-
Article
Protecting survivors from the rain
Marie Ginette, a certified nurse, watched her house crumble following the earthquake. Now she’s participating in Mercy Corps’ cash-for-work program, and as a participant she automatically received one of the plastic sheets. Photo: Miguel Samper for Mercy Corps Last Thursday in the early morning hours it rained heavily here in Port-au-Prince. I slept right through it, but later when I was talking to a local Mercy Corps staff member, she told me the rain woke her up. “My heart hurt” at the sound of it, she said. She knew the rain meant serious problems for many of the earthquake survivors who still lack adequate shelter from the rain. That same day we went to the Truitier neighborhood in Tabarre to see the distribution of plastic sheeting that will protect families from the rain. This week we went back to Truitier to find and photograph people that had set up their sheets. We spoke with 28 year-old Marie Ginette Fils Aimee. Marie Ginette, a certified nurse, watched her house crumble following the earthquake. Now she’s participating in Mercy Corps’ cash-for-work program, and as a participant she automatically received one of the plastic sheets. Marie Ginette and her good friend Darline, also a cash-for-work participant and plastic sheeting recipient, collaborated together and set up their houses directly next to each other, sharing one support wall. With the help of her brother and father, Marie Ginette was able to get her sheet up in one day. She says there is great comfort in knowing that her family, including her mother, father, and brother, can now sleep under the sheeting and will be sheltered from the rain.
25 February 2010
-
Article
Aid Worker in Haiti: 'It was like a huge bomb fell'
Mercy Corps worker from Ashland was stunned by Haiti quake devastation John Darling February 22, 2010 http://www.mailtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100222/NEWS/2220321 Source Publication: Mail Tribune As one of the first disaster responders to land in Haiti after the Jan. 12 earthquake, Richard Jacquot of Ashland found the devastation eclipsed what he had seen in the wake of numerous other natural disasters. With hundreds of thousands dead or dying and chaos all around him, Jacquot slept in the airport parking lot the first night and, with dawn, leapt into his job as a disaster team administrator, setting up water sanitation, building 800 latrines, distributing life's necessities and launching a cash-for-work program. "The emergency response was so difficult. It was like a huge bomb fell," recalled Jacquot, who has responded to disasters many times before but never in a place where all services — water, power, electricity, police, government, food markets — were gone. "We went to the general hospital and distributed emergency food, high-energy biscuits, moving soon to wet feeding, which is regular food," said Jacquot, a contract worker for Mercy Corps in Portland. "The hospital's kitchen was not working. "The people were just traumatized," said Jacquot, noting that his team visited a nursing school that once served 70 students and staff and found that no piece of the building bigger than a fist was left. Only 10 survivors were pulled out. "The sanitary conditions were absolutely apocalyptic. It was very hot and humid. The rains were starting." After a week, women from outlying areas began bringing in their food crops, selling them at booths along roads. Residents who helped in the disaster recovery effort through Mercy Corps' cash-for-work program were able to buy the food with the money they made, about $5 a day. In his four weeks there, Jacquot administered a Comfort for Kids program, which helps children overcome post-traumatic stress disorder by retelling their tough times and drawing pictures of it. The program also trains parents to recognize the symptoms of psycho-social problems. The children "need to download their story and they do," he said. "In the end, they have fewer problems with it than the adults." Working with Mercy Corps, Jacquot responded after the Indian Ocean tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, the China quake and other disasters. But because some measure of social services and government were left intact, they were considerably easier, he said. "The (Haitian) government didn't exist," he said. "It had no rescue teams, no ambulances, no heavy equipment to move rubble." His task force didn't deal with medical or search-and-rescue issues, he said, noting that after 72 hours, about when he arrived, the chances of finding someone alive "go down very drastically" because of dehydration and kidney failure. After the quake, people refused to sleep inside buildings. They slept in