Self-help the basis of viable alternative
22/02/2010
- Opinión
One of the most remarkable aspects of the post-earthquake situation has been the resilience and courage of the survivors. In the greater Port-au-Prince area, people have organized themselves in the face of incredible odds.
Survivors have pulled together in their neighborhoods, pooling meager resources, sharing food and blankets, looking after the injured and vulnerable, caring for orphans, and setting up brigades to clear rubble and provide security.
Camille Chalmers, who heads the Plateforme Haitienne de Plaidoyer pour un Developpement Alternatif (Alternative Development Advocacy Platform, PAPDA), describes the way that survivors responded to the catastrophe as exemplary. "It was a lesson to the world," he said. "Without such goodwill, things could have been much more serious."
In the countryside, too, ordinary Haitians have relied on their own resources and networks. One eyewitness report from the hills above the town of Leogane, close to the epicenter of the earthquake, tells of the immediate response to the earthquake. "At the sound of the lambi (a conch shell blown into to make a loud alarm sound), people would gather from far and wide, picks and hoes in hand, to clear blocked roads, dig each other out, rebuild homes, and prepare to accept refugees."
People helping people
As international aid organizations continue to struggle to meet the huge demand for medical aid, temporary housing, and food, grassroots organizations are trying to fill the void by maintaining and building on the survivors' spontaneous self-rganization.
Eramithe Delva, coordinator of the grassroots women's organization, Komisyon Fanm Viktim pou Viktim (Commission of Women Victim to Victim, KOFAVIV), lost her home in the earthquake and, together with thousands of other survivors, is now living under plastic sheets in the city's main square, Champs de Mars.
Although the organization's office was destroyed and around 140 members of the organization were killed, Delva and other KOFAVIV survivors are still providing support. With small amounts of money sent by foreign friends, they are purchasing food for more than 50 women who have no means to help themselves.
In the nearby Bel-Air district, the community organization Solidarite Ant Jen (SAJ)/Veye Yo (Solidarity Among Youth/Be Vigilant) has set up a center in a partly damaged kindergarten building to provide food and shelter to local people. Every day the center provides food for 400 people and each night shelter for 200 others.
SAJ/Veye Yo organizer Lance Jean-Francois says, "People need to know that we can count on ourselves. We don't lack anything, we have the capacity. That's what behind this initiative. We accept support that comes, but in the framework of respecting people's dignity."
In the Carrefour-Feuilles district, the Association for the Promotion of Integral Family Healthcare (APROSIFA) has contracted 20 food vendors with roots in the community to each prepare and serve one meal a day to the same 10 or 15 families, usually with upwards of seven members per family. By the time the project has fully scaled up, it aims to provide food for approximately 5,400 people each day.
APROSIFA's Roseanne Auguste says all the food served is domestically grown. "Instead of sending rice from the US, I would like to tell the international community that the earthquake didn't affect production in this country," she says. "We can produce food."
PAPDA and the Plateforme des Organisations Haitiennes de Droits Humains (POHDH), another platform that brings together numerous human rights and development organizations, have joined forces to establish similar centers to provide services to those living in the refugee camps that have been spontaneously set up in other areas of the city.
The PAPDA/POHDH coordinating committee says, "The emergency aid effort we are involved in is alternative." The coordination's first public declaration continued, "We are advocating a humanitarian effort that is appropriate to our reality, respectful of our culture and our environment, and does not undermine the forms of economic solidarity that have been put in place over the decades by the grassroots organizations with which we work."
Grassroots groups demand role in rebuilding
As well as helping survivors to help themselves, progressive grassroots organizations want to solidify these impressive actions as part of an effort to make sure Haiti's reconstruction is carried out in the interests of the poor majority.
The PAPDA/POHDH coordination statement said, "These spontaneous organs of solidarity must now play a central role in the reconstruction and planning of our national space." It stressed the importance of establishing "a collective approach in seeking common responses to our problems" in order "to build a real and viable alternative based on popular democracy."
PAPDA's Jean-Pierre Ricot stressed that the strategies for rebuilding Haiti must be rooted in sustainable agriculture, and a strong decentralized public sector that supports links between the towns and the countryside. "Another Haiti is possible," he says. "Not through militarization and humanitarian aid, but with the Haitian people's involvement in the development process."
With this aim in mind, progressive civil-society organizations have established a forum of social movements to prepare a plan for national reconstruction. The task is urgent, for, as PAPDA's Chalmers pointed out at a Feb. 3 press conference, "If we don't promptly and dynamically come up with collective answers to the current situation, the system will recreate the same horrors, the same inequalities, or worse, because today the poorest people have lost virtually everything."
