by Laura Flynn

On May 20^th I sat down with ten young recently trained lay mental health-workers in the Aristide Foundation for Democracy’s Soulaje Lespri Moun project, to hear how the new project was going. In April these young people received training from a group of social workers from the University of Michigan.  (Read an Account of this work by Leah James on the Huffington Post)

For the past eight weeks they’ve have been conducting mental health sessions in two refugee camps in Port-au-Prince. On the day we met in the courtyard of the foundation one-by-one they raised a hand to offer some testimony about the work they were doing.

Most described an initially rough reception in the camps, where most people in Port-au-Prince are still living in conditions that can only be described as inhuman.   People are hungry and understandably skeptical about a project that offers mere words.  Over time the Mental Health Workers had made inroads, and some of the people who had initially been most skeptical were now regulars at the sessions, or regularly brought new people to participate.  Several told stories about people who were drinking or doing drugs to escape the grief and the trauma, and who had came back to say they’d stopped, they would come to talk instead.  Many, many people returned to tell them they slept better after participating in the sessions, and after doing the regular breathing and self-soothing exercises that are a key component to the trainings.  Some participants reported headaches or body aches were eased, and many people described improved relations with their families.

One woman who came to a session had been estranged from her husband since the quake.  Part of the instructions in the mental health workshop is to go home and do the relaxation exercises with your family each night.  Despite the estrangement, this woman had taken the direction to heart and so sought out her husband in the camp were both were living.  She taught him the breathing and relaxation exercises she had learned – this in turn led to a reconciliation, which was then celebrated by the whole camp.

One common reaction to the trauma of the quake, which the Mental Health Workers call attention to, is difficulty in showing affection.  One of the young Mental Health Workers described how as they came to this part of the training a woman had nodded in amazement and said, “It is like you are describing me.”   She had been having a terrible time with her daughter, who had been misbehaving since the quake.  But she also realized she herself had been distant, and unaffectionate with the child.  She came back two days later to tell them that she had spent time with the child, rocking her and putting her to bed that night.  Since then the child’s behavior had dramatically improved; she was, once again, the sweet, helpful child she’d been before the quake.

One of the young Mental Health Workers told me she never imagined she could do something like this.  The work was hard.  And the suffering she’d encountered in the camps she would never forget.  But it had transformed her.   She was much stronger than she’d imagined she could be.  She described an encounter with a woman who had lost her only child in the quake.  This woman had heard her daughter’s calls from under the rubble, but she had not been able to save her.  She no longer wanted to live—the daughter had represented her only hope in life.  The Mental Health Workers did not know what to do.  They themselves overwhelmed with emotion on hearing this story and bearing witness to this women’s pain, though they struggled not to show it.   “All four of us who were there, we just put our hands on her and repeated over and over, you are alive, you are alive.  That was the most powerful experience of my life.”

I was struck by how seriously all the staff at the Foundation took the relaxation exercises, which they had learned in sessions conducted at the AFD in the two month after the quake.   I asked what they thought of the training they’d received. Was it all talk? No, no several of them assured me, they did they exercises religiously, every night with the children and partners.  Especially the butterfly hug, one staffer told me, wrapping her arms around herself, a look of calm coming over her face as she did it — she especially liked the butterfly hug.

Gladys Delouis, a long time staff member of the AFD who I’ve known since 1996 told me that the night after the first workshop she did with Leah was the first night she was able to sleep inside her house. Her house was not damaged, but like nearly everyone in the city, she’d been sleeping in a tent outside out of fear of another quake.  She decided to go inside, because “you have to live.”  She also told me that she was able after the training to go downtown in the area of the Palace of Justice, where she had been having her hair done at the moment of the quake. The Palace of Justice completely collapsed, taking the beauty shop she was in with it.  She scrambled to get out – she made motions with her elbows, pushing forward, as if she were crawling, to show me how.  Somehow she escaped the building.  Just that past week Gladys had learned that the woman who had been sitting in the next chair next to her having her hair done, had been killed.  Gladys told me that before the workshop each time she had approached the area around the Palace of Justice, she’d veered away.  After the session she went back and took a good look at the place she had been.  She still didn’t know how she got out.