parks, driveways and streets, leaving narrow corridors for vehicles, said Jacquot, recalling a 6-foot-square plot of parkland on which a family of 12 tried to live. Port-au-Prince, epicenter of the 7.0-magnitude quake that killed 230,000, was a collection of problems waiting to get a lot worse before disaster struck, Jacquot said. Tens of thousands of people relocated over the years in the periphery of the capital city, looking for work and erecting slum housing, he said. Many homes were built on hillsides and they all came down "like dominoes," he said. "There's no economic or social opportunity, except in Port-au-Prince. There is no middle class — they all leave Haiti. There's only the pick-and-shovel people and those who run things." Most structures, he said, even the multi-story downtown buildings, were put up with little regard for building codes. "They have building codes but no one to enforce them. Those who oppose government regulation should see what it's like in practice." Mercy Corps' long-term goal, he said, is to promote agriculture (Haiti imports 40 percent of its food, although it has a considerable amount of arable land) and clear drainage canals for the coming rainy season. The upside of the killer quake is that Haitians, with the help of Mercy Corps and other groups and nations, can focus on a new Haiti, he said. "It often takes a disaster to make changes for the better, same as in our own lives," he said. The devastation to Haiti will take a decade to repair, he said. "If the international community sees this as an opportunity to guide and help the government, it may get rebuilt so it isn't just sitting there, waiting for the next (disaster)."
22 February 2010
-
Article
What We're Doing in Haiti
Haitians left homeless after the earthquake camp out in a Port-au-Prince park. Photo: Photo: Reuters/STR New, courtesy www.alertnet.org More than a month after the devastating 7.0-magnitude earthquake that rocked Haiti, Mercy Corps’ team of emergency response experts is working to meet the immediate needs of survivors. At the same time, our team is laying the groundwork for longer-term recovery, drawing upon Mercy Corps’ three decades of experience helping disaster-struck communities transition from receiving aid to carrying out their own recovery. Haitian authorities estimate that more than 230,000 people died in the earthquake and that three-quarters of the capital city, Port-au-Prince, will have to be rebuilt. At least one million people have been displaced. The Mercy Corps team is coordinating with the United Nations and other aid groups on the ground to ensure the most efficient response. Team of Experts Just hours after the earthquake struck, Mercy Corps deployed an A-team of humanitarian first responders. These experts from around the world have collective experience that includes responses to the China earthquake, Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar, and Hurricane Katrina. Learn more about our Haiti Response Team Right Now: Water, Trauma Support, Jobs The Mercy Corps response is currently focused on immediate humanitarian needs: food to beleaguered hospitals, water and sanitation, trauma support for children and job creation. Five days after the quake, this woman and her baby need water first, then food and shelter. Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps Earthquake survivors like this little girl are living in parks and vacant lots around Port-au-Prince. Photo: Cassandra Nelson/Mercy Corps Clean Water and Sanitation Our water and sanitation team has conducted assessments at 14 separate sites in Port-au-Prince with plans to secure clean water systems and at least 500 safe latrines for more than 42,000 people. Earlier this month, our team installed a water filtration unit at a local hospital. Job Creation and Economic Recovery To jumpstart the decimated economy and begin rebuilding efforts in earthquake-affected areas, Mercy Corps has initiated a cash-for-work program that pays earthquake survivors a daily wage to clear debris, restore buildings and repair basic infrastructure. We plan to employ more than 8,000 workers in some of Port-au-Prince's poorest and most-devastated neighborhoods. Through the cash-for-work approach, survivors carry out their own recovery efforts. Employing survivors gives them the dignity of earning an income they can then spend on the supplies they need for their families. Their purchases in turn help restart local commerce. Trauma Support for Children When the earthquake struck, all schools in Port-au-Prince collapsed. Haitian children who survived the earthquake experienced trauma that could negatively affect them for life. To help restore children’s sense of well-being, Mercy Corps is providing