Haiti, Day 17: Haitian Grassroots Organizations Get Relief to Those Who Need It Most

© Ozier Muhammad/New York Times

• Donate to the UUSC/UUA Joint Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund
• Address the crisis in your congregational service
• FAQ about UUSC Disaster Response

According to the leader of the Papaye Peasant Movement (MPP), UUSC's partner in the Central Plateau of Haiti: "We are supporting the injured in the hospital in Hinche where more than 250 survivors have arrived. We are sending them water, soap, and food, but there is a severe lack of medicine, blood, and surgical materials.

"There is a great team of orthopedic surgeons here from Boston working day and night alongside Haitian medical professionals. There is not enough food for the patients, so at the training center we are preparing 150 meals to send to the hospital. We are spending about $1,500 a week on food and supplies for the hospital but covering basic needs really requires more like $2,500."

Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, the MPP leader, further reports that thousands of Haitian earthquake survivors have begun to arrive in rural villages, looking for food and medical help. Hundreds of thousands of survivors have left Port-au-Prince in search of the food and water unavailable to them in the city. This massive outmigration is affecting the rest of the country, which was already struggling to feed itself before the massive earthquake.

The MPP is a peasant organization that has spread appropriate technologies and empowered Haitians throughout the island nation from their training center in Papaye in the Central Plateau. Now as injured and homeless earthquake survivors stream out of Port-au-Prince, MPP leaders are using their considerable organizing skills and all of their resources to attend to those who arrive in the areas of Hinche and Papaye seeking shelter, food, and medical help.

The MPP is focusing on three objectives: supporting the hospital patients in Hinche with food, and what medicine they can buy; providing food to families in the Papaye area who have taken in earthquake survivors; and redeploying their training center in Papaye as a shelter for displaced survivors who continue to arrive daily.

Observed Jean-Baptiste, "There is so much to do in this terrible situation we find ourselves in. We are doing whatever we can to save lives, while at the same time thinking deeply about what we have to do for the future."

It has been very difficult to get funds into Haiti, but with the help of Fonkoze, a micro-credit institution, UUSC has been able to send relief funds to the MPP.

The Haitian grassroots organizations like the MPP have just commenced their work to locate food and medicines and employ their networks to distribute it to survivors. While the large-scale relief operation remains snarled in logistical challenges and the massive distributions are chaotic and sometimes violent, the Haitian grassroots organizations are swiftly and efficiently getting relief to their communities. UUSC has focused on getting resources into the hands of such groups.

Using this strategy, UUSC has been able to partner with the following organizations and disburse funds to them for their emergency response:

• Papaye Peasant Movement (MPP) has been granted to provide transportation to people leaving the capital, run a shelter in Papaye out of their training center, provide food for people in the hospital in Hinche, and provide food supplements to peasant families taking in earthquake survivors. The MPP is buying food and supplies from local producers where possible to strengthen the local economy; domestic production is often gravely undercut when massive amounts of aid is imported following a disaster.


• The Lambi Fund of Haiti has received a grant to supply their community groups in rural areas that are receiving earthquake survivors from the city. In many communities, there is an immediate need to double their food supplies to ensure that everyone can eat. The Lambi Fund is also sourcing from local producers.

• UUSC is working with sister organization ActionAid USA to organize supplies and logistics for two grassroots organizations, the Platform of Community Organizations of the Port-au-Prince Metropolitan Zone (COZPAM) in Port-au-Prince and the Regional Coordination of Southeast Organizations (CROSE) in Jacmel. This will help them distribute essential items to earthquake survivors in the areas where they work. This aid will include food and essential gender-specific nonfood items such as cooking pots, sanitary supplies, and water containers.


• UUSC is encouraging its members and supporters to urge the U.S. government to ensure debt relief for Haiti. Haiti is currently carrying $791 million in debt owed to international creditors. These creditors could cancel the remaining debt or declare a moratorium on payments for several years with no interest accrued. Additional support from creditors could be provided as grants, instead of loans, so that international aid for recovery will not add to the country's already punishing debt burden.

• UUSC is sending an assessment mission to Haiti February 5–12 to work with our partners to develop a mid- and long-term response. Our mission will include the manager of UUSC's Rights in Humanitarian Crises Program, and a colleague who can speak Creole, has many years of experience working in the country, and has strong relationships with Haitian organizations.

• UUSC's assessment will guide our response over the mid- and long-term. We will help grassroots groups get back on their feet to work with the marginalized. Along with them, we will focus on reaching out to survivors who are on the margins of the relief and recovery efforts. As the situation in Haiti evolves, we are learning that those groups include:
  
  
  • Children, orphans, child domestic workers (restaviks), and unaccompanied children.
  • Women merchants and street vendors who will need help recapitalizing.
  • The newly displaced who are fanning out to the countryside and need support from an already overstretched population.
  • Amputees who will need to develop longer-term livelihoods.

How UUSC prioritizes immediate needs and mid- and long-term needs

UUSC reaches groups of people who are at risk of being left out of or overlooked by traditional relief and recovery operations. With local partner organizations, we identify and bring attention to the gaps in relief and recovery, and help fill those gaps. We take action in the critical days and weeks following the disaster, and continue to work into the mid- and long-term as survivors struggle to re-establish their lives and livelihoods.

After any disaster, a portion of our relief funds are specified for emergency relief. A larger portion is allocated to the significant work of helping families and communities recover, rebuild, and renew.

Where your donation is going

Thank you to all of you who have already given to help UUSC respond to the humanitarian crisis in Haiti. Your donation is restricted to the UUSC/UUA Joint Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund. UUSC sends $0.92 of every dollar you donate to support relief and recovery efforts on the ground. The remaining $.08 covers essential administrative expenses such as wire transfer fees to send funds to Haiti, calls between our office and our partners on the ground, and temporary hires to support our rapid response.

Please help by giving as generously as you can. We will be updating our website regularly as our plans develop further.