Perhaps of all the stories I heard Frederick’s was the most inspiring. Frederick was not technically a member of the Mental Health Worker team.  Solon, the psychologist who is mentoring the young mental health workers had asked him to come help translate for Leah James during the trainings back in April, because Frederick is a language professor.  But it turned out Solon had a secondary reason for inviting him  — he knew Frederick was suffering as well.   Frederick, whose face I can only describe as radiant, began by saying, “You know when I first came to the training I was not well.  That first day I could not even translate. For weeks after the quake I was not myself.”   Frederick went on to tell his own story.   At the moment of the quake he had been in a classroom teaching at the college where he worked.  The entire building had collapsed and over two hundred people died there including many of his students in his classroom, colleagues and the beloved dean of the school, Frederick’s mentor and role model.  He had witnessed these deaths and somehow escaped.

In April as schools were reopening he was called on to go back to teaching.  He did not know if that was possible, because he was not functioning well, and because since he had been in the classroom at the moment of the quake, teaching would be to reenact the trauma.  But, he said, the time he spent in the trainings, following the work of the Lay Mental Health workers, doing the relaxation exercises, and talking with Solon, had brought him back to himself.  He reported that he was now back teaching, in the ad hoc facilities that the college had created.   And what is more every day when he taught he led his students through the relaxation exercises.  The students, in turn, took the exercises home to their families.   Frederick was now an adopted member of the Lay Mental Health Worker group, and perhaps its biggest evangelist.

The conditions of life for those who survived the quake are terrible.  They need food and they need shelter.  But there is also a deep hunger for healing the psychological wounds of this quake.  For this reason  project Soulaje Lespri Moun is having a strong multiplier effect — the skills and information are being passed on to many more people than the Mental Health Workers are able to reach in person.

We hope you will join us in keeping this work going.

If you would like to support this work tax-deductible donations can be made here:

Or mail checks to: Aristide Foundation, PO Box 490271, Key Biscayne, Florida 33149

All donations are tax deductible and will be acknowledged.

For more information on the the Lay Mental Health Worker Project and on volunteer opportunities for international mental health professionals wishing to support this project please visit: http://mentalhealthhaiti.wordpress.com/

AFD Lay Mental Health Workers lead a workshop at a camp in Tabarre

Aristide Foundation Lay Mental Health Workers Lead Workshops in the Camps

Four months after January 12 the experience of that day — the terror and the losses — remain vivid and present in the minds of all Haitians who survived the quake.   Nearly everyone has some degree of post-traumatic stress with hyper-vigilance, startle responses, sleep difficulties, intrusive memories, fear, anxiety, grief, and anger widespread.    Even before the quake Haiti’s mental health structure was nearly non-existent.  Right now for the majority of the population of Port-au-Prince, who are now living in tents in refugee settlements, mental health care is both inaccessible and foreign to their experience.

Beginning in late April the AFD in cooperation with a group of social workers and doctoral students from the University of Michigan began working together to to create a Haitian-model for lay mental health workers to reach people in the camps.  Ten extraordinary young Haitian college students spent a week receiving training from Leah James, a social worker and doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan, and Dr. Todd Favorite and Dr. Mike
Messina, psychologists at the PTSD clinic at the Ann Arbor VA. (Read Leah’s Huffington Post Article Describing the evolution of this project here).

A Haitian psychologist who has been providing mental health care at the AFD weekly clinics signed on to advise the project, and provide ongoing mentoring for the young mental health workers.   Together they created a culturally appropriate  90-minute  psycho-education and coping skills curriculum.  The project that has emerged from this collaboration we are calling Soulaje Lespri Moun, or Relief for the Spirit.  Soulaje Lespri Moun is an expansion of the AFD Mobile School project.  For the past four weeks The Lay Mental Health Workers have been working at two of the mobile school sites (at Carradeux and Building 2004),  leading workshops for parents of the children who’ve attended the mobile schools.

US Mental Health Professionals training AFD Lay Mental Health Workers in April

The goal of the workshops is to decrease stigma, shame, fear, and self-blame and increase ongoing healing and communication within families and communities.   The Lay Mental Health Workers first encourage participants to share their experiences and talk about the symptoms of trauma they are experiencing.   They work on trying to “normalize” the responses, that is to emphasize that it is a normal human response to continue to feel that the ground is shaking, to be hyper-vigilant etc.    And then they teach basic relaxation and self-soothing techniques designed to reduce symptoms of physiological hyper-arousal and thus decrease anxiety, fear, irritability, startle response, bodily aches and pains, and sleep difficulty.

Soulaje Lespri Moun is not an effort to train mental health professionals with the skills needed to work with the seriously mentally ill (although this is needed, too). Rather, it is a movement toward widespread dissemination of education and coping skills to benefit the general public in the belief that some of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress among the population can be alleviated through basic psycho-education about common reactions to trauma paired with training in relaxation and other coping strategies.

