22:10 on November 10th 2011
Three weeks today I’m leaving Haiti and EDV will end its international volunteer operations in country. It will have been 18 months since I first glimpsed the vast tent cities of Port-au-Prince as my plane came into land in the country’s stricken capital. It’s been quite a journey since then with many ups and downs in between.
The past few weeks have been particularly anxiety provoking and our entire crew have been working flat out to complete the projects that are coming to an end and transition those that will be continuing under Haitian leadership. This week though, thanks to the amazing efforts of our many volunteers, I’m finally starting to exhale.
Construction was one area where I was getting a little worried about how much we had left to do. With two fairly large projects still on-going at the beginning of last week I was concerned we were rapidly running out of time. However, we currently have an amazing building team with us and in just nine short days they managed to construct five classrooms and so complete one of our outstanding
projects.
The team hard at work framing the classrooms (click for more pics)
And just a few days later the work is almost completed
Thanks to this we’re now well on track to complete all the building work we’ve committed to before our volunteers leave.
Even after our volunteers depart, EDV will be continuing its work in Haiti by supporting education in the form of primary school scholarships and English classes for adults. The English programme will be led by six Haitian teachers but one of the issues we’ve been facing is that the teachers are also students themselves as English is their second language.
To deal with this our English team have been “teaching the teachers” throughout the course of EDV’s time in Haiti. As the main body of students have progressed many of them are due to move up a level next year. This means that the teachers themselves also have to pass exams to keep ahead of the students and remain qualified to do the job.
Our volunteers have been working intensively with the Haitian teachers to run group seminars as well as one-on-one tutorials to tackle individual areas of previous weakness. Thanks to these efforts by our volunteers the final two teachers are well on course to pass their exams tomorrow and we’ll be all set for next years classes.
Schneider, one of the Haitian teachers, presenting a happy student with his exam certificate (click for more pics)
One of the things I find amazing in the case of these two projects is that not only have volunteers implemented them but they’ve also been a driving force behind funding them too.
The five classrooms recently completed were paid for using the proceeds of a fundraising event that one of our volunteers, Christian, ran at home in Germany. He then flew to Haiti to help with the construction. In the case of English, Debra, the volunteer who developed the project and is now managing the transition, has now raised enough money to fund the on-going classes for at least six months after we leave.
To me these examples show the power of the volunteer model and Christian and Debra are only two of the amazing people who’ve made EDV a success in Haiti.
The unsung heroes of the office team have recently been crunching the numbers ahead of our end of year appeal and post-Haiti reporting. To date we’ve welcomed 182 international volunteers from 19 countries spread across 6 continents. 18 of those individuals have volunteered with us twice and 3 of them are now on their third trip. Together they’ve donated 51,728 hours of work in Haiti and they should all be very proud of what they’ve achieved.
From me and all our beneficiaries, I will end this post by simply saying a huge thank you!
Although EDV’s volunteers are leaving we’ll be continuing to invest in Haiti’s future through education. We have 50 children enrolled in our Scholarship programme and 120 adults in our English classes. As Thanksgiving, Christmas and the New Year approach please consider Giving the Gift of Education so Haitians can build a brighter future for themselves.
Tags: Andrew Chaggar, Andy Chaggar, Donate to Haiti, Education, Education in Haiti, employment in Haiti, European Disaster Volunteers, Free volunteering, Haiti, Haiti Earthquake, Haiti earthquake 2010, Haiti Education, Haiti Schools, Natural Disaster, Port au Prince, tsunami survivor, Vodafone Foundation, Vodafone World of Difference UK, Volunteer, Volunteer in a disaster zone
Posted in Post
17:18 on October 12th 2011
Although I’m currently still working away in Haiti the clock is now well and truly ticking. As of today EDV’s international volunteers have 49 days left in Haiti!
As I explained last time our construction crews are working flat out to complete our commitments before we leave. However working equally hard are our volunteer English teachers and scholarship team who have the critical task of transitioning our on-going projects to local leadership.
Our English education programme started almost as soon as we got to Haiti in June of 2010 but has come a long way in the time since. It began as an informal language exchange with volunteers learning Kreyol and helping Haitians develop and practice their English. However, English is a key vocational skill and with less than 1 in 50 Haitians holding a steady, wage-earning job demand for the class meant the original format soon became unmanageable.
So, with the support of many volunteer teachers, the programme was restructured to use a formal curriculum with the students working towards recognised Cambridge certifications. Today we have 120 students spread across 4 different levels of class, depending on their ability, and at least 150 more on a waiting list to join.
We knew right from the start of the formalised classes that this was something we wanted to continue after our volunteers left Haiti and so, over the months, we’ve been working with the best English speakers to develop their own teaching skills. Now, with less than 2 months left, we’re preparing to fully hand over classes to our 6 Haitian teachers who will become EDV staff in December.
To support this work one of our amazing volunteers, Debra, who also developed the formalised programme, recently cycled over 1,000 miles from Lands End to John O Groats in the UK with some friends. They kept a video diary of their two week journey, the last day of which is here:
This was an epic undertaking and we’re all incredibly happy to be welcoming Debra back to Haiti in November to help manage the final transition.
The other on-going initiative that we’re very excited about is our Scholarship programme. Free education is virtually non-existent in Haiti and many children simply don’t attend school. This essentially leaves generations of Haitians trapped in a cycle of poverty as the children of poor parents grow up unable to find jobs and send their own children to school.
To counter this we’re aiming to provide primary school education to 100 children in three different schools. This is an ambitious 5 year plan which will require a lot more funding to succeed. However, thanks to a generous grant of £5,000 which we recently secured from the Evan Cornish Foundation we now have funding secured for 50 children until at least March of next year.
If you’ve been following my blog over the past year you may remember our work at the Foyer D’Orelph orphanage and school. Between March and June we constructed 5 classrooms at the orphanage and our scholarship programme will start here by funding teachers salaries and school meals for the children.
The kids at Foyer D'Orelph orphanage during their first day of school - the classroom and furniture were also built by EDV volunteers (click for more pics)
This is an amazing achievement made possible thanks to the tireless work of dozens of volunteers from all over the world and we’re now delighted to be handing over day-to-day monitoring and evaluation responsibility to Jhonson, one of our most trusted local staff members.
I’m definitely sad to be leaving soon but I’m delighted that EDV’s efforts will be continuing in more than capable Haitian hands.
Anyway, both of these programmes need more funding in the long-term so if you’d like to donate to Education in Haiti then visit: http://www.edvolunteers.org/donate or simply text EDVH11 £5 to 70070 from your UK mobile.
Tags: Andrew Chaggar, Andy Chaggar, Donate to education, Donate to Haiti, Education, Education in Haiti, employment in Haiti, European Disaster Volunteers, Free volunteering, Haiti, Haiti Orphanage, Haiti Schools, Natural Disaster, Orphans in Haiti, Port au Prince, tsunami survivor, Vodafone, Vodafone Foundation, Vodafone World of Difference UK, Volunteer in a disaster zone
Posted in Post
00:00 on September 1st 2011
With the arrival of September we now have 3 months until major EDV operations in Haiti are scheduled to end.
While we’ll continue supporting orphanages, scholarships and English education through our local staff and partners, we’re shutting down our international volunteer operations at the beginning of December and returning to the UK to regroup and refocus on the next stage in EDV’s organisational development.
In the interim however we have a lot left to do, particularly in regards to construction as we currently have 3 fairly large building projects on-going.
Firstly, we’re continuing with our work at the La Main Tendre Orphanage & School that I blogged about last time.
The new sections of the security wall are complete and we’re now working on repairs to the gate before moving onto to fix the drainage issues.
International and local volunteers rendering the newly built security wall at LMT Orphanage & School (click for more pics)
Secondly, after a bit of a delay we’re now also back at work at the nearby Institution Classique school. Back in May we finished reconstruction of the property wall and have been waiting ever since for the wheels of corporate match funding to turn.
Happily almost £4,000 was recently released to us and we’re now working on repairs to 5 classrooms. We’re currently a little low on international volunteers so we’ve once again enlisted the help of a local contractor. He’s already added new columns and repaired and rendered the classroom walls and soon EDV volunteers will be moving in to build the lovely new roof and paint.
The contractor and I discussing progess on repairing the classroom walls at Institution Classique (click for more pics)
Finally, we’re now well on our way to funding 7 more transitional classrooms at College Adonai. Back in June we built an initial 5 but needed to find another £4,000 to finish the job.
Thankfully amazing past volunteer Christian recently ran a “climbing for Haiti” fundraising event in his hometown of Detmold, Germany. It was a huge success raising almost £3,000 and counting and Christian is returning to Haiti in October to work on this project that he’s worked so hard to support. Thanks Criddy!
The classrooms at College Adonai that we'll be replacing with 7 new structures (click for more pics)
In total these 3 projects will support the education of over 400 kids and we’re obviously keen to see them all finished.
In addition to construction we also still have a lot to do on our other projects but I’ll talk more about those and how we’re planning to transition them to local management in a future post. I hope you’ll come back to find out more.
To support EDV’s work in Haiti visit: http://www.edvolunteers.org/donate or simply text EDVH11 £5 to 70070 from your UK mobile.
Tags: Andrew Chaggar, Andy Chaggar, Donate to Haiti, Education, Education in Haiti, European Disaster Volunteers, Free volunteering, Haiti Earthquake, Haiti earthquake 2010, Haiti Education, Haiti Schools, Haitian Orphanage, Haitian Orphans, Natural Disaster, Orphans in Haiti, Port au Prince, Schools in Haiti, tsunami survivor, Vodafone, Vodafone Foundation, Vodafone World of Difference UK, Volunteer in a disaster zone
Posted in Post
20:01 on August 12th 2011
I’ve now been working in Haiti for just over 14 months and I’m also approaching the end of my year as a World of Difference winner.
With so much happening on a day-to-day basis it’s sometimes hard to find time to reflect on the experience as a whole. However, recently I’ve been working on a couple of things that have brought home everything I’ve been involved with in Haiti.
Firstly we’ve recently released our Haiti One Year Report detailing everything EDV has achieved over its first year in the country. Between June 2010 and June 2011 we mobilised over 150 international volunteers who worked on 19 projects to support over 2,000 earthquake survivors. I’ve not yet collated all the statistics for the last two months but our projects are growing all the time so I know the numbers are also.
It’s quite amazing to reflect on all this when I think about first arriving in Haiti. I remember feeling a little overwhelmed by the scale of the need and thinking about how to get started. However by putting one foot in front of the other and by welcoming one dedicated volunteer after another we’ve made some remarkable progress in an environment that’s proved challenging to even the largest charities.