post-trauma help using Comfort for Kids. This counseling methodology was first developed in New York by Mercy Corps and Bright Horizons, a global workplace childcare provider, to help children recover from the trauma of 9/11. Subsequently, Mercy Corps has used Comfort for Kids to help children recover from the China and Peru earthquakes and Hurricane Katrina. Mercy Corps recently announced a partnership with Haiti's First Lady, Elisabeth Delacourt Préval, to implement Comfort for Kids trainings for adult caregivers. The First Lady and UNICEF will organize “safe spaces” in camps to run arts, sports and music activities for children, while Mercy Corps will run simultaneous sessions — in French and Creole — to educate parents and caregivers about child symptoms of trauma and how they can be addressed. Next Steps Mercy Corps will focus on supporting the creation of jobs, especially in the provinces around Port-au-Prince, in sectors such as agriculture, tourism and apparel manufacturing. Mercy Corps also expects to use cash grants to help people rebuild assets like small businesses, fishing boats, food carts. In addition, Mercy Corps is exploring options with microfinance provider FONKOZE and other partners to help small- and mid-size businesses grow using remittances and microfinance. In the coming weeks and months, Mercy Corps plans to expand its work to include the provinces surrounding Port-au-Prince, particularly the Central Plateau area where approximately 500,000 people fled after the earthquake. The agency is striving to make these areas economically viable and provide critical resources to displaced families who have settled there. A Long Track Record of Helping Recovery The earthquake in Haiti left three million people in need of aid, exacerbating the dire humanitarian situation in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. The Caribbean nation suffers extreme hunger and political instability, and this disaster only increases the needs of thousands of impoverished Haitian families. Mercy Corps has a long track record of helping people living in the world’s toughest conditions to recover and rebuild after natural disasters and conflict. The agency has special expertise in disaster response that establishes a foundation for, and leads directly to, self-sufficiency. HOW TO HELP Mercy Corps is accepting donations toward our earthquake response. Public support thus far has been strong, and corporations such as Amazon.com, ITT Corporation, Best Buy, Western Union, Gap, Nike, and Trilogy/Voilà have generously contributed to our efforts.
22 February 2010
-
Article
Pay day
Images of the cash-for-work pay day at Impasse Dorcé. Photo: Miguel Samper for Mercy Corps Last Friday was pay day. After putting in five days of work clearing debris and repairing basic infrastructure, 119 participants in Mercy Corps’ cash-for-work program here in Port-au-Prince patiently lined up at Impasse Dorcé and waited their turn to get paid. Mercy Corps’ local microfinance partner, FONKOZE, helped with the money distribution. The 119 workers are divided into seven teams, each with a team leader, and they approached the FONKOZE staff one team at a time. The leader handed over a sheet of paper with all the team members’ names on it, and then one by one names were called out and the workers stepped forward. Because many people lost their national ID cards in the earthquake, Mercy Corps distributes vouchers to the workers the day before as a way of keeping track of who is being paid. The vouchers look a bit like a credit card and have a unique number that corresponds to each worker. They also have a small hologram on them to prevent replication. The worker hands in this voucher, sign their name and then they are handed an envelope with their money. The workers are paid 180 Gourdes, or roughly US $4.50, a day. This figure is the standard minimum wage set by the Haitian government.
22 February 2010
-
20 February 2010
-
Article
Video: Helping Haiti's children laugh, play and sing again
Today I visited a daycare where Mercy Corps' Comfort for Kids program is helping dozens of young earthquake survivors to celebrate their lives and friends again. Today I visited a daycare where Mercy Corps' Comfort for Kids program is helping dozens of young earthquake survivors to celebrate their lives and friends again. Here's a video I took that shows just how amazing the spirit of these games and this music really is.
20 February 2010
-
Article
Video: Cleaning up Petionville, Haiti
Here's a video from my visit to one of Mercy Corps' cash-for-work sites today.
20 February 2010
-
Article
Video: Plastic sheeting distribution in Haiti
Here's a video of one of Mercy Corps' distribution of plastic sheeting.