We began the project as a pilot to train this first group of 10 mental health workers, and find out how participants in the camps responded to the workshops.  Given the conditions of life in the camps — hunger first and foremost — we wondered if people would be motivated to participate.   Initial results are heartening, in fact inspiring, largely because of the dedication and determination of the young people carrying out the project.   They report that despite some initial resistance to a project that offers only words, they are having success drawing people into the sessions.  Participants report relief from some of their symptoms, and most importantly, they say they are sharing the skills they’ve  learned with family and friends.  For instance many participants report that they do the breathing and other self-soothing exercises nightly with their partners and children.

We would very much like to expand the project and train at least 10 more mental health workers in late-June.  To do that we need to find the additional funding, most of which will go to paying Haitians who staff the project.

An AFD psycholgist, and lay mental health worker lead a workshop for kids at a camp in Tabarre

Summary of objectives

• To quickly and efficiently provide free basic mental health education and coping skills to residents of Port-au-Prince IDP camps
• To develop an effective, culturally-appropriate protocol for presenting mental health education, coping skills, and relaxation techniques in a group setting and to evaluate the effectiveness of this model in reducing symptoms of PTSD and depression among recipients of the intervention AND among the lay mental health workers implementing the intervention.
• To provide practical training and employment to young Haitian high school and college grads.
• To create a sustainable system of lay mental health provision which will ultimately be maintained entirely by Haitian organizations and workers.
• To establish a safe and efficient pathway for US volunteer mental health professionals who will provide ongoing training to lay mental health workers.  (All foreign volunteers will pay or raise money to cover their expenses.  Any funds raised by the Aristide Foundation for this project go directly to project expenses in Haiti. )

If you would like to support this work tax-deductible donations can be made here:

Or mail checks to: Aristide Foundation, PO Box 490271, Key Biscayne, Florida 33149

All donations are tax deductible and will be acknowledged.

For more information on the the Lay Mental Health Worker Project and on volunteer opportunities for international mental health professionals wishing to support this project please visit: http://mentalhealthhaiti.wordpress.com/

On Saturday April 24 thousands of children from the AFD Mobile School gathered for a cultural celebration at the Aristide Foundation.  Since late February the AFD has been operating open-air classrooms serving 1260 children who lost their homes in the January 12, 2010 earthquake.  The schools are in refugee camps at Fontamara, Nazon, Tarpage, Carredeux, and Building 2004.

For two weeks leading up to the event teachers and kids in the Mobile Schools prepared presentations on the theme  “Life with Love.”  On the afternoon of the 24th buses from the Foundation brought the children, their families, and friends to the AFD for the event — over 2000 people in all.

Marie Stuart Roche, the director of the Mobile School project welcomed all the kids to the Foundation — which she reminded them is their home.

Toussaint Hilaire, the Director of the AFD welcomed the children and their families on behalf of former President Aristide and his wife.  He reaffirmed to them the Foundation’s commitment to work with them for a better life –a better life meaning: school, food, healthcare, hospitals and parks for them to play in.

Zamor, the coordinator of the schools                                                                                                                                                                                                              at Nazon then took over as MC and introduced the kids, who put on a spectacular show.  The kids from the schools at Nazon danced and sang, the schools from Fontamara put together a threatrical piece about what they lived through at the moment of the earthquake. The kids from the camps near Building 2004 danced and read poetry.  The schools at Carradeux and Tarpage performed music and danced.

All the children who attended received new t-shirts,  part of a large gift of new clothing from American Apparel.  The AFD is distributing these clothes to the kids in the Mobile Schools and to others living in refugee camps around Port-au- Prince.  We want to thank American  Apparel for the generous donation.  There are a lot of used clothes coming into Haiti as donations right now, and while people are in great need of all kinds of assistance, it is especially nice to be able to give the kids new clothes — made in the US, and sweatshop-free to boot.

After the event, everyone present, teachers, kids and their families shared a meal together.  It was chance for everyone to be out of the mud and heat that is a daily part of their lives and to celebrate what the teachers and kids in the Mobile Schools have accomplished together over the past two months, under these extraordinary circumstances.

Every Wednesday morning in the auditorium of the Aristide Foundation for Democracy in Tabarre, Haiti, over a 1000 people receive free primary care treatment.  Almost all of the people coming to the Foundation for care are living in temporary settlements in the area.

The clinics have become a weekly gwo konbit medical - with 40 or more doctors, dozens of volunteers and health workers and pharmacists, working together to make sure that everyone who comes sees a doctor and receives the medicine they need.