The second thing that’s caused me to reflect is our recently restarting construction work at La Main Tendre Orphanage & School.
We first got involved with the orphanage last October when they were in quite dire straits. Their main house was destroyed in the earthquake and as a result all the kids and carers were living under tarps in their property’s yard.
Orphanage Director "Pappi" standing amid the ruins of the old house (click for more pics)
While we were obviously concerned about the housing situation the orphanage directors’ highest priority was to get their 30 kids back in school. In response we built a classroom on their property which I wrote about in a blog last year.
In the months since the Association for Aid and Relief (AAR), Japan, have demolished and rebuilt the main house but we’ve maintained a relationship with the orphanage through our Health Education programme. Now with AAR’s work complete EDV construction volunteers have recently returned to tackle remaining issues with the property.
The new house constructed by AAR Japan (click for more pics)
Firstly, we’ve taken on reconstruction of the security wall which was in danger of collapsing. We’ve demolished the old wall, poured a new foundation and are now laying bricks for the new wall.
Once this is complete we’ll be turning our attention to drainage problems in the main yard and are aiming to pave or concrete the entire space to create a much healthier environment for the kids to play in.
Anyway, I was out on site this week helping with the preparation for pouring the wall’s foundation. At one point I sat inside our original classroom taking a rest from the sun. Being on site is relatively rare for me these days as I spend more time directing our multiple projects rather than actually implementing individual ones.
However last October EDV had only just welcomed its first dedicated volunteer. So as I sat I looked up and remembered personally laying the tin that was now shading me from the sun 10 months later.
This was the first classroom EDV built in Haiti and so, of the 30 or more we’ve now worked on in total, it holds a special place for me. This was the project where construction first began for us in Haiti so by being out on site I felt that I’d come full circle.
Me after a days work preparing for the foundation pour
Of course our work isn’t finished yet. EDV are committed to working in Haiti until the beginning of December this year which means that we still have over 3 months and lots of work left to do. So, I hope you’ll come back next time and see how our projects are progressing.
To support EDV’s work in Haiti visit: http://www.edvolunteers.org/donate or simply text EDVH11 £5 to 70070 from your UK mobile.
Special thanks to Toby Walker for volunteering his professional help with the layout and design of EDV’s One Year in Haiti report.
Tags: AAR Japan, Andrew Chaggar, Andy Chaggar, Association for Aid and Relief, Donate to Haiti, Education, Education in Haiti, European Disaster Volunteers, Free volunteering, Haiti, Haiti Earthquake, Haiti earthquake 2010, Haiti Health, Haiti one year on, Haiti Orphanage, Haiti Schools, Haitian Orphanage, Haitian Orphans, Health in Haiti, Japan, Natural Disaster, Port au Prince, tsunami survivor, Vodafone Foundation, Vodafone World of Difference UK, Volunteer in a disaster zone
Posted in Post
21:50 on July 22nd 2011
As always time is flying by and after a ten day trip to the UK I’ve already been back in Haiti for over a week.
My time at home was great as I was able to combine catching up with friends with fundraising for EDV. When you’re living and working in disaster zones you often develop great friendships with other volunteers. As they often also become passionate about projects many generously also organise fundraising events when they get home.
This summer there’s a lot of these events going on and I was able to attend two of them in London while I was home.
On the Saturday volunteers I’ve worked with in Thailand, Peru and Haiti gathered on Clapham common for a reunion fundraiser. There were lots of fun games and activities organised including a sponsored wax of myself which proved somewhat painful and has left me with varying degrees of hairiness.
On the Sunday a team of five runners took part in the ASICS British 10K London run. All did amazingly well including Niall who took 304th place out of a field of over 25,000 people.
EDV Fundraising Director and volunteer Buffy passes Big Ben
These summer events, along with others that I sadly wasn’t able to attend, have given us a great boost in terms of funding for our on-going projects and as always I’m really grateful to everyone for their support.
Back in Haiti the projects people have been donating to are continuing to roll forward.
One of these, the workshop EDV built for our partner REBUILD Globally, had it’s official opening while I was away. I was sad to miss the festivities but it’s great that after all the hard work of our many volunteers REBUILD’s growing number of Haitian employees are settled into the new space.
The completed REBUILD Globally workshop (click for more pics: photo credit Dorota Oleksiewicz)
Schools and access to education continue to remain a big focus for us in Haiti and we’ve recently just finished the first five transitional classrooms at our latest partner school. The school has over 170 students who were previously attending class under tarps and we’re aiming to return soon to build another seven of these structures.
The first five transitional classrooms at College Adonai (click for more pics)
Due to the often very poor infrastructure in Haiti we do spend a lot of time and funding on construction projects but at EDV we’re also very aware of the less visible scars disasters leave in their aftermath.
Trauma is something I’m also personally aware of due to my own experience as a tsunami survivor. However, I’m an adult and its often much more difficult for children, such as those who live at the orphanages we work with, to articulate their emotions. As a result they continue to live with nightmares and frustration.
To give these kids a positive outlet we’ve been sending teams out to teach art such as sculpture. We’ve recently finished the first three months of workshops at the Hands Together to Defend the Children Orphanage and I’m delighted to say it’s been a great success to date. Not only are the kids loving the classes but many of our volunteers are buying their work as souvenirs bringing the orphanage some extra income.
Some of the kids showing of their artistic creations (click for more pics: photo credit Dorota Oleksiewicz)
Based on the great feedback we’ve had from the kids, orphanage directors and volunteers involved we’ve decided to take this project a step further. Now that the kids have practiced their skills we’re supporting an exhibition of their further work at a local gallery at the end of the month.
Anyway, that’s all from me for now but I hope you’ll come back next time to see how things are going in Haiti .
To support EDV’s work in Haiti visit: http://www.edvolunteers.org/donate or simply text EDVH11 £5 to 70070 from your UK mobile.
Tags: Andrew Chaggar, Andy Chaggar, Art for orphans, Donate to Haiti, Education, Education in Haiti, employment in Haiti, European Disaster Volunteers, Free volunteering, Haiti, Haiti Earthquake, Haiti earthquake 2010, Haiti Education, Haiti livelihoods, Haiti Orphanage, Haiti Schools, Haitian Orphanage, Haitian Orphans, Natural Disaster, Orphans in Haiti, Port au Prince, REBUILD Globally, tsunami survivor, Vodafone, Vodafone Foundation, Vodafone World of Difference UK, Volunteer in a disaster zone
Posted in Post
21:37 on June 27th 2011
Apologies for the long delay since my last post but things in Haiti, for me at least, have been pretty crazy and frustrating for the last few weeks.
When we first moved into our own base I was warned about the somewhat eccentric nature of utility companies here. So in January and February I dutifully went along to the offices of the electricity company to check our account and promptly make any payments needed. On both occasions I was told that the meter was broken and that I could only pay the basic tax on the connection – which I did.
On the second visit I was also told that we should wait for a technician to visit us and sort out the meter situation.
So I was a little bit surprised when three weeks ago the electricity company finally turned up and demanded that we pay a $13,000 bill immediately or be cut-off. Based on the previous information we’d received I was understandably hesitant and tried to reason with the visiting officials.
Sadly this was to no avail and the fuse to our transformer was removed leaving our base without a connection to mains electricity.
Over the new few weeks I travelled from office to office trying to establish exactly what had happened and how we could address the situation before our poor little reconditioned generator, now our only source of power, gave up the ghost leaving us completely in the dark.
Initially I was told that the meter had been fixed without our knowledge in April and that we had definitely used the full $13,000 worth of electricity since then.
Given that we only run a small office and a few power tools (and that according to Google $13,000 of electricity would have required us to run over 1,800 computers 24 hours a day), our lawyer went off to a judge who issued an order that the electricity company release their full records.
After this it became clear that the meter was in fact not broken – the electricity company had simply not been reading it since 2008. As a result they’d gone ahead and read the meter in April and presented us with the bill for the past three years.
Although it was now clear we hadn’t used all this power the problem in Haiti is that the bill relates to the property, not the occupier. In other words the power company didn’t care who had used the electricity – we are currently the tenants and they expected us to pay for it before the power could be reconnected.
So I then got in touch with our landlord who was supposed to clear all utility bills before we moved in. He claimed he’d done this and was therefore unwilling to pay. However after several days he was unable to show any receipts to prove this and so we began negotiating with the electricity company about a payment plan.
From them demanding 100% of the money owed we dropped through 80% to finally agreeing on 50%. So late last week, after me handing over several bulging envelopes of cash a few days earlier, we were finally reconnected to city power.
In the end the $6,500 payment was split between us and the landlord but it was still painful to have to pay so much in one go particularly when most of it wasn’t even our bill.
Ultimately though, we can’t run our projects without a functioning base so we took the hit and are now moving on. All this has taken up a great deal of my time, leaving me feeling like I’ve achieved nothing else, but happily thanks to our volunteers our projects have still been rocking on.
As I wrote in my last post we’ve been very much looking forward to us completing construction work at Foyer d’ Orelph orphanage where we’ve been sending a crew day-in-day-out since late March.
Happily the classrooms for the orphanage’s home-school are now completed and we’ve also cemented the driveway eliminating the last of the standing water problems which were endangering the health of the kids.
The new concrete driveway at the orphanage eliminates standing water (click for more pics)
The orphanage kids and volunteers pose together for a group photo in front of the completed classrooms
In some ways it’s a little sad not be sending volunteers there every day now but our support of the orphanage is far from over. With the urgent physical work completed we’re turning our attention to longer-term issues of sustainability.
We have several goals in this regard moving forward. A big issue we’re currently working on is funding for the teachers. The orphanage’s 53 kids also study there and the director also lets other kids from the community attend classes for free.
To date we’ve secured funding for the teachers for three months but we’re aiming to support the education of these kids for years to come. Longer-term we’re exploring income-generating possibilities for the orphanage to support itself but in the interim we’re seeking new donors and grants to keep the kids in school.
Another area where we’re working with the orphanage is in regards to improving the health of the kids as part of our larger orphanage health programme.
Our health team have developed, and are currently delivering, a series of classes that explain sanitation, dental hygiene, nutrition, first aid and other key issues. Child friendly versions are presented to the kids and more complex versions delivered to their carers. Both sets of information work together to help keep the kids healthy.
Volunteers present child friendly health information inside the new classrooms (click for more pics)
The lessons include class time as well as hands-on teaching, in this case handwashing.
To complement this work we’ve also created comprehensive health records for all the kids at the orphanages. One problem we’ve noticed is that when the kids to get sick there is little, if any, formal documentation of problems. This makes it hard for the carers, and visiting medical professionals, to monitor illness over the long-term and understand what the potentially serious on-going problems are and what are more normal, one-off episodes of childhood sickness.