(Sources: Xinhua 01/29/10; AlterPresse, 02/04/10; Huffington Post 02/11/10)
Sent by: Haiti Support Group - www.haitisupport.gn.apc.org
Survivors have pulled together in their neighborhoods, pooling meager resources, sharing food and blankets, looking after the injured and vulnerable, caring for orphans, and setting up brigades to clear rubble and provide security.
Camille Chalmers, who heads the Plateforme Haitienne de Plaidoyer pour un Developpement Alternatif (Alternative Development Advocacy Platform, PAPDA), describes the way that survivors responded to the catastrophe as exemplary. "It was a lesson to the world," he said. "Without such goodwill, things could have been much more serious."
In the countryside, too, ordinary Haitians have relied on their own resources and networks. One eyewitness report from the hills above the town of Leogane, close to the epicenter of the earthquake, tells of the immediate response to the earthquake. "At the sound of the lambi (a conch shell blown into to make a loud alarm sound), people would gather from far and wide, picks and hoes in hand, to clear blocked roads, dig each other out, rebuild homes, and prepare to accept refugees."
People helping people
As international aid organizations continue to struggle to meet the huge demand for medical aid, temporary housing, and food, grassroots organizations are trying to fill the void by maintaining and building on the survivors' spontaneous self-rganization.
Eramithe Delva, coordinator of the grassroots women's organization, Komisyon Fanm Viktim pou Viktim (Commission of Women Victim to Victim, KOFAVIV), lost her home in the earthquake and, together with thousands of other survivors, is now living under plastic sheets in the city's main square, Champs de Mars.
Although the organization's office was destroyed and around 140 members of the organization were killed, Delva and other KOFAVIV survivors are still providing support. With small amounts of money sent by foreign friends, they are purchasing food for more than 50 women who have no means to help themselves.
In the nearby Bel-Air district, the community organization Solidarite Ant Jen (SAJ)/Veye Yo (Solidarity Among Youth/Be Vigilant) has set up a center in a partly damaged kindergarten building to provide food and shelter to local people. Every day the center provides food for 400 people and each night shelter for 200 others.
SAJ/Veye Yo organizer Lance Jean-Francois says, "People need to know that we can count on ourselves. We don't lack anything, we have the capacity. That's what behind this initiative. We accept support that comes, but in the framework of respecting people's dignity."
In the Carrefour-Feuilles district, the Association for the Promotion of Integral Family Healthcare (APROSIFA) has contracted 20 food vendors with roots in the community to each prepare and serve one meal a day to the same 10 or 15 families, usually with upwards of seven members per family. By the time the project has fully scaled up, it aims to provide food for approximately 5,400 people each day.
APROSIFA's Roseanne Auguste says all the food served is domestically grown. "Instead of sending rice from the US, I would like to tell the international community that the earthquake didn't affect production in this country," she says. "We can produce food."
PAPDA and the Plateforme des Organisations Haitiennes de Droits Humains (POHDH), another platform that brings together numerous human rights and development organizations, have joined forces to establish similar centers to provide services to those living in the refugee camps that have been spontaneously set up in other areas of the city.
The PAPDA/POHDH coordinating committee says, "The emergency aid effort we are involved in is alternative." The coordination's first public declaration continued, "We are advocating a humanitarian effort that is appropriate to our reality, respectful of our culture and our environment, and does not undermine the forms of economic solidarity that have been put in place over the decades by the grassroots organizations with which we work."
Grassroots groups demand role in rebuilding
As well as helping survivors to help themselves, progressive grassroots organizations want to solidify these impressive actions as part of an effort to make sure Haiti's reconstruction is carried out in the interests of the poor majority.
The PAPDA/POHDH coordination statement said, "These spontaneous organs of solidarity must now play a central role in the reconstruction and planning of our national space." It stressed the importance of establishing "a collective approach in seeking common responses to our problems" in order "to build a real and viable alternative based on popular democracy."
PAPDA's Jean-Pierre Ricot stressed that the strategies for rebuilding Haiti must be rooted in sustainable agriculture, and a strong decentralized public sector that supports links between the towns and the countryside. "Another Haiti is possible," he says. "Not through militarization and humanitarian aid, but with the Haitian people's involvement in the development process."
With this aim in mind, progressive civil-society organizations have established a forum of social movements to prepare a plan for national reconstruction. The task is urgent, for, as PAPDA's Chalmers pointed out at a Feb. 3 press conference, "If we don't promptly and dynamically come up with collective answers to the current situation, the system will recreate the same horrors, the same inequalities, or worse, because today the poorest people have lost virtually everything."
(Sources: Xinhua 01/29/10; AlterPresse, 02/04/10; Huffington Post 02/11/10)
Sent by: Haiti Support Group - www.haitisupport.gn.apc.org
https://www.alainet.org/en/active/36302
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