Services offered include: general medical care, as well as pediatric, eye, dental,  gynecological, orthopedic and psychological  care.   The Haitian Ministry of Health (MSPP) sends health monitors to carry out vaccinations for all those who want them.  Canned milk is distributed to all pregnant women and mothers of young children.

The most commonly observed health problems are malnutrition, diarrhea in children, respiratory ailments, urinary tract infections,  intestinal parasites, and untreated high blood pressure.  The vast majority of those attending the clinics are living in temporary settlements (tent cities) across the metropolitan area.  Many of the health problems they face are a direct result of the conditions in the camps, which have little or no sanitation and limited water.   And it is now raining nearly every night.

While waiting to receive medical care, patients also hear a health education talk – for instance on malaria prevention.  On April 21, they got a concert.   Tatann of the Gwoup Lakol, a Haitian musician from Miami  stopped by to sing for everyone, doctors, patients and staff, while they worked and waited.

Volunteer psychologists are also on-hand at each clinic to work with people exhibiting symptoms of PTSD.  About 100 people each week participate in  group counseling sessions with psychologists offering guidance and support for dealing with post traumatic stress.

AFD doctors have seen and provided primary care treatment to:

• March 10, 2010 – 650 people   

• March 17 – 1169 people

• March 24 – 1284 people

• March 31 – 1192 people

• April 7 – 1178 people

• April 14-1276 people

• April 21 – 948 people

We are grateful to the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund for providing funding for these clinics, and also to several institutions who are contributing the medical supplies needed each week including Partners in Health/Zanmi Lasante and the government of Taiwan.

“We are living in the mud.  We are wet and we are hungry.  Those in charge have left us without hope. If they have a plan we do not know it.   We are asking about the future.   And we want our voices to be heard, ” Suzette Janvier, a resident of  St. Martin (a neighborhood of central Port-au-Prince)

Each Saturday for the past two months a thousand or more Haitian earthquake survivors have met in the auditorium of the Aristide Foundation for Democracy to talk about the future of their country.   Since its founding in 1996 the Aristide Foundation, whose auditorium seats up to 3000 people, has provided a place for grassroots activists and ordinary Haitians to come together to debate and discuss national issues.  In response to the earthquake the Foundation is sponsoring weekly public forums in which participants tell their stories, talk about the conditions of their lives, and describe their needs; they receive training or information on the current situation and on their rights under the Haitian constitution, and the United Nations principles on Internally Displaced People; and together presenters and participants brainstorm and discuss actions that can be taken to make their voices heard.  Each forum has drawn between 900-1500 participants; the majority of those attending are living in spontaneous settlements across the earthquake zone–as are the majority of the citizens of Port-au-Prince.   Delegations come from other parts of the country as well, particularly the South and Southeast – Jacmel and Les Cayes –which were also hit hard by the quake.

Participants at AFD forums have offered vivid testimony about conditions of life in Port-au-Prince since the earthquake. Now that the rains have begun, people describe spending the nights “domi pandeye,” (sleeping while balancing upright), standing under their plastic sheeting because there is no room for everyone to be sheltered and lie down, and because water floods the tents.  During the rainy season, which has already begun, but will intensify in May, it rains nearly every night.  In the morning the sun blazes, the heat under the plastic sheeting—which is all most people have to protect themselves—is stifling.  They are now living in “labouye” (the mud) 24 hours a day, in camps almost uniformly lacking in latrines, or other sanitation.

They describe the struggle to feed their families.   The price of basic foodstuffs  (rice, beans, cornmeal, cooking oil, and charcoal for cooking) have risen 15-30% since the earthquake, while incomes have all but disappeared.  Only those receiving funds from family overseas are able to purchase food.  For those dependent on international aid, finding food for their families is an unending labor.  Coupons for food might be distributed in the camps once a week, though not to everyone and not with predictability.   Women who were able to get the coupons must then go to a different site, often miles away, and line up long before the sun rises.  If they are lucky, by noon they might receive a 50lb bag of rice, which must then be carried or transported back to where they are living.   The next day the same struggle might begin again this time to find cooking oil—one day spent in line waiting for the coupons, another day to travel to where the oil is being distributed, in a completely different location than the rice.   Often these ventures yield nothing: there aren’t enough coupons to go around, the rice runs out, the distribution center has been relocated, or it does not open due to security concerns.  And with the rains bags of rice get wet and spoil.

Participants describe with horror a dramatic rise in prostitution—young women and girls selling their bodies to feed themselves and their families.