The health programme has been ramping up for several months now so it’s great for us to be able to roll it out to orphanages like Foyer De Orelph now our construction teams have moved on to other projects.
Anyway, this is becoming a very, very long blog so I’ll leave it there and hope you’ll come back next time when I ‘ll be back in the UK for some summer fund-raising events.
Tags: Andrew Chaggar, Andy Chaggar, Cholera, Cholera in Haiti, Donate to Haiti, Education, Education in Haiti, European Disaster Volunteers, Free volunteering, Haiti, Haiti Earthquake, Haiti earthquake 2010, Haiti Education, Haiti Orphanage, Haiti Schools, Haitian Orphanage, Haitian Orphans, Health, Health in Haiti, Natural Disaster, Orphans in Haiti, Port au Prince, tsunami survivor, Vodafone, Vodafone Foundation, Vodafone World of Difference UK, Volunteer in a disaster zone
Posted in Post
20:09 on May 24th 2011
Since my last post work at our latest partner orphanage has come on leaps and bounds thanks to the funding we received from The Project Solution. We’ve used part of their grant to build two more roofs: the first covers the third and final classroom and the fourth is for the kitchen area so the staff now have somewhere dry to prepare meals for the kids.
The new kitchen roof at the orphanage provides a dry space for cooking (click for more pics)
Once drainage work is complete we'll add bricks to the classrooms to enclose them (click for more pics)
With the rest of the money we’re focusing on further improving drainage at the property. We’ve already concreted many areas but the front driveway is still muddy and underwater after heavy rains so we’re now planning a BIG concrete pour (always a fun day) to eliminate this problem as soon as possible.
Any cash we have remaining after this we’re going to use to complete brickwork on the classroom walls which are currently only half as high as needed.
Construction work at this orphanage only started two months ago and it’s already amazing how different it looks. So, I’m really excited to see the results in a few more weeks with a new driveway and fully enclosed classrooms!
With work progressing so well at the orphanage we’ve been able to start the next construction project on our list, this time at a nearby school.
As well as hosting primary and secondary classes this school used to also run vocational training before the earthquake. However one of its buildings was damaged in the disaster and the security wall at the front of the property also collapsed.
This has left them with many kids crammed into the surviving classrooms and the vocational school has been unable to reopen as equipment such as computers and sewing machines would be vulnerable to theft.
The first priority for the school’s director was the wall and so last week work started in earnest on its reconstruction.
We’d never taken on a job like this in Haiti before so we decided to enlist the help of a local contractor. For the first two days he and his crew of Haitian builders seemed pretty bemused to have volunteers on the work-site but by Wednesday they had loosened up and were happily communicating in mime with international volunteers.
By Saturday the security wall was complete and we’re now making plans to repair the walls on the damaged building before adding a roof.
International volunteers working with Haitians to rebuild the security wall (click for more pics)
The damaged building which we'll repair and add a roof to (click for more pics)
As well as these two large construction projects our English and health education teams are continuing to work very hard and make progress on their projects. It’s mothers day in Haiti this Sunday and the health team are currently planning a women’s health workshop to present at a local women’s group to mark the day.
So all in all it’s full steam ahead here in Haiti. I hope you’ll check back again to see how we’re getting on.
To support EDV’s work in Haiti visit: http://www.edvolunteers.org/donate or simply text EDVH11 £1 to 70070 from your UK mobile.
Tags: Andrew Chaggar, Andy Chaggar, Donate by text, Donate to Haiti, Education, Education in Haiti, European Disaster Volunteers, Free volunteering, Haiti, Haiti Earthquake, Haiti earthquake 2010, Haiti Education, Haiti Health, Haiti Orphanage, Haiti Schools, Haitian Orphanage, Haitian Orphans, Health in Haiti, JustTextGiving, JustTextGiving by Vodafone, Natural Disaster, Orphans in Haiti, Port au Prince, Text giving, Text Giving by Vodafone, tsunami survivor, Vodafone, Vodafone Foundation, Vodafone World of Difference UK, Volunteer in a disaster zone
Posted in Post
20:11 on April 28th 2011
It’s amazing in Haiti – as in many other poverty stricken countries – how things can seem to cycle. This cycling means that we once again find ourselves dealing with issues of poor infrastructure, illness and education, and this, in turn, is why today’s blog post has the same title as one I made last October.
In simple terms poor countries and communities are often forced to live day-to-day, leaving them unable to invest in their own infrastructure. As a result essential services like health care, sanitation and schools are either lacking or difficult to access. As a direct consequence people frequently suffer from preventable disease. Frequent illnesses means that education is often disrupted. In turn illness and a lack of education lead to more poverty and the whole situation keeps on repeating itself.
This cycle was demonstrated in very concrete terms recently at our latest partner orphanage. As with many such institutions in Haiti the orphanage also hosts a home school for the children who live there. This school is also attended by other kids from the surrounding community.
Although the orphanage directors have been doing a valiant job their very limited resources meant that the place was quite a mess before our involvement. The bathrooms were hardly working, the classrooms literally just had tarps for roofs and the whole property suffered from severe drainage issues.
One of the original classrooms with tarps for roofs, the approaching rainy season would clearly have stopped classes!
The original walkways which became filled with water and mud after a heavy rain were a big health hazard
With the rainy season fast approaching we’ve been keen to get started to keep the kids both healthy and in school.
Over the past few weeks we’ve built roofs over two of the classrooms. To keep the kids out of the mud and eliminate flooding we’ve also begun concreting and drainage work to channel excess water off the property.
We’ve created walkways between all the main buildings and had made a great start on the drainage. However some early heavy rains last week left several of the uncompleted areas still inches underwater and at this point several of the children contracted cholera. With over 50 kids living on property many people were concerned about the disease spreading.
So on the day of the outbreak our partners, GrassRoots United, donated essentials like bleach for cleaning and re-hydration salts to treat any new cases before they reached the hospital. I collected them and headed out to make a late night delivery.
Over the next few days we all anxiously did what we could. The first kids soon returned from hospital but others succumbed and were admitted for treatment. Many other groups pitched in with donations including clean water and sheets to replace soiled bedding.
Just over a week later there have been a total of eleven cases at the orphanage but thankfully no new ones for several days. All the kids who were sick are now out of hospital and recovering well so hopefully the crisis is over for now.
As a precaution however the school is still closed this week so that others from the community aren’t exposed. While necessary this does mean that because of the health crisis their education is once again suffering.
To improve the future situation we’re cracking on with the drainage and further roofs. These efforts have been recently helped by The Project Solution who has awarded us our first project specific grant. The $2,700 will be used to complete two more roofs and further improve sanitation.
The new walkway with one of the new roofs in the background (click for more pics)
Kids in class under one of the new roofs which will keep the rain out (click for more pics)
This will go a long way towards stemming future disease outbreaks but to really keep the kids healthy and in school we’ll need to completely renovate the bathrooms and concrete the entire property. Through addressing the root causes, rather than just dealing with the emergency, we’ll be one step closer to breaking the cycle of poverty, disease and lack of education for these particular kids.
Of course this a long process however and so we’re still appealing for donations. If you’d like to help you can do so here.
I hope you’ll come back next time to see how we’re getting on.
Tags: Andrew Chaggar, Andy Chaggar, Cholera, Cholera in Haiti, Cholera Orphans, Cholera outbreak, Donate to Haiti, Education, Education in Haiti, EDV, European Disaster Volunteers, Free volunteering, Haiti, Haiti earthquake 2010, Haiti Orphanage, Haiti Schools, Haitian Orphanage, Haitian Orphans, Health in Haiti, Natural Disaster, Orphans in Haiti, Port au Prince, tsunami survivor, Vodafone, Vodafone Foundation, Vodafone World of Difference UK, Volunteer in a disaster zone
Posted in Post
19:07 on April 9th 2011
I’m currently back in the UK in my home town of Leicester. I was last here just before Christmas and although that’s only three months so much has happened that it feels much longer.
While the wintry weather that greeted me on my last trip has thankfully gone there is still enough of a temperature difference between here and Haiti that I started pulling warm clothes out of storage as soon as I arrived.
One of my main reasons for this trip is to try and raise more awareness of EDV’s work in Haiti and to generate more funding.
It was a fairly last minute trip but before arriving I’d managed to confirm a meeting with a previous corporate donor and an interview with the Leicester Mercury. Both of these happened two days ago and both went pretty well.
With the donor I went over what we’d done with the previous funding (big thumbs up!) as well as discussing possibilities for future support. While there wasn’t a hard “yes” on more funding I left information on our current projects and I’m optimistic that a gentle follow-up might produce some results.
With the Mercury I gave a follow-up interview on what EDV has achieved in Haiti since December when the paper ran an in-depth article on our work. I also took the opportunity to talk about our longer term plans as a charity and appeal for more donations.
While I was ideally hoping for more than two face-to-face meetings during my trip I’ve also spent quite a lot of time on the phone to other local businesses.
Some of these calls were to existing contacts who have turned to us down before but asked that I re-apply again later (“positive nos” as we call them). In other cases I’ve literally just been cold-calling companies and asking if they have charity donation schemes and if so getting contact details for the appropriate people.
As a result of this I’ve sent information off to many businesses who were pretty interested to know more about us.
In the past I’ve had to rely solely on text and photos to introduce EDV and our work but, thanks to EDV’s amazing media team, I’ve now also got some cool new toys to help me. For example I can also send the following short video when appropriate:
It’s useful to be able to reach potential donors using a variety of different media as you never know what might appeal to them most until you’ve already established a relationship. So, I’m also pleased that the Leicester Mercury article ended up running yesterday. This will hopefully mean that my new contacts will be seeing an EDV feature in print at the same time they’ve been talking to, and receiving emails from, me.
Anyway, I’m now waiting to hear back from people and hoping that more support might now be forthcoming as a result of all this. Tomorrow I’m flying back to Haiti so my next blog will be from Port au Prince. I hope you come back to see how we’re getting on.
Tags: Andrew Chaggar, Andy Chaggar, Donate to Haiti, European Disaster Volunteers, Free volunteering, Haiti Earthquake, Haiti earthquake 2010, Haiti Schools, Haitian Orphanage, Haitian Orphans, Natural Disaster, Port au Prince, Vodafone Foundation, Vodafone World of Difference UK, Volunteer in a disaster zone
Posted in Post
17:11 on March 30th 2011
As March draws to a close I’m half-way through my year as a World of Difference winner and recently wrote a report for the Vodafone Foundation on what I’ve achieved so far and my goals for the second half of the year.
