While the world’s media is still portraying the immense and immediate challenges faced by Haitians, I am heartened by the awareness that supporting Haitians to rebuild their institutions and infrastructure is equally important. In my view it should be the higher priority for our design, our planning and our resources.

There is enough money, supplies and personnel, perhaps too much, available now. The task is more one of logistics, of distribution and allocation of what has already been provided. Paul Farmer, a Harvard Medical School professor, who has spent much of his life in Haiti indicated on CBC radio on February 14th that food, water, medical supplies and most important doctors and nurses are still not reaching the majority of people.

But what of this tougher challenge? If previous post – disaster efforts are any indication the world’s attention will eventually be distracted, aid money will dry up and donors’ attention will be turned elsewhere. After the Balkan war for example within 10 years of a massive infusion of money there were few resources to continue the rebuilding. Vancouver Sun columnist Don Cayo recounts failed and successful examples of post disaster relief. His conclusion, the best examples owe their success to local leadership.
 

Cayo quotes Akash Kapar a reporter living in SE India where 50,000 new homes were built and registered in the name of women 5 years after the December 26th tsunami:
The result of titling these homes to women has transcended the economic gains of home ownership. It has changed the very social fabric of the coast. In village after village, I heard stories of women whose status had been utterly transformed. Wives spoke of a new self-confidence and greater control over household finances. Mothers talked about insisting that their daughters went to school.

Post disaster success, like all thoughtful interventions, requires conscious, focused and strategic attention to reinforcing the ties of belonging and creating the opportunities for people to solve their own problems. It requires: tapping into everyone’s desire to be helpful to others; ignoring cultural mythologies and stigma about inability, laziness, and desperation; focusing on everyone’s capabilities; nurturing joy and celebration; being patient, understanding that what took decades to build will not change overnight; and putting professionals in their place (i.e. in the background); and understanding the well meaning but negative consequence of relying on the intervention of outside professionals.

The social fabric of a culture is not lumber and nails but belonging and resilience.

This is consistent with the thinking and practice of John McKnight a friend and mentor who created the Asset Based Community Development Institute. John has taught the world to see the gifts, assets and abilities of people who have been labeled, marginalized, ignored and excluded. Similarly, Ashoka founder Bill Drayton has built a global social enterprise movement on the premise that every country in the world has an abundance of ingenious, talented social entrepreneurs with solutions for local, regional and global challenges. They simply need the resources to make it happen.

While I am hesitant to provide any direct advice to those involved in the re-construction of Haiti, I do think the experience of individuals and groups who have been in similar situations is worth digesting. It can provide those of us who are viewing from afar with guidelines on how best to support Haitians to rebuild their country.

Here are some design criteria to guide the actions of governments, foundations, policy makers, donors, workers, development agencies and concerned individuals.

Assume the necessary leadership, capability, talent, determination, expertise and resilience exists among Haitians.

Strengthening the resilient, adaptive capacity of Haitians to solve their own problems must be the primary goal of all interventions, practices, aid, resources, donations, and volunteerism.

Local Haitian leaders must direct all outside intervention and resources.

DO NOT DESTROY THE SOCIAL FABRIC OF BELONGING AND RESILIENCE. Make sure all interventions, either intentionally or unintentionally, do not erode the sense of belonging that clearly exists in Haiti. This is the equivalent of the Doctor’s Oath to above all, Do No Harm.

Seek out and support local creativity and innovation. This is the basis of the Ashoka model. For over 25 years they have discovered talented local leaders and given them the resources to incubate and scale up their ideas.

Resources:

From Clients to Citizens: Communities Changing the Course of Their Own Development
Alison Mathie & Gordon Cunningham, (Eds.), 2008.
Produced through a partnership between the ABCD Institute and the Coady International Institute at St. Francis Xavier University. Coady has been addressing global poverty and injustice for 50 years.

http://www.standwithhaiti.org/hait.i Paul Farmer founded this organization. The vast majority of Partners in Health hospital and medical staff in Haiti are Haitians.

Al blogs and writes for a number of websites. To read more of his blogs and commentary visit: www.aletmanski.com

Still no news from the community in the Philippines … that’s a fact, even though it’s been several months since the deadly flood.

I decided to start this entry by talking about the Philippines, because I don’t want this blog to make the same mistake. It seems that many of you visit this blog each day—several hundred of you, in fact. That’s wonderful, and because there are so many of you, I’m going to push myself to send news continuously. Every day, if possible; if not, then every second day. L’Arche has the privilege of being a federation drawn together—despite distance—in prayer and in our hearts. I will therefore do my best to tell you about our world …

I decided to start this entry by talking about the Philippines, because I don’t want this blog to make the same mistake. It seems that many of you visit this blog each day—several hundred of you, in fact. That’s wonderful, and because there are so many of you, I’m going to push myself to send news continuously. Every day, if possible; if not, then every second day. L’Arche has the privilege of being a federation drawn together—despite distance—in prayer and in our hearts. I will therefore do my best to tell you about our world …

Mwen pa te vle rete nan fè nwa!*

I had to see it ... now I can smell it. Death: do you know what death smells like? It smells awful.

The scent of death is awful. The scent of hope is better: All the friends are here—I can see them, alive. So we’re trying to build morale, in a situation where there is little morale, so that we don’t fall over the edge into despair.

