local municipality: 10 ticket holders at a time rush across the tarmac and collect these prized possessions, repacking them as they go to make them more portable. A frail old lady, old enough to be a granny many times over, is struggling with the weight of the rice bag until her grandchildren come to the rescue and hustle her out of the stadium.

I think what a life…queuing for hours often in the heat (though it is cooler today) for what should be a “given” - the right to simple food and a basic health kit. Outside the queue is mercifully getting smaller though not with out the odd flash of temper as the UN police politely deal with the few interlopers without a ticket.

Influx of displaced people

We are in the town of Belladere a few kilometres over the Dominican Republic (DR) border. This is the town that “Papa Doc” Duvalier built to impress their neighbours about the quality of life and architecture in Haiti. It is with the odd exception down at heel and tired looking now with roads of a much lower quality than in the DR.

This area is now coping with a big influx of displaced people from further inside Haiti. Port-au-Prince is a couple of hours away. This distribution of food, with funds from Plan, is just about the first one in the town. The mayor and local authorities are there to say thank you as the 5 lorries from San Juan in the DR are being unloaded, bag by bag, sack by sack.

It is good to see this support for the families of Belladere. Although on Haitian soil, it has been organised by the Plan DR team who are taking responsibility for work in this area. That gives the Plan Haiti team more time to focus on the devastated programme units much closer to Port-au-Prince.

Unsung heroes

During my short visit to 3 Plan programme units in the DR, I have had the chance to say thank you to the dozen or so staff from Plan DR who went into Haiti right from the start. Stories of people coming in on their holidays and volunteering to set off for Port-au-Prince are common. And it is not just the technical advisers and the specialists in development. Most of the DR team have been involved in some way or another - including the unsung heroes like the drivers who were in Port-au-Prince and Jacmel at the height of the aftershocks.

We have a lunch and a ceremony to present these wonderfully committed people with a certificate to mark their work in Haiti. The drivers get the biggest cheer. I make a speech about Plan and its future but the words appear redundant. Anyone in the room will have seen the future of Plan and know it works.

Great people make great organisations and in the DR team we are lucky to have so many of them.

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