They describe the dire health conditions in the camps where infectious diseases are poised to run rampant.  Each Wednesday since March 10, 2010, the Aristide Foundation has held a large free clinic in the auditorium of the Foundation, providing primary care services to 1,200 people every week.   What AFD doctors see and hear from patients in the clinics confirms the testimony in the forums—that is, high rates of illness that result from the conditions in which people are living: malnutrition, diarrhea among children, urinary tract and other infections.

The first demand of those who have gathered at the AFD in the forums is for temporary housing in safe and sanitary locations.  The second is for food.  Beyond this jobs, education, healthcare, and—despite the fact that most of the participants are urban—they are demanding real investment in agricultural for food production that can one day offer food security to the country.

Underlying all of this, participants in the forums are asking to participate in the planning of the nation’s future—the necessary precondition for real recovery.   Those gathering at the AFD, feel more intensely than ever before, a profound sense of exclusion.

Certainly there was no attempt at consultation or participation with Haiti’s vibrant and engaged grassroots organizations in the preparation of the PRND  (the Post-Disaster Needs Assessment) put forward by the Haitian government to the international donors conference on March 31^st.   On the eve of the donor meeting, on March 27, over 1,200 people met at the AFD for a debate focused on the constitution – specifically the constitutionality of the creation of the 20-person  Interim Commission for the Reconstruction of Haiti, dominated by foreigners, which will oversee all international funding.  The next, even larger, forum focused on the GOH plan to extend its emergency powers for 18-months in order to allow the Interim Commission to be created and to exercise extra-constitutional powers.  Fourteen hundred people gathered, and most expressed deep concern over the repercussions for Haiti’s sovereignty.  This was followed by three days of sit-ins of 500-600 people, at the Haitian parliament, to protest the passage of the law.

In addition to preparing the plan and creating this Interim Commission without participation, there has also been almost no communication about what might be in that plan. People coming to the forums at the Foundation have all heard there’s a plan.  They have no idea what is in it.  They hear billions of dollars were pledged in New York.  They have little faith this money will be given, and no faith that what is given will be spent in their interests.

The issue at the top of everyone’s mind is the question of temporary resettlement, of moving people out of the way of the clear and present danger that the coming more intense rains represent.  But three months after the quake, no clear message or plan has been articulated by the Haitian government or international NGOs.

In early April there were several reports of forced removals of people encamped on the grounds of private schools, private property, and from the soccer stadium.  At some sites bulldozers arrived without notice to tear down shelters and families were left with no a place to go.  To date it appears the only voluntary relocation which has had any success is at Corail, where over the last week or two the Haitian government in collaboration with international NGOs has begun to move people from the Petionville golf course (where more than 45.000 people are encamped) to a relocation center at Corail, but this camp is only intended to hold 7,500 people.   Over one million people are estimated to be homeless in the metropolitan area.  If there are plans for temporary shelter for anyone other than those on the Golf Course they are not being communicated to the general public. Those gathering at the AFD express fear that they will be forcibly evicted from the camps where they are living.  They are also skeptical about plans to relocate people to remote areas, which would leave them cut off from the economic life of the city, meaning cut off from the mutual aid provided by families, communities, neighborhood associations etc, and the informal economy.  Mutual aid and the informal economy are the only things that keep Haitians alive.  That was true before the quake and it is still true.

Efforts to assist must empower Haiti’s powerful networks of mutual aid and the informal economy—not dismantle, not ignore them.  What would it mean to empower them?  Community kitchens in the camps, loans to women to restart “ti komès” (informal sector commerce), relocation for those in imminent danger with their participation, finding way of keeping people close to the city if that is what they desire.  There are thousands of community organizations across Haiti to carry out projects like these.   And if, as we hear, decentralization is a goal for Haiti’s future, then who is talking to the residents of Port-au-Prince about lives they might imagine outside the city?   And why out of $12.2 billion dollars requested in the Post Disaster Needs Assessment (the plan) was only $41 million or .3% allocated for agriculture and fisheries, i.e. for local food production?

Forums at the Aristide Foundation, held on March 13, March 20, March 27, April 3, April 17, and April 24, along with the International Women’s Day event on March 8, 2010 (attended by 3000 women) represent the largest indoor gatherings of Haitians to discuss and debate the country’s future since the earthquake.  We are not aware of any occasion since January 12 where the Haitian government, the UN or any international NGO planning Haiti’s future and the distribution of aid funds, have brought large groups of Haitians together to ask for their opinions, their input, or their stories.