I’m responsible for all of our work in Haiti, so I’m always monitoring and evaluating the impact EDV’s projects have. However, writing my World of Difference report has given me a chance to reflect on the bigger picture.
As EDV is a relatively new charity two of my main goals for this year were to establish our first international operation, and in doing so, provide opportunities for volunteers to participate in Haiti’s recovery from the earthquake.
In terms of establishing our operations things have gone very well to date. Our completed and on-going projects include emergency distributions following storms, the delivery of vocational training, the rebuilding or new construction of classrooms and the provision of housing and education for vulnerable children.
As I mentioned last time we’re also gaining important exposure to areas like health and economic development through our work with partner organisations.
On the volunteer front I’m also pretty pleased. When writing my World of Difference report I wanted to include some tangible figures, so I decided to crunch a few numbers.
It turns out that, since we moved to our new base last December, EDV has welcomed 76 volunteers from 12 countries. Together these volunteers have donated well over 1,000 days of work to Haiti.
However, while numbers provide a great illustration of our overall success they’re also a little impersonal. So, we’ve just started collecting video testimonials from individual volunteers so that they can tell their own personal stories. The first one, from current volunteer Grant, is here:
They’ll be many more videos uploaded in the next few days so please keep checking back to hear from more of these inspiring people who come and generously donate their time.
The last of my bigger picture goals for this year is to promote EDV’s sustainability as a charity in the long-term. While World of Difference is huge for us in terms of immediate funding it also raises our profile and so presents opportunities to attract further supporters and diversify our overall future income.
At the half way point I’m getting increasingly conscious of the need to start leveraging this as much as possible so that we don’t lose momentum once my year is over.
With this is mind I’m heading back to the UK tomorrow to try and raise more awareness of EDV’s work in Haiti. It was a fairly last minute booking so I was a little worried I would just be “cold-calling” people upon my arrival. Thankfully I emailed my growing contact list and already have a meeting set with a major UK company who made their first donation to us just before Christmas last year.
This last donation was made after a brief email exchange so I‘m excited to be finally sitting down with their charities department face-to-face. I’m also still waiting to hear from other business and media contacts so fingers crossed I’ll have a productive time at home.
I’ll keep you posted with a blog while I’m back in the UK.
Tags: Andrew Chaggar, Andy Chaggar, Donate to Haiti, Education, Education in Haiti, European Disaster Volunteers, Free volunteering, Haiti, Haiti earthquake anniversary, Haiti Education, Haiti Health, Haiti Schools, Health in Haiti, Natural Disaster, REBUILD Globally, tsunami survivor, Vodafone, Vodafone Foundation, Vodafone World of Difference UK, Volunteer in a disaster zone, volunteer testimonial, Youtube
Posted in Post
20:08 on March 24th 2011
March has been an incredibly busy month for us in Haiti and for one week we peaked at over forty volunteers at one time. This included an organised group of over twenty health students and professionals who I’ll come back to later.
We’ve got loads of projects running and I want to particularly highlight two here as they show some of the great partnerships EDV is developing with other organisations.
We recently started building a new workshop for a group called REBUILD Globally who I’ve mentioned in past blogs.
At present REBUILD employs nine Haitians full-time who construct recycled tire sandals, macramé straps, bracelets and hair bands out of recycled rubber and wallets made from old milk cartons and tin cans.
Nearly all of the materials used in this work are sourced from the streets of Haiti: old tires, rubber, milk cartons and tin cans. The health hazards of burning these items (which is common practice in Haiti) are well-established, so an initiative that provides much needed employment while recycling them is an ideal solution.
REBUILD is currently expanding and aims to employ up to 40 people, so they need a lot more space. However, given that their key skills are in product design and economic development we’ve offered both funding and volunteers to construct a new bigger and better workshop.
The original REBUILD Globally Workshop
EDV volunteers framing the roof of the new workshop (click to see more pics)
Work is progressing really well but we’re still fundraising to complete the job so if anyone feels like supporting this effort they can donate via this JustGiving page I’ve created.
The second partnership which is currently ramping up is our health education programme.
Poor health is a serious barrier to disaster survivors’ long term recovery and general development. However, simple preventative measures can go a very long way to stopping health issues before they start.
So, working in partnership with a new group called Medical Relief & Education International (MREI) we’ve been running health education at several of the orphanages EDV supports for a couple of months.
Just last week however we were able to aim quite a bit higher thanks to a group of over twenty medical students and professionals. We used EDV’s volunteer management and logistical skills to organise a pediatric clinic and series of children’s health workshops.
The result was a great success and over the course of two and a half days we treated 616 children and educated 357 parents on how to keep them healthier in the future!
EDV volunteers running a recent health workshop (Photo Credit: Lavender Tree Photography http://carisalippmann.blogspot.com/)
EDV volunteers at our pediatric clinic (Photo Credit: Naomasa Hase)(click to see more pics)
MREI was founded by experienced health professionals so, as with REBUILD Globally, this is a great example of how EDV is complementing its own skills and experience with those of others groups. This helps us do more to help Haitian earthquake survivors while also giving EDV understanding of new areas like health and economic development.
Anyway, our big medical group has since departed and even though we still have around twenty volunteers in the house, it seems much quieter!
Actually let me revise that: it seemed much quieter.
We’ve recently discovered the drainage pipes from our house just stop two feet from the wall. This leaves water and food scraps just waiting to backup… which they did about a week ago leaving us with clogged sinks and a terrible smell. As a result our construction hero, Iain, is now using a jackhammer to cut a path through the concrete to actually connect them to the septic tank.
As I said last time…TIH
Tags: Andrew Chaggar, Andy Chaggar, Donate to Haiti, Education, Education in Haiti, employment in Haiti, European Disaster Volunteers, Free volunteering, Hait employment, Haiti, Haiti earthquake anniversary, Haiti Education, Haiti Health, Health in Haiti, REBUILD Globally, tsunami survivor, Vodafone Foundation, Vodafone World of Difference UK, Volunteer in a disaster zone
Posted in Post
16:17 on March 5th 2011
I was planning to spend some today writing a deep and meaningful blog about Haiti’s long-term recovery from the earthquake. However, after my plans changed for the sixth time, I got thinking about how today, in all its craziness, was probably worth blogging about in itself.
If any of the following seems pointed, it isn’t meant to be – we’re often laughing (in retrospect at least) about “getting Haitied”. On a serious note though, although a little extreme, today was more or less normal for me in many ways, reminding me yet again how relative the term “normal” really is.
This morning I got up at just after 7am and had coffee and eggs. This would be fairly normal for a lot of people but as our volunteers all live communally our breakfast table is currently made up of about twenty people. A Haitian lady who carries fresh bread in a large basket on her head often comes to the door to try and sell to us at exorbitant prices (we call this the “blanc” or white tax). We usually buy it anyway because it’s delicious and we can bargain by offering mangos from our tree in return. “Normal” right?.
Many of the 20 volunteers are fairly new to the house which means that we usually need to supervise breakfast to a degree. This involves reminding people that they need to finished by 8am and that showers shouldn’t be taken in the hour leading up to this so that bathrooms don’t become bottlenecks. Today was no exception and I followed the common tactic of starting to clean the table while the stragglers were still eating.
At 8am those working on base for the day do a general fifteen minute tidy while those heading out to projects depart for the day. Well, that’s the theory assuming that transport isn’t required and, if it is, “Haiti time” was allowed for and that the driver was told to arrive earlier than needed. For example, if we need a car for 8am, we regularly schedule it for 7:30. Actual leaving time? Upto about 8:30. Today people made it out by around 8:10am which was relatively good.
Volunteers inside a public "Tap Tap" - yes that is a goat!
I then finished my part of the chores and sat down at my desk to check emails. Sadly the internet was proving cranky for the fourth day running and no-one was able to keep a connection for more than a few minutes. Time to start calling the internet provider again!
While the company started trying to fix the problem I decided to make some signs (“no showering between 7am and 8am!”) and start drafting this blog offline. I made about one paragraphs progress before our Volunteer Coordinator, Becks, returned from the airport with a new volunteer, Alex. People often arrive jet-lagged and tired so we don’t usually put them to work on their first day.
Alex however, was an exception. He proved to be keen and sprightly so I got him started on organising the large bag of keys which came with our new base. I’ve been meaning to do this for weeks but haven’t yet found the time.
After getting Alex off and running I sat down with another of our volunteers whose working on trying to expand our community football programme. Tanya works for a UK football club back home so this is a great opportunity for us to further support an activity which is very important to youths in our area.
Local youths playing football in our community
However, because they are so passionate about football, our community contacts got a little bit ahead of themselves. We had previously discussed a small tournament of about four teams to give Tanya and her contacts back home an understanding of the programme. However, after meeting with some of the coaches, Tanya came up a bit nervously and said they had left to organise all their clubs. All their clubs, together, have at least 500 people. They also wanted to involve a local displacement camp… which has 4,000 people in it.
Slightly alarmed that we don’t have enough footballs for 4,500 people, I made a quick phone call to bring our community contacts back in for a second meeting where we reiterated the concept of “small tournament” and sent everyone off planning again. They’ve now organised a two day, 8 team tournament that we’re all very much looking forward to.
With this settled, I abandoned my blog and set off to the hardware store to source wood for school desks we’re building next week.
Thankfully “Haiti time” was factored in and I left as planned at noon. Right now we don’t have our own vehicle and we often hire “tap taps”. These are usually brightly painted pick-up trucks with a roof welded on and benches in the back. Despite generally being fairly poorly maintained many come with impressive sound systems that blare “Compa” (a popular type of music in Haiti) over the noise of the very heavy traffic.
As a result of this traffic we managed the 5 mile drive to the hardware store in about 40 minutes of thumping Compa and shouting drivers. Once there I undertook the standard wood buying ritual. This involves the following:
Step 1: go to wood section and write down five digit codes and quantities of items wanted.
Step 2: go to checkout section and present list to cashier (hoping that she won’t reject my dollar bills because they have a small stain on one corner).
Step 3: go back to wood section and present receipt to woodman.
Step 4: work (or argue) with woodman to ensure wood is actually straight.
Step 5: take wood to receipt man who recounts your purchases and issues official red stamp to show you’ve not been stealing.
Step 6: show receipt to security and walk outside to find your tap tap driver has gotten bored and wondered off.
When I’d been reunited with my driver we loaded the wood and set-off home. At this point I discovered my driver didn’t want to face the traffic again and knew of a “short-cut”. Sadly this turned out to be a very narrow alleyway and we soon met three UN vehicles who’d had the same idea, only travelling in the opposite direction.
