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Posts tagged ‘Haiti’

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Théogène Mie Michèle is 22 and volunteers as a British Red Cross community-based health and first aid team leader, raising awareness about the risks of diseases such as cholera, malaria and tuberculosis in her area of La Piste Camp, Port-au-Prince.

The camp is home to at least 40,000 people and the health and first aid programme is designed to reach the entire camp community. As part of the programme, two facilitators from each block of the camp were selected to train three more volunteers. These three volunteers trained another 15 volunteers, who in turn will train 40 households each until the whole camp is covered.

Mie Michèle is one of those most active volunteers in the largest camp in Port-au-Prince, and was one of the first volunteers to be trained in first aid, and health and hygiene promotion.

A chance to help my fellow Haitians

Mie Michèle says: “This is a chance for me to help my fellow Haitians, those who have been suffering under these tents for almost two years, to help those who face various health problems without even realising it, or when accidents happen. For example, if a child is injured while playing, I can be there to help instantly, before his parents are able to take him to the hospital.”

Despite the challenges that volunteers face, Mie spends three days a week walking from tent to tent to raise awareness in the community,. Mie says: “People living in La Piste Camp come from a different social background. We have to make huge efforts to get this information through to them. Sometimes people refuse to listen to us when we go to their tents to speak to them.”

Coping with poverty and insecurity

Dr Vieux Manoucheka, programme manager, says that the poverty in the camp causes the most communication problems: “People are more worried about finding food to eat than in the health messages from the volunteers. And at the end of the day, the volunteers also live in the camp and are facing the same problems, although their determination to help their community comes first and foremost.”

Another big problem that volunteers face is the insecurity in the camp. “The camp is very dangerous,” Mie explains. “People are murdered every day, there are armed gangs, and we are afraid to walk through the camp in case we bump into them. They could rob us or even rape us. We sacrifice a lot to volunteer in this camp. Community-based health and first aid volunteers are exposed to all these threats because we are always walking around from tent to tent.”

However, Mie believes that because the British Red Cross is willing to help everyone in the camp people view volunteers in a better light. “This ensures our security a little,” she says.

Despite all of the work of the British Red Cross in the camp, people in La Piste Camp – including Mie Michèle – still face enormous difficulties. Before the earthquake, Mie lived in Cité Militaire with her family, near La Piste. The earthquake totally destroyed their house and they moved into tents. Since then, the conditions in the camp have made Mie’s mother constantly ill, and she sometimes has to go to live with friends elsewhere. This meant that Mie was often alone in her tent and has ended up moving in with her boyfriend for safety.

Volunteers are best placed to serve their community

According to Dr Vieux, volunteers who come from the camp are the best placed to serve their community: “Camp residents have more knowledge around health problems in the camp and therefore they can much better serve the population with health care and first aid. They are living in the community and so they know the way to address these issues with people, which would be almost impossible for an outsider to do.”

Mie Michèle firmly believes that her work is having a positive impact on the life of the community: “I’m addicted to this job of helping this poor community that suffers from all kinds of terrible problems. People in the camp do not realize they are slowly dying because they don’t do anything to prevent diseases. Poverty blinds them.

“However, thanks to our work with the British Red Cross no one is dying any longer of cholera or any other epidemic, so I feel that despite the difficulties, my work is having a positive impact and my objective is being achieved.”

Discover more about our work in Haiti

Read blog posts and survivors’ stories from Haiti

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Yesterday we ran a live Q&A session across our social media to mark the two-year anniversary of the Haiti earthquake. Our Disaster Management team was on hand to answer your questions. Here’s how it went…

Q: What has been achieved in Haiti with the millions of dollar from donors and managed by internationals for two years on?

A: In the last two years approximately 500,000 people have actually left the camps and moved to improved living conditions which is very positive. This issue is tackled in more depth on our blog and in the Independent.

Q: I’m interested in volunteering in Haiti. Howdo I go about that and how are you empowering the local community grassroots?

A: We don’t send volunteers overseas but you can register to work here. Our recent blog post on Haiti tackles how we’ve been empowering the local community.

Q: What is being done to spread HIV youth prevention messages?

A: There is no specific youth focus, but HIV prevention is a large part of the wider health message in the camps.

Q: What is the situation for women in the camps? Are women’s rights considered a priority among aid organisations?

A: We’ve been tackling this on a number of fronts. From small locks on latrines and making sure camps are well lit at night to a literacy programme for women linked to a gender violence project. Women’s rights are a priority in line with international humanitarian standards.

Q: What happened to all the funding to help aid this situation?

A: The money was split between immediate concerns and long-term resilience projects.

Q: Why is so difficult for aid agencies and organisation such as the British Red Cross to collaborate with other organisation?