Port-au-Prince is dead. You can feel it.
Port-au-Prince is dead; you can see it.

The community is doing well, even though our nights are spent outside under the stars. Because the stars continue to be beautiful. And to say that things are going well is, above all, to say that everyone is alive. That’s already saying a lot. Seeing the ruins of the city; smelling it; hearing the stories—yes, to be alive is quite something. And that brings me to this story, not unusual and yet extraordinary, of a young woman who saved more than one person by the strength of her courage.

Marie–Pier arrived at L’Arche Carrefour on October 20th last year. Three months. Three months during which she has given all that she is to the community. And then, out of the blue, the sky falls in on her head; Mother Nature shows her strength; the tectonic plates clash and leave a country with a sad taste of deja vu. Poverty—events like this breed poverty, and it’s in catastrophes like this one that we notice it.

On the evening of the 12th, Marie-Pier displayed enormous courage in pulling neighbours, alive, out of the rubble. She and another neighbour, with lots of sweat and the help of a spade, rescued eight people. I don’t know if you know this, but here, we call that heroism. Remember it when she comes home—don’t forget her heroism, because it’s in having the courage to do what one is called upon to do each day that we discover the measure, the greatness, of individuals.

Since that night, a lot of water has gone under the bridge of our expectations. The assistants have built a makeshift shower and toilet so we can keep our own little world clean. It’s wonderful to see people working with so little, when the hope of replacing things doesn’t even exist. To think about the long term would be overwhelming—we get on with the day-to-day stuff so we don’t have time to dwell on it.
Actually, when you think about it, sleeping outside is not the end of the world. When I wake up in the morning and see Samuel, a smile on his lips, I tell myself that the situation could be worse. Never before in my life have I done this, but I’m going do it today—I thank life for having saved the community for us—it’s a pretty significant act and we can’t forget to repay it a hundredfold. Our houses are uninhabitable, but they are standing. That’s why the friends are still here.

The whole country is talking about what’s happened, about these days of no rain, but where the earth is flooded with tears. A people in mourning, that’s what it all feels like when you walk the streets. Then we get to the gates at L’Arche, eyes sore from seeing chaos, ears drained from hearing the talk of death, bodies dehydrated because of the lack of water in the city, baked like little hot rolls, in the sun of the Caribbean. We barely get through the gate and our pulse slows, our head lightens. Outside, “c’est le bordel” (“it’s a mess”), as my old uncle Henri used to say. People are sleeping in the streets, with what few things they still have—often, that means their surviving children and the clothes on their backs. In fact, it’s not complicated; outside, there are people everywhere! Then we come into the grounds of the community. Dozens and dozens of people are staying here: neighbours, the friends, the assistants, their relatives. A calm reigns here, like one of the rest stops on the road to Compostela. Everyone inside is busy, however. There are meals to prepare twice a day; the grounds have to be cleaned and prepared to accommodate the cooking, the outdoor rooms, the bathroom, a corner to wash clothes ... We look after the friends, or they look after us—it depends on what time it is. And we talk about our friends ...

It is so hard to understand what happened a few days ago in Haiti—how can I explain it simply? Especially to people who are intellectually disabled? How can I help them comprehend an incomprehensible situation? Ha! We forget, too often, that these are people of the heart before they are people of the head. What we feel, they feel too, and when we communicate things through the way we act, they get it, better than anybody else does. More than that! Even though their routine has been so dramatically shaken up, they are the ones who are adapting most easily. For some, like Samuel, the life of a gypsy—without a fixed address—is a matter for celebration. For another, like Bernadette, this is a time of prayer and of gatherings. For Joseph, it’s a time for work, where each rock moved is another step forward in cleaning up the grounds. They are discovering their own usefulness, and their own personal space in a home they now have to share with dozens of other people. Nothing is easy, not for them, nor for the assistants, but the survival of each person, especially mental survival, depends on the bonds we are developing with the community, and with the folks who are now part of it.

The needs are overwhelming—for the coming days, the coming weeks, and the coming months, too. You need to be generous. Because we have an entire community to rebuild and, to date, in the history of this country, the State has never been able to respond to the needs—even the most basic needs—of people who are disabled.

Speaking of disabilities, I have a bad feeling when I walk down the streets of Port-au-Prince; I don’t see one person who is disabled. It’s a foreboding feeling that those who are so often hidden away, rejected, forgotten, those who don’t have a voice, that they are now victims of their marginalized status. Is it really possible that here, where an estimated 10% of the population are people with disabilities, we would see only a handful hanging around the streets, looking for water or food? It’s only a nagging suspicion, an idea that comes to me when I walk among the ruins ... that people affected by a disability—physical or intellectual, have maybe, just maybe, been the first victims in this tragedy.

Will a country trying to rebuild itself be prepared to do it with the ones who are most marginalized?

For now, L’Arche is mourning the loss of two members of the Board of Directors: Schella and Marie-Cecile.

For the time being, L’Arche is trying to survive, having lost two homes.

And before we rebuild, we are going to be discovering a new community life —and that in itself is an enormous challenge.

So spread the word: L’Arche Carrefour is alive and we’ll share this life with all of you.

*I don’t want to stay in the dark, in the unknown