19 February 2010: I first met Myriam Valme Joseph from the Plan Haiti office 2 summers ago when she was working for short time in the Plan USA office in Rhode Island. I had the chance to interview her to learn more about the perplexing challenges facing Haiti’s children. When we said our goodbyes in the office, as much as I would have wanted to, I never imagined that I’d have the chance to see her again.

After hearing the news of the earthquake, my first thought was for Myriam. As I sat in my living room, watching the news on TV, Twittering and following Facebook updates from my laptop, I wondered what she and her family might be experiencing.

I knew that Myriam was a strong Haitian woman, who’d earned her master’s degree in Europe and returned home to help strengthen the country that she loved. And so I wasn’t surprised when I saw her on a Plan video coordinating food and family kit distributions from the parking lot of Plan’s Port-au-Prince badly damaged office, while she told the story of how she rushed home after the earthquake and witnessed her husband rescuing her family from the rubble, including her young daughter.

Catching up

Myriam Valme Joseph in the Croix-des-Bouquets programme office

On my first full day in Haiti, I ran into Myriam again somewhat by chance at the Croix-des-Bouquets programme office. She was behind a laptop computer working alongside her colleagues, many of whom had lost their homes, friends, and relatives - and sadly, one Plan colleague. I didn’t even know if she would remember me, but I rushed to give her a hug anyway - and passed along the regards from my colleagues back in Warwick, Rhode Island. The Plan Haiti community centre behind her was barely standing with rubble pouring out of its front door.

Yesterday, I returned to see Myriam again in that same courtyard. She had helped me organise a conversation with 5 youths who had agreed to share their feelings about life before and after the quake. With one of my Plan colleagues from Ecuador, Santiago Davila, an expert in child participation and protection, we sat under the shade of a large tree in a circle on folding chairs with 3 teenage girls and 2 teenage boys.

Instead of me filming them, I handed them my Flip video camera so that they could be the journalists in their own lives. They had never used one before, so after a quick training session, they took turns asking and answering the questions in Creole that they had for each other, and a community volunteer translated their words into French and English.

Broken dreams

At one point, one of the boys shared that before the earthquake he wanted to be a pilot, but now, after the events, his dreams were broken, and that he would have to rethink the future because his dreams might not come true.

“What do you need to dream again?” I asked him and the others later on, after a long discussion about what they thought Haiti needed to be whole again. The consensus was clear: they all wanted a place to go to school. That will give us hope, they said, that the future is still there.

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