A: Given the scale of the response cooperation between non-governmental organisations has been good. It is the largest Red Cross Movement response to date.

Q: This natural disaster has also had negative impacts on the environment and has most likely caused a number of environmental emergencies. How have you been managing these environmental emergencies?

A: One of the most immediate environmental problems has been rubble, in Port-au-Prince 50% of debris has been cleared by the Red Cross. We are working with local communities in addressing vulnerability to issues such as flooding through infrastructure improvements. We have also installed biosand water filters which provide drinking water without the need for harsh chemicals like chlorine.

Q: Can you let us know what it is that actually gets done with the money from donors?

A: Since Jan 2010 the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement has provided over 250,000 households with emergency aid – that’s approximately 1.1 million people. We picked up the pace in 2011, and have now reached around 22,000 vulnerable families with safe and improved shelter (at best, helping people move back into rented accommodation).

Q: What is being done to address the huge levels of unemployment in Haiti exacerbated by the 2010 disaster?

A: Livelihoods are critical to recovery. We’ve reached thousands with programmes to help people get back on their feet, see here for more info.

Q: Is the current situation in Haiti better or worse than it was before the earthquake?

A: The situation remains challenging, which is why the Red Cross Movement is still working in Haiti. The British Red Cross will be there until 2014.

Q: Could I ask, why after donating £20 have I been harassed with phone calls, inundated with letters (usually two per month) and containing gifts, cards, badges etc.? The £20 I donated has been swallowed up with the tat you send me and the constant phone calls and emails. Never again.

A: Firstly, thank you for your donation. If you donate to an emergency appeal, then that money is not used on fundraising for future appeals. We follow up donors with direct mail and telephone calls because they are effective at bringing in the money we need to help people in crisis, whoever and wherever they are. As for gifts, the level of additional income raised when we include them far outweighs their cost. There’s more info here. If you wish to stop receiving phone calls or direct mail packs, then contact our Supporter Care team on supportercare@redcross.org.uk.

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When a devastating earthquake struck Haiti in 2010, the British Red Cross was quickly on the scene helping communities recover. Two years on, we are still there. Why? Because recovering from such a huge disaster takes time. At least, it does if you want to improve people’s lives permanently.

By adapting our approach to the local context, working directly with the affected communities and ensuring that the work we do is sustainable, our programmes can continue improving people’s lives long after we have left. By taking a long-term view, we are helping people in Haiti rebuild their lives in a way which reduces their vulnerability to future disasters.

Rising to unexpected challenges

When responding to a disaster, we need to adapt to new challenges. In Haiti’s South Department, the British Red Cross ran a livelihoods programme from October 2010 to October 2011, giving grants and training to the most vulnerable people. However, shortly after the programme began, a cholera outbreak spread to the region.

One of the only organisations to respond to the outbreak in the south, we quickly began treating people, delivering medical supplies and spreading hygiene information. Many remote communities in the south could only be reached on foot or by donkey. Despite this new challenge, we continued to help people through our livelihoods programme – reaching over 3,000 households.

Luciana Pierre Jean was displaced from Port-au-Prince after losing everything in the disaster. Using cash grants and training from the Red Cross she improved her small commerce business. She says: “The way I run my business now is different. I make more profit and I can use the profit to buy things that I need for my baby and myself. The Red Cross has helped me so much. I am not just surviving now, I feel like I am progressing.”

Our programme in the south has now finished, and we have given thousands of vulnerable families the ability to continue providing for themselves once we’re gone. In addition, by training local government medical staff and Haitian Red Cross staff and volunteers in cholera treatment and hygiene promotion, we have ensured that they can continue working to prevent and cure cholera.

Handing over responsibly

In the Automeca and La Piste camps in Port-au-Prince, the British Red Cross has been running water and sanitation-focused projects since July 2010. As in the South Department, it soon became necessary for us to provide cholera prevention and treatment services too.

Before the earthquake, many people in Port-au-Prince had limited access to the services we now provide in the camps – basic necessities such as clean facilities and water. Before our programmes in the camps finish at the end of this month, we are working with the Haitian government and other agencies to ensure that vital services continue to be provided. This way, improvements to people’s way of life can be sustained until more permanent resettlement is possible.

Another way to make sure that benefits are long-lasting is by working with local communities. In the Delmas 19 area of Port-au-Prince we are working with the community to regenerate their local environment. This includes addressing shelter, livelihoods, health and hygiene issues. By enabling the community to determine the pace of recovery, what’s needed and when, we can help them recover in a sustainable way.

As Luis Sfeir-Younis, programme support officer for recovery, says: “You have to take the time to work with communities, or it is superficial and the impact doesn’t stick. We want to make communities stronger and more resilient”.