We then began the elaborate “reverse around the large holes in ground” dance and after twenty minutes or so eventually re-joined the original traffic we’d tried to avoid. In total the trip took just under three hours and I then returned to my desk to get back to this blog.
A typical "Tap Tap" from the outside
Precisely seven minutes later Ronald arrived unannounced and I was called away again. Ronald is a good friend of ours who helps us navigate the Haitian legal system. On this occasion he was dropping off the notarised copies of EDV’s translated, governing documents which we need to submit as part of our registration with the Haitian government.
While finishing up talking to Ronald the crew working at a local school today arrived back at base. So I then met with Iain, our construction guru, about the plans to return tomorrow to lay concrete floors in two classrooms. Happily the team are all set for an early start to a big day – thank you Iain!
At 5pm, just as everyone else was sitting down to dinner, I came back up to the office to finally write my blog and check if the internet was working. It wasn’t.
Despite the insanity, I still love it and every day is a different challenge. Admittedly it’s sometimes tiring to constantly have to adapt and adjust, so taking breaks like the one I did recently is essential. However, I’m certainly never bored.
Tags: Andrew Chaggar, Andy Chaggar, Donate to Haiti, Education, Education in Haiti, European Disaster Volunteers, Free volunteering, Global Giving, Haiti, Haiti Schools, Haitian Orphanage, Natural Disaster, Port au Prince, Vodafone, Vodafone World of Difference UK, Volunteer in a disaster zone
Posted in Post
19:08 on February 3rd 2011
I’m a little overdue on this latest blog post so I’m forcing myself to sit down and write this as night falls over Port-au-Prince.
I mentioned at the end of December that EDV had just moved to its own base to enable us to our expand our operations. It’s certainly exciting times for us as a charity but managing the growth can be both challenging and tiring at times.
To give you some idea of what my life is like right now, here’s just some highlights of what’s happened with EDV since my last written post (just over three weeks ago):
Finished the roof of the transitional classroom I talked about last time helping over 180 kids learn more safely. We’re now trying to schedule the repairs to another roof and floor of a third classroom on the weekends to not disturb classes.
Delivered health and first-aid trainings to local community groups.
Assessed the health of, and de-wormed kids, at two orphanages and presented trainings on germ awareness and basic hygiene.
Marked the earthquake anniversary by preparing and delivering meals to 180 patients at the Port-au-Prince general hospital and also taking the kids at one orphanage swimming.
The new roof at a nearby school damaged in the earthquake. We'll be returning to improve other classrooms here later
Volunteers and kids from an orphanage marking the earthquake anniversary with fun
Welcomed staff of the fundraising website Global Giving to visit projects funded through them and report to their donors.
Poured two concrete floors and erected a large tent to accommodate the home school at Hands Together to Defend the Children Orphanage and outfitted it with hand built tables, benches and desks. All the kids are now back in class for the first time since the earthquake.
Worked with the same orphanage in developing their initial website and also continued supporting them with their legal registration with the government – both of these sub-projects are continuing to develop their independence and capacity.
Welcomed the Vodafone Foundation’s commissioned photographer, Matt Oldfield, to shoot pictures of me and our projects for the World of Difference Programme.
Built the new upstairs office at our base.
Assessed a new orphanage for possible support with building repairs and health education.
The new home school at the Hands Together orphanage with desks built by volunteers
Teaching kids about how germs spread prior to administering de-worm medication
Welcomed two journalist masters students from Germany to write a feature about our German volunteers and hopefully help us leverage the “E” in “EDV” more. Towards this end we’ve also just setup a Facebook page in German.
Starting wall and roof construction at another school which will be our biggest building project to date in Haiti.
Starting beneficiary interviews for our scholarship programme which will provide yearly school fees for 25 kids during the initial pilot and then grow from there.
PHEW!
Of course, I’m certainly not doing all of this in isolation and we’re fortunate enough to have been joined by some high quality, long-term volunteers who are now part of EDV’s management team in Haiti and are either managing individual projects or coordinating key “back-end” work.
Without these committed individuals, and of course our amazing Haitian staff – of whom we now have four full time, none of this would be possible.
However, drawing all of our project and programme threads together and making sure everyone’s priorities and actions are in sync is ultimately my responsibility.
Managing peoples different personalities and expectations often takes as much time as anything else but is critical when working with volunteers with complimentary skills, all of which are essential to running our overall operations.
Right now I’m keeping on top of most things but I must admit I’ve recently started dreaming about the day ahead during the previous night which is probably a sign I need a break!
Thankfully we have a brief lull starting next week before the end of February ramps up into March when we have a full house of about 32 for Easter. Things are not going to slow down after that so Emma and I are taking 10 days in the Dominican Republic before the next wave of expansion starts.
The plan is to get some hard earned R & R and come back refreshed and ready to work. After years of working in disaster zones I’ve learned to take “pre-emptive holidays” to be strong enough to deal with all eventualities.
For example, the last time we were away was a 5 day holiday in October. We came back just as Cholera broke out which meant we were doubly glad of the break. Fingers crossed there won’t be anything so drastic to deal with after this holiday, but whatever happens I’m sure to be busy and keen to keep pushing forward with our growth.
So, until next time, I’m heading to the beach and leaving EDV in the capable hands of others. I hope you’ll come back to see how things have moved forward while I’m away.
Tags: Andrew Chaggar, Andy Chaggar, Donate to Haiti, earthquake 1 year anniversary, earthquake one year anniversary, Education, Education in Haiti, European Disaster Volunteers, Free volunteering, Global Giving, Haiti, Haiti Earthquake, Haiti earthquake 2010, Haiti earthquake anniversary, Haiti Education, Haiti Health, Haiti Schools, Haitian earthquake 1 year anniversary, Haitian earthquake anniversary, Haitian earthquake one year anniversary, Haitian Orphanage, Haitian Orphans, Health, Health in Haiti, Natural Disaster, Orphans in Haiti, Port au Prince, Schools, tsunami survivor, Vodafone Foundation, Vodafone World of Difference UK, Volunteer in a disaster zone
Posted in Post
07:50 on January 13th 2011
Posted in Post
07:44 on January 13th 2011
Posted in Post
20:42 on January 11th 2011
Posted in Post
19:18 on January 8th 2011
It’s now been almost a year since the devastating earthquake of the 12th January struck Haiti.
The capital of Port-au-Prince was just 25km (16 miles) east of the epicentre. Already poverty stricken and vastly overcrowded with people desperately seeking chances for employment it’s slums and other poorly constructed buildings were incredibly vulnerable to the seismic shock waves that rose from beneath people’s feet just before 5pm in the evening.
Although exact numbers will probably never be known it’s estimated that the earthquake killed around 230,000 people, injured approximately 300,000 more and left well over 1,000,000 homeless.
Statistics are one thing but they can never fully portray the anguish, terror and confusion that must have followed as the sun quickly set and darkness fell over the shattered city.
As a disaster survivor myself I have a certain amount of empathy with Haitian survivors – I can also remember lying trapped in debris for hours, slowly losing blood and hope that someone would find me.
However, also as a disaster survivor I know that no-one except those who were here can truly understand what it means to have lived through those events. In fact there are millions of unique stories that have unfolded since the earthquake – one for each and every person who was affected.
As both an organisation and as people we’ve been talking recently about how to mark the one-year anniversary in an appropriate and sensitive manner. However, as is happening more and more these days our Haitian friends have approached us with their own ideas.
In a blog post last October I introduced Johnson while discussing tent distributions after a freak storm. In the months since Johnson has become a critical part of our operations and now lives and works with us everyday.
Johnson’s interests are very varied. He’s an amazing general “fixer” but also really enjoys teaching, construction and counselling. Underlying all this is his unshakable conviction in the importance of faith and hope.
Johnson the Constructor
Johnson the Teacher
While talking with him after work this week he expressed a strong desire to do something for those he feels who are losing, or have already lost, hope in the painfully slow, or often stalled, recovery process over the last year.
As such he’s asked us to help him prepare and deliver a cooked meal to some of the most vulnerable survivors he knows – such as the sick, amputees the most destitute who have no families to help support them. Johnson feels that this simple gesture will help remind some of the most desperate and alone that the world hasn’t forgotten them so long after the disaster.
While our focus on long-term sustainability and capacity building means that we generally steer away from food distributions Johnson’s passion for this project, and his desire to take the lead on it, have convinced us to support him with a relatively modest budget and our hands-on participation.
Johnson has already started buying and organising supplies and the plan is to do the food preparation at one of the local orphanages we partner with so that the kids there can also have some fun with the international volunteers and get a healthy meal that day too.
It should be quite a day and I’m planning to report from the field via twitter and hopefully also via a new audio blog which is coming soon.
Of course, since we’ve moved and expanded our operations, we’ve also got lots of other longer-term projects running.
Our good friends from Students for Ayiti are currently back with us and as I draft this blog they’re making final preparations for health and first-aid trainings with two of our local community group partners. They’ve also been teaching English and are going to be helping with de-worming the kids at two orphanages early next week.
On the construction front we’ve also been pressing on with our latest classroom project at another local school. The school, which serves over 180 kids, had its upper floor badly damaged in the earthquake which seriously reduced classroom space. The kids were previously working under tarps right beneath the dangerously unstable building and as soon we saw it we were keen to help.
Not wanting to disrupt classes further we worked with our partners, GrassRoots United, over the Christmas holiday to demolish the dangerous section of the upper floor. Last week we finished the timber frame of the new roof. We’ve now sourced the roofing tin and will be having a very early start on Monday trying to get the job completed as classes are resuming next week.
Students for Ayiti preparing for health training with members of a Women's Group
The completed classroom roof frame ready for us to lay the tin on Monday so that classes can restart
If there’s one thing that’s critical to the on-going recovery and long-term future of Haiti it’s education. With so many kids still out of school, or studying in poor conditions, nearly a year after the earthquake we’re pushing hard to make sure this particular job is done before the anniversary.
Anyway, I hope you’ll keep checking in to hear more about the coming week and our many hands-on projects.
To support EDV’s work in Haiti visit: http://www.edvolunteers.org/donate
Tags: Andrew Chaggar, Andy Chaggar, Donate to Haiti, earthquake 1 year anniversary, earthquake one year anniversary, European Disaster Volunteers, Free volunteering, Haiti, Haiti Earthquake, Haiti earthquake 2010, Haiti earthquake anniversary, Haiti Election, Haiti Election 2010, Haiti one year on, Haiti Orphanage, Haitian earthquake 1 year anniversary, Haitian earthquake anniversary, Haitian earthquake one year anniversary, Haitian Orphanage, Haitian Orphans, Natural Disaster, Orphans in Haiti, Port au Prince, tsunami survivor, Vodafone Foundation, Vodafone World of Difference UK, Volunteer in a disaster zone
Posted in Post
22:51 on December 29th 2010
I was hoping to write this latest blog post while I was back in the UK for a recent visit. Unfortunately, my time home ended up being more hectic than originally planned and I’m just getting round to drafting this after returning to Port-au-Prince on Christmas Day.