20 February 2010
-
Article
Video: Helping Haiti's children laugh, play and sing again
Today I visited a daycare where Mercy Corps' Comfort for Kids program is helping dozens of young earthquake survivors to celebrate their lives and friends again. Today I visited a daycare where Mercy Corps' Comfort for Kids program is helping dozens of young earthquake survivors to celebrate their lives and friends again. Here's a video I took that shows just how amazing the spirit of these games and this music really is.
19 February 2010
-
Article
Back to normal, sort of
Here in Portland, it's sunny and warm for February. Camellias are in bloom, and lots of little flowers and bushes are budding out with new leaves. I've been helping process all the donations in support of Haiti — we've had tons of volunteers, and even hired some temporary help to keep up with the donations. It's been a tremendous outpouring of support as well as the highest number of gifts in our history. Today, though, I broke down all the extra workstations in the gift processing area and cleaned up many of the signs of our response to the Haiti earthquake. While I'm enjoying "getting back to normal," I keep thinking about the people in Haiti. How, even after this disaster has faded from the headlines, after our work here in the U.S. returns to our usual volume, everyone's lives in Haiti are not going to be normal for a very long time. It's part of what inspires me about working for Mercy Corps — we stay for a long time, helping folks rebuild their lives. Many many people in Haiti will be dealing with the aftermath of the earthquake for years to come. And Mercy Corps will be right there alongside them, helping out.
19 February 2010
-
Article
The Haitian Mr. Bean
Joseph Moїse prepares bamboo poles for temporary housing. Photo: Miguel Samper for Mercy Corps This is Joseph Moїse. He’s 34 years old and a native of Pétionville. Before the earthquake he was a teacher and now he’s a cash-for-work participant with Mercy Corps — but what he really wants to do is direct. We met Joseph today in a displacement camp and Mercy Corps work site called Impasse Corail. He quickly volunteered to speak with me and let Miguel, our photographer, take some pictures. He told us that, before the earthquake, he lived on the second floor of a house nearby — a house that completely collapsed when the quake struck. He and his extended family escaped the crumbling building and are now living in temporary shelter in the Impasse Corail camp. When we came along, he was in the process of rebuilding his tent with the plastic sheeting Mercy Corps had delivered earlier in the week. During the day, Joseph and his neighbors in the camp are part of a work crew — removing rubble, clearing out drainage ditches and earning a daily wage from Mercy Corps. When we asked what he planned to do with his wages, he said his first priority was taking care of the woman in his life: his mother. I asked if he planned to return to teaching when he gets back on his feet and his school reopens. That was when he really opened up. He enjoyed teaching — the classes he taught were an unusual combination of physical education and penmanship — but what he really wants to do, he told us, is to make a film. What kind of film? A documentary perhaps? A moving story about his community’s struggle in the weeks after the earthquake? No — a comedy. “You know Mr. Bean?” he asked us. “That’s like what I’m making. But funnier! I’m much funnier than Mr. Bean,” he assured us seriously. Joseph took us up the steep hillside to show us his new tent site and the huge bamboo poles he would use to hold up the plastic sheeting. The bamboo grows just a few hundred feet away from the camp. “It’s amazing that after all this, the earth still gives back,” he said. As he gathered up the poles, he showed off the new work gloves he’d been given when he started the cash-for-work job. He is deliberate and serious as he describes his plans and cuts the support polls for his tent. But he’s also written his stage name in marker on both gloves. He’s ready to give back — through the heavy lifting required to rebuild his neighborhood and the longer-term need for some comedy to lift its spirits.
18 February 2010
-
Article
Helping Haiti's children laugh, play and sing again
Today I visited a daycare where Mercy Corps' Comfort for Kids program is helping dozens of young earthquake survivors to celebrate their lives and friends again. Here's a video I took that shows just how amazing the spirit of these games and this music really is.
18 February 2010