Finally, those attending the forums at the AFD are unanimous in their call for the return of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to Haiti. It is best summed up by Jean Vaudre, a community organizer from Bel Air, who said at the forum on April 17, “If Aristide were here even if he had no money to help us, he would be with us, in the rain, under the tents.   If he were here we might believe, we might have hope that we will be able to participate in the future of the country.”  Hope is a commodity in short supply right now in Haiti. Is there some way of rebuilding the country without it?

Laura Flynn is a member of the board of the Aristide Foundation for Democracy-US, which supports the work of the Aristide Foundation in Haiti.  AFD-Haiti was founded by Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1996 on the principle that to bring real change, democracy must include those at the margins of society: street children, market women, landless peasants, restaveks (children living in Haitian households as unpaid domestic laborers), and the urban poor. For 14 years the Foundation has dedicated itself to providing educational opportunities, and opening avenues of democratic participation for those who traditionally have had no access to education or voice in national affairs. Since the earthquake the AFD has mobilized its staff, doctors, volunteers and supporters–nationally and internationally.  The AFD is operating Mobile Schools in 5 refugee camps, participating in mobile clinics, and providing medical care to 1,200 people at the AFD each week.

Online Donations to Support the Earthquake Relief Efforts of the Aristide Foundation for Democracy can be made here:

Or mail checks to: Aristide Foundation, PO Box 490271, Key Biscayne, Florida 33149

All donations are tax deductible and will be acknowledged.

Follow The Aristide Foundation on FACEBOOK

Member of Kolonb Dor on stage at the AFD

On April 4, 2010, Easter Sunday, Kolonb Dor, the choral and dance troupe of the Aristide Foundation offered a concert at the auditorium of the AFD, attended by 1250 people.

Kolonb Dor was founded in 2008, when a group of students in the Computer School of the AFD asked to form a performing arts initiative within the Foundation.  The group has since evolved into a forty-person chorus and dance troupe, who perform at many Foundation events and produce two yearly benefit concerts – one at Christmas, one at Easter.  This year, with Easter falling less than three months after the quake, with the whole country still on its knees, the members of Kolonb Dor and everyone at the AFD, felt we had to go forward with a cultural event on Easter Sunday, which could symbolize a renewal of life and hope.

Tickets were distributed primarily to women living in refugee camps in Port-au-Prince and its environs – over 1,200 of whom gathered for an afternoon of music, dance and theater.

The emotional highlight of the afternoon came when Kolonb Dor performed a requiem for those lost in the earthquake written by Farah Juste, and first performed at a funeral mass organized by the AFD at Titanyen (the mass burial sites)  two weeks after the quake.   Kolonb Dor opened the requiem  with a dramatic on-stage re-enactment of the quake,  followed by the song itself, which offers a libera (an opening of the doors to the next world ) for all those who died–unnamed and unmarked — in the quake.  Audience members found the presentation powerful,  jarring, but also emotionally cathartic.   The piece was so powerful, in fact, it was shown in its entirety on three of Haiti’s main television stations repeatedly over the next few days.  This represents one of the first organized cultural responses to the tragedy.

A re-enactment of the quake

At the close of the program Toussaint Hilaire announced that all funds raised by the concert would go to support the Mobile Schools program of the AFD.    A passing of the hat followed – with many present contributing what they could – a gourde, five gourdes—to support their children, or their neighbors children in the Mobile Schools.  A total of 51,000 gourdes was raised (about $1500US).

We salute the young people who put this concert together.  We look forward to working with them and others to support artistic and cultural responses to the January 12 earthquake which can aid in the spiritual recovery of the country.

Elrose Revolte and Pierre Richard, directing Kolonb Dor

]]> http://aristidefoundationfordemocracy.org/2010/04/09/a-cathartic-easter-celebration/feed/ 0 http://aristidefoundationfordemocracy.org/2010/03/30/mobile-schools-update/ http://aristidefoundationfordemocracy.org/2010/03/30/mobile-schools-update/#comments Wed, 31 Mar 2010 03:41:52 +0000 lauraflynn http://aristidefoundationfordemocracy.org/?p=346

We launched our Mobile School project in late February to do two things: support children living in refugee camps across Port-au-Prince and to offer immediate employment to young Haitians to work with kids at a time when the whole economy has collapsed.   With the generous support from the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund we were able to get schools up and running very quickly.  Since late February we’ve been running Mobile Schools, three hours a day, five days a week, serving 1260 kids in 5 refugee camps in the earthquake zone.

This project has surpassed our expectations at every level.