I was originally due to fly on the 9th December but sadly, due to the political unrest I talked about last time, there were a lot of flights cancelled and I was stuck for six days waiting for things to settle down. I eventually flew on the 15th and arrived back in my home-town of Leicester the following day.
After last going back in July for my interview for World of Difference returning this time was a bit of a shock to the system to say the least.
Living in the western hemisphere’s poorest country for months meant that the sudden presence of things like intact buildings, widespread electricity and running water was more than a little surreal. My first day back I almost threw used toilet paper into the waste-bin before I remembered the exciting concept of plumbing!
I say this a little lightly but in all seriousness flying back into the “land of plenty”, especially with everyone preparing for the consumer frenzy of Christmas, was definitely more than a little alien after being in an environment where people regularly go without shelter, food, and clean water.
Also, the physical shock of traveling from the tropics to snow and freezing temperatures added to the mental changes I also needed to process. Re-entry Syndrome, a kind of reverse culture shock, kicked in hard and fast.
Happily, seeing friends and family after so many months away provided me with a welcome distraction to take my mind off the sharp contrasts between the UK and Haiti.
I spent the first few days catching up with folks and doing some essential shopping – like buying a new laptop to replace the antique I was previously banging my head against – and then it was time to get started on the main business of my trip, trying to raise EDV’s profile and generate some more awareness of our work.
I’m certainly no expert at public relations but as a tsunami survivor working in Thailand over the one-year anniversary of that disaster I’m also not entirely a novice either. I was interviewed pretty heavily back then and the resultant coverage meant that I knew the coming months could be pretty significant for us as a charity.
With Christmas, the six year anniversary of the tsunami and the one-year anniversary of the Haiti earthquake falling in quick succession I wanted to be sure that EDV was in the minds of as many people as possible. We obviously push social media pretty hard all the time but for my trip to the UK we were looking for as much as traditional media coverage as possible.
Emma, our Media Director, has worked incredibly hard over the last two years to get our name out there – no easy feat when we were preparing for operations and not actually active. As a result of her efforts my local paper, the Leicester Mercury, were already lined up for an-depth interview the first Monday I was home.
Happily, this turned into a front page feature which ran 27th December.
The following day I was on the train to London to meet the Press Association. Vodafone’s PR team have also been working very hard on our behalf since I won World of Difference and this interview, arranged by them, could turn out to be pretty significant. The Press Association are pretty much the UK News Agency and my in-depth interview with them could end-up being distributed far and wide.
Finally, after another day of minor chores, I did a live interview on BBC Radio Leicester on Christmas Eve. It was pretty brief but I managed to get our name and website plugged as much as possible.
I then threw the last few bits of shopping into my bags, and then headed back into town to catch the train to Heathrow and fly back to Haiti. I took off at 8pm and after a horrendous eleven hour layover at JFK airport, New York, I got back home to Port-au-Prince about 2:30pm Christmas Day.
I was so tired after the trip that I actually fell asleep before the dinner of barbequed goat that had been organised by the other volunteers in my absence. Fortunately, the following day was a Sunday which meant that I had some time to re-adjust in the opposite direction before getting back to work.
And plenty of work there is to do as well! It’s been in the pipeline for a while now but while I was away we announced that EDV has recently rented its own dedicated house to accommodate our exciting growth.
Me enjoying the pool infront of EDV's beautiful new base - volunteers can now have a refrshing dip after work
The downstairs kitchen where our new cook prepares amazing Haitian food for the evening meal
While we were happy sharing a base with our partners, GrassRoots United, our success over the past five months means that we really wanted to increase our capacity ready for more growth in the New Year.
The new house is lovely and will provide either private rooms or dorm space for up to thirty international volunteers at a time starting in January.
It does however also mean a lot of additional work in some ways as we’ve had to hire more local staff and deal with things like Haitian internet providers and some very imaginative electrical house wiring – yikes, the electrician is hopefully on his way as I type this!
Anyway, the contract on the new house is for one full year which means I’m now effectively committed to Haiti until next December. So, although I’ve been here for six months, and been funded by Vodafone since September, this is in many ways the real start of the adventure.
I hope you come back next time to see how things are going and catch-up on our many exciting projects.
Tags: Andrew Chaggar, Cholera, Cholera in Haiti, Cholera outbreak, Donate to Haiti, European Disaster Volunteers, Free volunteering, Haiti, Haiti earthquake 2010, Haiti Election, Haiti Election 2010, Haitian Election, Haitian Election 2010, Haitian Orphanage, Haitian Orphans, Leicester Mercury, Natural Disaster, Orphans in Haiti, Port au Prince, Port au Prince Storm, Press Association, REBUILD Globally, Vodafone, Vodafone Foundation, Vodafone World of Difference UK, Volunteer in a disaster zone
Posted in Post
21:10 on December 3rd 2010
Apologies for the long gap since my last post but as always my work in Haiti keeps throwing up things that need my attention. Anyway, things have now settled down enough for me to sit down for an hour and draft my latest blog.
As you may have seen on the news Haiti recently voted in it’s first national election since the massive earthquake last January. With over one million people still living in displacement camps and the country now also battling a cholera epidemic the vote was seen as crucial in defining a legitimate government that could finally begin pushing forward with recovery.
However with 18 presidential candidates and frustration with the lack of progress building, generally peaceful demonstrations and political rallies have sometimes turned violent. Attacks on UN peacekeepers and polling stations were reported and gun-battles have been heard on several occasions nearby after dark.
Needless to say we’ve all be very concerned about security and the risk of someone getting hurt. Over the months we’ve been here we’ve developed a great relationship with our local community and people keep a pretty close eye on us to make sure we’re safe. However, reasoning that it only takes one “bad-egg” to spoil things we went onto lock-down (sealing the base and no international volunteers leaving at any time) last Thursday.
As a result there’s been a lot of cabin-fever going around recently and at one point pretty much everyone on base had no money left as it was impossible to get to the bank. Happily those who did have cash made loans and our wonderful local staff and volunteers made sure we all had enough food, water and cigarettes (for the smokers). We’ve also got a “hole in the wall” to a neighbours property who sells us cokes and snacks.
There’s been plenty of work on base to keep the international volunteers busy and if people have had down time they’ve worked on base beautification projects to improve our own living standards.
International volunteer Corrine buying drinks from the "hole in the wall"
International volunteer Delphine having a meeting in her new Parisien cafe
So I’m happy to report that we’re all safe, sound and content despite all the problems going on outside.
My main concern through all of this was that the orphanage project I discussed last time would have to stop and that the kids would be forced to continue living in tents for a while longer.
Happily thanks to a good friend of ours, Carlo, this hasn’t been the case. Carlo is the son of Denise, the main carer at the orphanage, and has turned out to be a quite amazing leader in our community.
He first started volunteering with us way back in June and was one of the driving forces behind the first language exchange class we held. This was originally done as a one-off but has proved so successful it’s been running every week for several months now.
When we first started working with the orphanage (on a drainage project to protect their tents) Carlo came out with his friends to help. He quickly proved to be very competent and was a great help organising lunches and drinking water.
Before the lock-down a group of international volunteers went with him for a day and a half to show him and his friends how to paint. We worked with him in three of the rooms before we were confined to quarters. Carlo was determined to push forward though and organised his own crew. He’s been coming to base every couple of days, clearing purchases with me, collecting petty cash and delivering me with receipts for the previous days.
As a result of all this he’s now finished painting the entire house – including ceilings and the outside of the house. He’s also organised the move and the kids are now sleeping at the house.
I’m obviously delighted with the project’s progress but also with how Carlo has stepped up to the challenge and performed so admirably. We always view our project’s physical outcomes as a vehicle for empowerment and building skills so this result is pretty much perfect. Now things have settled down and we’re able to move freely again we’ve decided that we want Carlo to stay on as Project Manager responsible for both local and international volunteers.
As a bonus to all this one of our partners here, REBUILD Globally, have organised a donation of bunk-beds for all 47 kids through the Carribean Lodge hotel. These have been delivered and Carlo and his crew are assembling them as I type this.
The newly delivered bunk beds outside the freshly painted house
The freshly painted interior of the new house
REBUILD Globally trains and employs Haitians to make shoes from recycled tires (these usually just get burnt). Renting the orphanage property gives the opportunity for groups like REBUILD Globally to expand their operations and directly support those who need it most. With a new piece of land and existing contacts who are anxious to learn and desperately need employment, holding workshops on the orphanage’s land could be a perfect fit.
This kind of “joined-up” programming could provide huge benefits to organisations like Rebuild Globally who are already doing great work in providing job skills and employment for several people including one of the orphanage staff – ultimately benefiting the children as well.
So all in all things are definitely going very well and I’m excited about an upcoming trip home before Christmas to try and drum up some support for all the work going on down here. So, my next blog will be from the UK – I hope you come back for more!
For information on how to support EDV’s work in Haiti this Christmas, including free donations via online shopping go to:
http://www.edvolunteers.org/support-haitian-earthquake-survivors-holiday-season
To support Rebuild Globally in their Global Giving Open Challenge go to:
http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/rebuildglobally/
Tags: Andrew Chaggar, Cholera, Cholera in Haiti, Cholera outbreak, European Disaster Volunteers, Haiti, Haiti earthquake 2010, Haiti Election, Haiti Election 2010, Haiti Orphanage, Haitian Election, Haitian Election 2010, Haitian Orphanage, Haitian Orphans, Orphans in Haiti, Port au Prince, Port au Prince Storm, REBUILD Globally, Vodafone, Vodafone Foundation, Vodafone World of Difference UK, Volunteer in a disaster zone
Posted in Post
00:10 on November 16th 2010
I’m writing this on a quiet Sunday afternoon on base. After working six day weeks, during a succession of exhausting events, many of the volunteers here have decided to take advantage of “Sunday Funday” to drive to a nearby waterfall and relax.
It’s apparently beautiful, and I was sorely tempted to go, but in the end I decided what I really wanted was some quiet time to reflect and catch up on some chores like cleaning my combined office/bedroom. Many days of people, me included, coming in with muddy boots meant it REALLY needed doing.
Anyway, I’m sitting at my freshly tidied, wiped clean, desk and thought now would be an ideal time to post another blog – I’m feeling quite peaceful and enjoying fresh coffee as I write.