The British Red Cross will continue working in the Delmas 19 neighbourhood of Port-au-Prince until at least 2013. Luis says: “We have a strong understanding of the multi-faceted problems this community faces. Using this information we are helping vulnerable people rebuild their lives.”

We’re no longer taking donations for our Haiti recovery work, but you can help us to provide immediate aid when disasters like this strike by donating to our Disaster Fund.

Find out more about the ways we help communities recover

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Although Haiti’s South Department was not directly affected by the earthquake that struck the country in January 2010, between 100,000 to 120,000 people moved to the region and the size of an average family in the south doubled. Communities struggled with poverty before the population shift, and the disaster made life still more difficult for thousands of people.

Between October 2010 and October 2011, the British Red Cross supported displaced people and host families in the region. One of the ways we helped was by giving cash grants, livelihoods training and support to over 3,000 people. One of the people who benefited was mother-of-eight Anne Dite Lina Pierre Louis, who received two cash grants for £160 as well as training.

Anne says: “My brother and sister died in the earthquake, so their children came to live with us. For a time there were 15 of us all living under the same small roof, although now we are down to 11. This was very hard economically. I’m responsible for the household and all of these children so the burden fell on me. I had to do everything I could to take care of them.”

More money, fewer problems

Anne says: “We had so many problems and I couldn’t see how we were ever going to solve them. Then the Red Cross came along and gave us this money. It changed my life, because suddenly things became easier.

“With the first grant we used it to buy things that we needed immediately, like food and clothes, because it was a difficult moment for us. The rest we spent on buying three goats. With the second grant, we were able to invest in agriculture.”

Before receiving the second grant, Anne took part in an agricultural training. She says: “I have always worked in agriculture, but I did learn some new things in the training. For example, I learned how to start a vegetable plot, which is what I have done with the second grant. I have rented a field so that I can have more yield, as well as planting vegetables in my own garden.”

Training makes a lasting impact

The British Red Cross employs agricultural experts to support people like Anne with technical advice while they spend their grant on cultivating crops. She says: “This support from the Red Cross gives me a lot of encouragement and helps me to farm in a better way.

“The crops should allow me to make some profit by December. With this money, I would like to be able to fix up my house, and send the children to school. Seven of them are still in school, so it is a big expense. Little by little, we will find a way forward.”

“I know that the British Red Cross will leave soon, and so it is even more important that I invest my money well so that even after they are gone there will still be a way forward for my family. By planting crops on a larger scale than before I hope that we can be self sufficient from now onwards.”

We’re no longer taking donations for our Haiti recovery work, but you can help us to provide immediate aid when disasters like this strike by donating to our Disaster Fund.

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“A year ago, in December 2010, I watched people pass by, arms laden with things for the Christmas and New Year celebrations. I heard that it was Christmas but couldn’t celebrate it,” says Marie Bernadette, a resident of the Delmas 19 district of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. “How can you hope to have a good Christmas and welcome in a new year when you don’t have money to even buy a gift for your children?”

A year later, Marie’s situation has changed. She says: “Today, for Christmas, I will allow myself a few treats. I’ll give gifts to my children and buy new clothes and games. I will also change the tarpaulin covering on the roof of my house.”

Marie’s house is one small room with two beds that occupy the entire space. Pointing to the bed next to the door, she says: “I bought this bed with the first grant I received from the British Red Cross. Before, I slept on the floor and gave the only bed we had to my children. Today, it’s so different. At least now I can get a good night’s sleep.”

Given a chance to rebuild
Marie Bernadette shares her home with a total of nine children and grandchildren. Her family is one of over 1000 households in Delmas 19 that the British Red Cross is helping after the devastating earthquake of 12 January 2010.

“Before, I used to sell charcoal and food in the market,” Marie says. “Then the earthquake came and I could not provide for my family anymore. I only survived thanks to aid distributions. Sometimes I found work I could do from home, but I could not afford to send my children to school.”

In April 2011, Marie received an unconditional cash grant of £79 from the British Red Cross. “When I received an SMS telling me that I would get this money, I was so shocked. I was so happy because I didn’t have anything. It was such a nice surprise.”

Feeling the festive spirit

Marie used the grant to pay her children’s school fees and buy the bed. A second grant of £319 enabled her to start a business selling cooking utensils on credit.

Life has changed dramatically for Marie: “After the earthquake, I did nothing at all. I was just looking after my kids every day and I thought to myself, ‘how on earth am I going to be able to send them to school?’ But today I am able to pay their school fees, thanks to the benefits of my business and thanks to the British Red Cross.”

Thanks to the grants from British Red Cross, Marie Bernadette is now planning to open a small shop where she can sell products at home instead of on credit. “I can actually celebrate Christmas this year. The British Red Cross is my Christmas present,” she says, laughing.

Find out how we are helping people in Haiti recover

Read more survivors’ stories

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