First the amazing compassion, vitality and professionalism of the 102 monitors we called on to staff the project has inspired us.   The monitors are mostly young people who were students at the language and computer school of the Aristide Foundation at the time of the quake.  Many of them have lost their houses and are facing terrible difficulties in their own lives.  The coordinator of the mobile schools at the Tarpage encampment in Tabarre, Mirlande Janvier, was buried under the rubble with her son for two days after the quake before being rescued by her neighbors.   But she wanted to open these schools.  All the monitors and staff come to work every day with incredible energy and love for the kids they are working with.   In March they got a boost when  Leah James, a social worker from the University of Michigan did a training with them on how to support kids suffering form PTSD.  (See her story on the Huffington Post here. )

Second the overwhelming response of the families in the camps has humbled us.   At each site when we opened there was a massive press of parents desperate to get their children into the schools.  We knew we were offering a very modest program – under tents in the open air, without books or professional teachers. The parents saw this as something far more profound –a chance, a future, some hope for their children.   Here are a couple of testimonies from parents:

Esau, 31, Nazon: I thank God every day that my children can continue their education here at the school. You spend your whole life working to build a home to make life better for your children and then in a moment the catastrophe takes all that work away from you. We moved from our house because there were a lot of cracks in the walls. The concrete split open and was hanging from the ceiling. It was not safe anymore. First we stayed [in a camp] near the airport but it was very crowded so a month ago we moved here (to Nazon). When the director accepted my children to attend this school I was so very very happy because I want them to continue learning and getting an education. It’s good for them to go to school to have a normal life like children should have. It helps them be more confident.

Marjory 28, Tabarre: At the school my daughter learns to count, to say the alphabet and also she learns hygiene. When I come to walk her back after class she sings to me the songs they sing in the school. Her favorite song is “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” Now she knows all the parts of her body and the days of the week, and months of the year. She is very clever and is learning everything very quickly. The teachers at the school are caring and love each of the children.  They know what are the strengths of each child and they try to help each child. Going to school helps children forget about the earthquake for a short time. It’s good that the school is outside because the children will not go indoors. When there are aftershocks, the teachers calm the children.

We planned to take no more than 800 kids – we ended up with 1260.  We had to draw the line there because we simply don’t have the money to do more, but school coordinators in each camp continue to report getting pleas from parents everyday to take their kids into the schools.

And then of course the kids themselves are amazing.  They arrived from the first day in clean clothes, every child with shoes on.  How is that possible when we know the kind of misery these families are living in?  Well Haitians have always sent send their children to school with pride and dignity – even an earthquake, even the misery of the camps, cannot shake that.  Watching the kids sing, dance, play, laugh, smile has been healing for everyone involved–kids, monitors, coordinators, parents.  It’s a cliche perhaps to say that children are resilient and yet, they are, and they are the future of the nation.

When we opened the schools we thought, we hoped, we prayed that food distribution to families at refugee settlements would become more dependable.  This has not happened.  In none of the five camps where we are working is food distribution regular or sufficient to meet the needs of those living there.   Two of the settlements – at Nazon and at Fontamara report that the Aristide Foundation was and is the first and only aid agency of any kind to come to where they are.  These two camps are not on main roads (though they are smack in the middle of Port-au-Prince), but even at Carradeux on the campus of UniFA (the Medical school of the Aristide Foundation), at Tapage in Tabarre, and at Building 2004 , a stone’s throw from the airport, there is nothing resembling regular food distribution.

The terrible reality is that the snack we provide in the mobile schools is for many kids the only meal they get that day.   Naturally children line up more than once, or stash away snacks for their parents.  And yet, somehow the AFD monitors and coordinators along with the families in the camps have established enough discipline to run this project – including a daily snack distribution for the children right in the midst of camps of starving people.  There have been no major disruptions –a profound measure of how committed these communities are to making these schools work for their kids.

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Mobile School Update July 2010

An estimated 90% of the schools in Port-au-Prince were damaged or destroyed in the earthquake. Tens of thousands of children are living in refugee camps and will be for many months to come.

The government of Haiti officially reopened school in early April–meaning they announced that schools were reopened. But with so many schools destroyed and with the responsibility for reopening schools primarily left in the hands of individual school directors, some of whom received gifts of tents and supplies, many of whom did not, schools opened slowly if at all.  By late April about half the kids in the Mobile School project had returned to school.  We were very happy for those children.  And very worried about the rest of the kids for whom school remained a distant possibility (for all kinds of reasons–their school was destroyed and there is no sign of it being reopened, they lost their uniforms in the quake and their parents had no money to buy new ones, their parents can no longer pay school fees, they are displaced from where they once lived and cannot afford to travel back to their old schools, or, for a minority, they were never in school before the quake.)
We never intended to run full-time schools– this was always to be a temporary project to respond to the immediate emergency of the earthquake.   But the parents in the camps begged us not to leave.