I really hope this doesn’t sound flippant given that the cholera epidemic has seriously flared up and the death-toll has now tragically topped 900. If you bear with me I’ll try to explain why I’m trying to focus more on the positive things that are still going on here despite the terrible news.
Since my last post Haiti, already ravaged by poverty and the earthquake, has suffered several further blows. It had initially seemed like the hard work of many organisations, both local and international, had been fairly successful in containing the cholera outbreak. The number of new cases and deaths slowed for a while.
Sadly the country barely had a moment to catch it’s breath as hurricane Tomas was approaching fast. Given the damage Tomas caused in St Lucia everyone was very concerned about the survivors living in tent cities and slums. We live in a fairly substantial house but even we took the precautions of boarding up windows and evacuating to higher ground for two days.
Thankfully we were spared a direct hit on Port-au-Prince, but heavy rains and flooding worsened the cholera situation and peoples’ worst fears are materialising as 27 cases have been reported in the capital. The United Nations believe up to 200,000 people could now contract the disease.
As a result our partners, GrassRoots United (GRU), have stepped up their cholera education workshops and delivery of sanitation supplies to camps. Our own previous focus had been on complementary trainings with women’s groups, schools and community members outside of camps.
However, these were being coordinated on our side by EDV’s Media Director, Emma. Emma’s many official duties include updating our website and facebook pages (and stopping me shouting at WordPress – where I write this blog). However, she’s also very hands-on in other areas and stepped up to the cholera challenge by organising and running workshops.
An English class in the community classroom, where we've since built benches and a blackboard - we're also pouring a concrete floor tomorrow
Emma running a cholera workshop in the community classroom I mentioned last time. The structure has many uses as shown by the opposite picture
Sadly she’s been sick recently and has been forced to return to the USA to recover and get tested for any tropical nasties she may have picked up. Given Emma’s competence her departure has obviously impacted our capacity and right now our “bigger picture” cholera work involves directing cholera specific donations to support GRU’s efforts.
On all other fronts things are really rocking in terms of our projects though. One of these I’m especially excited about as it shows how powerful our model can be while also making a huge difference, including in terms of cholera prevention, to 47 orphaned children.
A few months ago we started working with a local orphanage. A group of seven international student volunteers helped to install a drainage system that provided immediate relief from flooding at the orphanage. Due to our limited resources we could only spend around EU250 on the project at the time. While the results helped improve the health of the kids many of them were still living in tents and had pretty poor sanitation. The property they lived on also had a very insecure lease.
The students, who now had a personal connection to the kids, were obviously concerned that more needed to be done. So they went back to the USA and to date have raised almost $4,500 for the orphanage. Combined with an additional donation of $3,000 from another of our US partners, Burners Without Borders, we’ve been able rent the kids a secure house for the next two years.
The new house will have several fully functioning bathrooms with running water. It’s also tiled throughout so whenever, the somewhat inevitable (with small children) “accident” occurs, the carers will be able to clean it up much more easily. As a result they’re all going to be a lot healthier for the next two years and this period gives them breathing room to work with us on a truly sustainable, long term plan for the future.
Denise, one of the orphanage leaders with just some of the kids at the cramped old property
An inside view of just some of the many rooms at the new house. We start painting this week!
I’m also really pleased that the orphanage leaders found the property and negotiated the contract terms themselves (the latter with some advice). They also signed the contract in their own name. We may have helped source the rent, and will help with further improvements, but ultimately the house is theirs to control and make decisions on.
If you read my very first blog on here you’ll know that I’m no stranger to tragedy. What I learned during my recovery was that focusing on the individual positives, even if they were sometimes dwarfed by comparison to the overall situation, was the only way to move forward.
So while cholera is threatening to run rampant in Port-au-Prince I’m trying to integrate personal lessons into professional practice. Our capacity may be currently reduced due to Emma’s absence but there are a lot of other people working hard to battle cholera on a large scale. So for now, while I’m obviously concerned for Haiti overall, I’m focusing on the fact that the futures of at least 47 children are suddenly a lot brighter and healthier thanks to the extraordinary efforts of seven supposedly “ordinary” volunteers who were in their lives for “only” one week.
I’ll see you next time.
For information on how to support EDV’s work in Haiti this Christmas, including free donations via online shopping go to:
http://www.edvolunteers.org/support-haitian-earthquake-survivors-holiday-season
Tags: Cholera, Cholera in Haiti, Cholera outbreak, European Disaster Volunteers, Haiti, Haiti earthquake 2010, Haitian Orphans, Natural Disaster, Orphans in Haiti, Port au Prince, Port au Prince Storm, Vodafone, Vodafone Foundation, Vodafone World of Difference UK, Volunteer in a disaster zone
Posted in Post
16:06 on October 27th 2010
There’s never a dull day disaster response, and this is proving to be especially true in Haiti.
As you may have seen in the news Haiti has been hit by a cholera epidemic and, although the situation today appears to be stabilising, everyone is bracing for the worst in case the vast camps and slums of Port-au-Prince succumb.
Right now it could still go either way and with hundreds of thousands of people living with poor or no sanitation the effects of a major outbreak in the capital could be unbelievably devastating. Cholera is highly contagious waterborne bacteria that causes massive and painful diarrhoeal dehydration. If left untreated it can kill within hours. With so many lives already lost in the earthquake people are understandably very scared at the moment.
I was actually in the Domincan Republic, renewing my Haitian entry visa, when the first cases were announced and when I returned on Saturday afternoon our partners, GrassRoots United (GRU), had already mobilised in response.
Medical distribution is a main focus for GRU and critical supplies were already being transported to St-Marc, the town at the outbreak’s centre. While treatment for those already affected is obviously important preventing the spread of the virus is also a key priority.
While cholera is terrible it can be held in check through good hygiene practices and the availability of clean water. So
International and local volunteers explaining simple steps to help prevent cholera
EDV have been supporting GRU’s efforts in delivering cholera workshops, explaining simple preventative measures such as the use of soap and the need to keep human waste away from water sources.
The main focus is on displacement camps but we’re also starting to tap into our connections in schools, churches and women’s groups to reach a wider section of the community. Of course education also often needs backing up with tangible support so we’re also preparing for distributions of hygiene kits and the construction of emergency latrines so that waste can be isolated as much as possible.
The fact that we’re facing another emergency situation so soon after the storm I talked about last time is obviously a challenge for EDV as we’re trying to focus on projects which build strength and capacity in the longer-term.
I know from my studies that having to jump back to providing immediate relief in emergencies, while also trying to move forward with longer-term recovery, can be very problematic for organisations. This is the first time I’ve worked in this situation personally however. In both Thailand and Peru recovery was challenging but overall there was generally progress away from an emergency mindset.
The more volatile situation in Haiti, to me at least, doubly highlights the need for what is technically known as “developmental relief”. In more simple terms this involves meeting immediate survival requirements in a way that itself builds longer-term strength.
For example both GRU and ourselves are very keen on transferring coordination of the cholera workshops to community members. Given that we have easier access to educational resources we’ve collated the materials, and translated them into Kreyol. From the start though we have been involving and training local volunteers in their delivery so that they can pass on information themselves.
Building community members’ ability to lead trainings themselves has meant that after four camps were visited on Monday a further nine were tackled yesterday. With fears that cholera may become endemic in the country a local ability to continue education independently may be essential for years to come.
Another way we’re working on integrating immediate response needs with our longer-term projects is through community spaces that can be used to host workshops and other classes.
I mentioned in my last blog that we were starting the construction of two transitional (semi-permanent) classrooms. I’m happy to say that in the “quiet” time between the recent emergencies we were able to build and equip the first one at a nearby orphanage which is now allowing 30 vulnerable kids to be home-schooled.
The main build of new classroom nearing completion
Some of the kids enjoying their new facilities
The second classroom is being built as I type this blog and this has a slightly different purpose. One thing we noticed very early on is that there is a distinct lack of community space in our neighbourhood. So when we wanted to run workshops and our weekly language exchange we often had to keep changing locations as we were borrowing space.
Thankfully a small local church (which was previously just built using scrap wood and tarp) offered us shared use of their land in exchange for building improvements. So we’ve adapted the classroom model and should be finishing the structure in the next few days.
EDV construction guru Iain starting to fix the roof on the community classroom
The new structure is designed and built to last for up to 10 years and will provide not only a space for the church and our weekly language exchange, but also a fixed place in the community that we can run critical workshops like cholera awareness when the need arises.
This is one reason we’re maintaining a focus on this longer-term project while the immediate threat of cholera continues to swirl around the city.
I may be posting more regularly on here depending on how the epidemic develops but if you want more information in the interim then you can also follow me on http://twitter.com/EDVExec and on our Facebook page under “European Disaster Volunteers”.
Whatever the case I hope you keep checking in.
To support EDV’s work in Haiti visit: http://www.edvolunteers.org/donate
To learn about our partners, GrassRoots United, visit: http://www.grassrootsunited.org
Tags: Andrew Chaggar, Cholera, Cholera in Haiti, Cholera outbreak, European Disaster Volunteers, Haiti, Haiti earthquake 2010, Natural Disaster, Port au Prince, Vodafone, Vodafone Foundation, Vodafone World of Difference UK, Volunteer in a disaster zone
Posted in Post
00:01 on October 12th 2010
It’s been a fairy hectic time since my last blog entry.
On September 24th a freak storm hit Port au Prince. Dealing with the aftermath has kept me, and everyone on our shared base, working long hours in response.
The bad weather literally came out of nowhere – one minute the sun was shining and the next the city was being lashed by torrential rain and almost cyclonic winds. As it’s currently hurricane season we check the weather reports several times a day to monitor potential threats but with this storm there was no warning.
Thankfully everyone on our base remained safe but at least six were killed across the city and ReliefWeb reported that over 10,000 families lost their temporary shelters, leaving them homeless for the second time in less than a year.
The business across the street from our base lost an entire property wall
Although we suffered some pretty significant damage on our base we were all also concerned about friends and contacts in our local community. As the storm struck in the late afternoon, nightfall was fast approaching however so we were forced to wait until morning before going out to assess the situation.
The next day we pulled our regular 8am morning meeting forward to 6am and with coffee being chugged we divided into teams – some to work on our own clean-up and some to start with an immediate response in the community. Our partner GrassRoots United had some tents on-site and we were keen to get them into use as soon as possible.
During EDV’s four months on the ground in Haiti I’ve been spending a lot of time building relationships with local groups and individuals. These relationships paid off yet again in the storm’s aftermath.
Our first stops to see if help was needed were two camps in our neighbourhood for people displaced by the earthquake. However, with any distribution – and especially after an emergency – I was aware of potential frustrations and the need to tread sensitively when distributing a limited supply of goods. As an outsider, I could have literally caused a riot going into the camp right after the storm with tents for some and not for others.
As we work closely with the community though, I was able to rely on a local friend and partner named Johnson to help
Many people displaced by the earthquake were made homeless for a second time
me with the distribution.
Johnson originally approached us about supporting a community football programme and since then he’s been volunteering his time with us more and more – he also introduced us to an orphanage where we’re currently building a transitional classroom.
Johnson has been helping us in a number of ways but on this occasion I was thinking of, shall we say, his commanding presence. Johnson’s local nickname is “BIG”. He’s physically a big guy, but he also knows everyone and is a respected leader in the community. His understanding of local politics and the respect he commands let us proceed with what could have been a difficult distribution, with displaced people fighting over tents, with the least friction possible.
With Johnson’s help we spent the morning assessing damage. Seeing tents ripped open, flattened or completely blown away – and the shock in people’s eyes – made it absolutely clear that emergency distributions had to start straight away. 144 families in the two camps had been made homeless by the storm. So, we were right back out in the afternoon to distribute the 30 tents we had to the most vulnerable families.
This was well short of the 144 tents needed, but I returned home to find a flurry of emails from the “Shelter Cluster” who help coordinate organisations providing shelter after the earthquake.
As well as requests for information on sites assessed and materials distributed (to avoid duplication) there were also messages that materials were available for groups with the ability to distribute. Having seen families in need first hand I was obviously pretty anxious to get some of these.
It took a few days to process but not too long after I sent a request I received an email that 114 large, canvas tents were available for collection. We immediately went off to collect them (in GrassRoots United’s school bus!) and got the majority distributed the same day (again with Johnson’s help).
"BIG" and the Big Tents (supplied by MINUSTAH and the OIM via the Shelter Cluster)
With all of this going on our other longer-term projects have obviously been pushed back a little but meeting basic needs is pretty critical. I was also delighted when one of the camp leaders stopped by a few days ago to thank us personally for our help and tell us that everyone at his camp now has shelter again. These are obviously still just tents but the difficult situation in Haiti really does mean taking one small step at a time.
Thankfully our language exchange and student workshops have continued throughout all this and we’re now caught back up enough to start building the first of two transitional classrooms this week. While these will be fairly simple structures they’ll be built to last for years, or until we can secure funding for something more permanent.
In my next blog entry I’ll let you know how we get on as these longer-term projects return to the top of our priority list.
Tags: Andrew Chaggar, European Disaster Volunteers, Haiti, Haiti earthquake 2010, Natural Disaster, Port au Prince, Port au Prince Storm, Vodafone, Vodafone World of Difference UK, Volunteer in a disaster zone
Posted in Post
17:00 on September 23rd 2010
It seems I’m becoming something of a blogger! Thanks to the Vodafone Foundation I’ve been invited to blog for a website called “Civil Society” and I recently had my first entry published.
As an introductory piece this is pretty similar to my first post on here but, in future months, my Civil Society series will be tailored more towards professionals working in the Voluntary and Community Sector – or third sector as some might call it.
This Vodafone blog will generally keep a more personal perspective but while I was looking around the Civil Society website I came across another blog, published back in January, and I really wanted to comment on it.
This older blog was itself written in response to an article in the Lancet which was critical of large aid agencies after the earthquake. Being familiar with how complex and huge the disaster is in Haiti I largely agree with the blog author’s comments – large agencies with a truly global reach are needed, particularly in the immediate aftermath of a disaster. However it’s now many months after the event and I wanted to respond in particular to this section:
There is definitely a place for these small grassroots organisations the Lancet pines after, but how does Maria Normal in Sheffield support an orphanage run by a few nuns outside Port-au-Prince if not via a megalithic entity like an international NGO[?]
Well, actually there are lots of ways Ms “supposedly” Normal can help, and often much more directly than you may think. I know this because for the last five years I’ve been incredibly lucky to be part of a growing community of international volunteers who’ve discovered that they can make their own, very personal, difference.
Now I’m certainly not suggesting that people just fly in on a whim to Pakistan, or wherever the next disaster strikes. That would be unhelpful and dangerous.
However, since the tsunami I’ve discovered again and again that, given an appropriate structure, supposedly ordinary people are capable of extraordinary things. In Thailand for example I had Emily and Caroline assigned to the building project I was managing. On their first day I asked if they had any experience and was told that their dads wouldn’t even trust them with a paintbrush at home. Given the chance though they proved to be amazing at rendering and pretty good at laying bricks too.
Of course supervising volunteers safely takes a lot of work and, and there’s always going to be the occasional one who causes headaches – “what do you mean I can’t work in flip-flops or have a beer at lunch?” Well toes are useful and pick-axes need controlling.
In my experience though 99% of people will behave responsibly and have a great impact. We’re still a small charity but even with limited resources we’ve managed to directly support orphanages and schools such as the one pictured here.
The school before our drain - Yuck!
The same location after the drain. Much better!
Last week I was out digging on-site to help put in the drainage system. Yes it was very hot, and yes it was very dirty, but with ten local volunteers and ten international volunteers working together we got the job done in four days and gave the kids a much healthier and more pleasant environment.
Large relief agencies do an amazing job, and I’m not saying people shouldn’t donate to them – they save lives everyday! What I am saying though is that there are alternatives, such as EDV, out there. Not only do we welcome your donations but we also welcome you to come and join in and see first hand where your money is going.
Of course volunteering in a country like Haiti isn’t for everyone, but you might be surprised at the range of people who do get involved. Right now, Richard, the Project Coordinator on base with our partner, GrassRoots United, is a sprightly sixty years of age and has been an absolute rock.
So Ms (and Mr) “Normal”, if you’ve ever wanted to get involved and didn’t know how, here’s your chance……
Tags: Andrew Chaggar, Haiti, Haiti earthquake 2010, Natural Disaster, Vodafone, Vodafone Foundation, Vodafone World of Difference UK, Volunteer in a disaster zone
Posted in Post
00:47 on September 11th 2010
I’m writing this from my small office/bedroom at our base in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The generator is thumping away on the roof, which means we have power (and therefore internet access), and my trusty little blue fan is working hard to keep me at least semi-cool. It would be considered a fairly basic setup by many people, but given that 1.5 million people are still living in tents after January’s earthquake, I’m just grateful to have a roof and walls. One of the things I’ve learned over years of disaster response is that luxury is relative.
Me and kids from one of the schools we're working with in Haiti
Anyway, I wanted to use this first blog to introduce myself, my motivations and give a flavour of the work I’ll be doing over the next 12 months. I’ve been in Haiti since June of this year working with the charity I co-founded in 2008, European Disaster Volunteers (EDV). EDV focuses on helping disaster affected communities achieve sustainable recovery.
What this means in more basic terms is that rather than just provide short-term handouts we work with disaster survivors to identify their own long-term priorities and then work in partnership with them to implement projects that leave them stronger and more self-sufficient. As a result we don’t arrive in a disaster zone with a fixed agenda, such as providing housing or sanitation, but develop our projects based on what we find on the ground.
Having gained a masters in International Development I could use terms like “participation”, “empowerment” and even “motivational vulnerability” to explain my belief in
EDV’s approach, but it’s perhaps easier to draw on my own personal experiences as a disaster survivor.
In 2004 Nova, my partner, and I were seven weeks into a planned one year trip around the world when the South-East Asian tsunami slammed into the coastal town of Khao Lak , Thailand, where we were staying for Christmas. I was quite seriously injured and Nova was sadly killed outright.
These experiences gave me a first hand understanding of the destruction natural disasters can inflict and that the physical devastation, while the most visible, is not necessarily the most damaging. For example, my actual injuries were severe but the feelings of impotence at being unable to protect Nova, and the complete loss of control in my life were in many ways much worse.
While I was certainly grateful for all the support I received in the aftermath of the tsunami I was often also overwhelmed by peoples enthusiasm to do things for me. Somehow I knew that it was critical for me to begin directing my own recovery if I was ever going to move forward in the long-term.
As part of the process of regaining control of my life I returned to Khao Lak in
Rendering one of the homes in Thailand
August of 2005 and began volunteering as a construction project manager with a Thai NGO. Over the next 13 months I managed international and local volunteers to help one community rebuild 67 permanent homes. As I worked, I developed a professional interest in disaster recovery to add to my personal motivations.
So I completed a masters degree in international development, graduating with distinction. In 2007 I traveled to Pisco, Peru to volunteer in the aftermath of a massive earthquake which had leveled the city and left around 100,000 homeless. During my 9 months there I worked with two US based groups who, like EDV, also use an inclusive volunteer model (no fees, no fixed duration and no specific skills necessary – big hearts, strong backs welcome).
However, while a huge amount was accomplished there wasn’t as much emphasis placed on community leadership as I’d encountered in Thailand. Wanting to see affected communities leading their own recovery projects was definitely part of my reason for wanting to start EDV. We seek to assist survivors in directing their own recovery rather than doing it for them or telling them what they need.
Since EDV first arrived in Haiti I’ve met dozens of individuals who are working tirelessly to improve the lives of their fellow survivors. They may run schools or orphanages, work as members of community groups that provide important services or organise social and creative outlets for stress and depression. What they all have in common is that they do an amazing job with little or no resources.
A major part of our role, and my personal goal, over the coming year will be to find ways to nurture these initiatives and increase the capacity of community-based groups. A key part of doing this is will be to provide resources and transfer skills without taking control and ownership away from those we’re trying to support.
In many ways I can draw another personal parallel here. After volunteering virtually full-time since 2005 I’ve spent pretty much every penny I had. I’ve been pursuing disaster response, and EDV, passionately but had been getting very worried that giving up and finding a regular job was becoming inevitable. So for the Vodafone Foundation to choose me as a winner this year, for them to say “we believe in you, we’re here to help but we want you to show us what you can do“, well it’s hard to fully articulate just what that means – thank you!.
Of course thanks are owed to many others who have supported us along the way, and who continue to do so. Right now, were particularly grateful to Sanchia Gallagher who is organising a 25 mile sponsored bike ride around Manchester. BUPA are match-funding her efforts so any extra support is appreciated as your donations will be doubled!
Well that’s about it for now. I’ll be blogging at least bi-weekly and I really hope you’ll follow my, and EDV’s, journey over the next year in Haiti. If you want to learn more, or see pictures of what we’re already up to, check us out online at www.EDVolunteers.org. You’re also welcome to email me personally if you’d like – executive@EDVolunteers.org.
Posted in Post