We’ve decided to continue the program as a recreational/arts/sports program 2-days a week, with a schedule, which will not conflict with school for those who have returned to school.   After a Summer holiday in June and July we plan to tranisition the project to a Friday afternoon and Saturday morning program.   The AFD will still be able to be present in the camps, accompanying children, and building on the relationships already established with their parents.   We will also be able to keep providing a work stipend to a group of young teachers.   In addition, to the recreational activities the kids have already been doing (arts and crafts, singing, dance, theater) we will increase the emphasis on mental health and add an agricultural component.
We plan to increase an emphasis on mental health work by more closely linking this project with the Soulaje Lespri Moun (Relief for the Spirit, our Lay Mental Health Worker Project aimed at parents).  Through the Soulaje Lespri Moun project  professional mental health workers from the US have been providing training to our staff to enable them to lead workshops with earthquake survivors in the camps.   A group of 37 Haitian-American Psychologists and Social Workers will be coming to Haiti and staying at the AFD for a week in August.   The Mobile Schools monitors will all receive training from these professionals on working with children after a trauma.   Together the Mobile School project and the Soulaje Lespri Moun Project will offer workshops and training on dealing with trauma and symptoms of PTSD for both children and their parents in the camps.

Finally, we will add an agricultural education program for the children in the Mobile Schools. Near the Foundation in Tabarre we have an ongoing agricultural project with a group pf 150 peasant farmers, who are growing corn, beans and vegetables and planning to build fish ponds.   In the wake of the quake, the importance of supporting local food production, and of maintaining food producing land near the urban center has become even more urgent. We want to connect city kids living in refugee encampments to food production.    On Saturdays groups of children from the Mobile Schools will work on two integrated farms plots (groups from each of the camps will work in rotation). The mobile school monitors will accompany them as will the farmers who are cultivating the plots.  The kids will participate in creation of the plots, learn skills associated with organic, integrated farming, including irrigation processes and fish farming   When the crops come in and when the fish produce each child will get a share to bring back to their families.

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Dr. Frantz Large providing eye exams on March 10

On March 10 and March 17 the AFD organized the first two in a series of large medical clinics to be held inside the auditorium of the Foundation.   We called on the services of volunteers and doctors attached to the Foundation, notably the large team of young doctors who trained at UniFA (the University of the Aristide Foundation).

AFD Medical Team

On March 10 an AFD medical team of 52 doctors  consulted 650 patients.

On March 17, 60 doctors saw a total of 1169 patients.

On both days services included: general medical care, as well as pediatric, eye, dental,  gynecological, orthopedic and psychological  care.   The Haitian Ministry of Health (MSPP) sent health monitors to carry out vaccinations for all those who wanted them.  The most commonly observed health problems observed were malnutrition, diarrhea in children, respiratory ailments, intestinal parasites, and untreated high blood pressure.

A volunteer opthamologist saw 152 patients on March 17, many of them people over 40, needing reading glasses.  Access to eye care was extremely limited in Haiti even previous to the quake — right now there is the additional critical need to assist all the people who lost their glasses along with all their other possessions in the quake.  The AFD was able to distribute reading glasses free of charge.  Three dentists provided dental care to dozens of patients –  49 patients alone on March 17.  We also distributed canned milk to all patients who are mothers of young children.

Two volunteer pyschologists were on hand at each clinic to work with people exhibiting symptoms of PTSD.  They provided group counseling sessions to offer guidance and support for dealing with post traumatic stress.

These clinics are similar to the mobile clinics that the AFD has been participating in with Partner in Health.  Now that the population has grown more comfortable being inside buildings we decided to put the huge space of the auditorium to use for these clinics and to offer additional services (dental, eye, and gynocological care).   These weekly clinic will be ongoing for the next few months.

We would like to thank all the doctors, nurses, pharmacists and others who are giving their time to staff the clinics.  A special thank yous to Dr. Maxon Guerrier  for donating not only his time but  medical supplies, Dr. Frantz Large for his time and for donating the glasses which we are distributing to patients.  We thank the Haitian Ministry of Health for sending health workers to carry out vaccinations, and Partners in Health for donating medical supplies.   Finally a huge thanks to the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund for agreeing to provide financial support for this project over the next three months.

Medicine were provided free of charge

AFD Clinic March 10, 2010