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Haiti

A Future for Agriculture, a Future for Haiti

By: Carol Schachet | March 5, 2010

We plant but we can’t produce or market. We plant but we have no food to eat. We want agriculture to improve so our country can live and so we peasants can live, too.
(Rilo Petit-homme, peasant organizer from St. Marc, Haiti)

What would it take to transform Haiti’s economy such that its role in the global economy is no longer that of providing cheap labor for sweatshops? What would it take for hunger to no longer be the norm, for the country no longer to depend on imports and hand-outs, and for Port-au-Prince’s slums no longer to contain 85% of the city’s residents?
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Haiti: “Post Disaster Needs Assessment” – Whose Needs? Whose Assessment?

By: Beverly Bell and Camille Chalmers | March 3, 2010

The Haitian government has been largely silent since the January 12 earthquake. Publicly, that is. Who knows what officials are saying behind closed doors to international governments and other donors? Citizens don’t. They have heard from President René Préval about his personal losses from the quake – his shirts, his palace - but about little else, least of all about the substance of governmental plans for reconstruction.

This week – a full six weeks after the world-historic-level catastrophe – the Haitian government launched a post-disaster needs assessment (PDNA). The PDNA establishes working groups to assess damages and look at the macro-plan for reconstruction.
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Feeding Dependency, Starving Democracy: 1997 Executive Summary

By: Carol Schachet | March 2, 2010

CARE has been "helping" people in the Northwest for decades. But each year, the misery of the people of the Northwest increases. What is the real impact of this aid? To make people more dependent, more vulnerable, more on the margins?...The aid is not given in such a way as to give the people responsibility, to make them less dependent....This is what you call "commercializing" poverty....The people's misery should not be marketed.... - Samuel Madisten, Haitian Senator
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Feeding Dependency, Starving Democracy: 1997 Full Report

By: Carol Schachet | March 2, 2010

In 1997, Grassroots International released a research study entitled "Feeding Dependency, Starving Democracy: USAID Policies in Haiti." Offering an in-depth examination of USAID development policies in Haiti, the study concluded that, as the title suggests, official aid actually damaged the very aspects of Haitian society it was allegedly trying to fix – namely it created a lack of democracy and too much dependency.
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Feeding Dependency, Starving Democracy… Still

By: Nikhil Aziz | March 2, 2010

Some of the advice for how Haiti ought to rebuild after the earthquake sounds hauntingly familiar, echoing the same bad development advice that Haiti has received for decades -- even before the nation faced its current devastating situation. To avoid repeating the past failures, we would be wise to review how previous aid models led down the wrong path.
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Fault Lines – Haiti: The Politics of Rebuilding

By: Carol Schachet | February 12, 2010

In whats left of Port-au-Prince, Haitians have self-organized into 450 camps administered by neighborhood committees. These newly formed communities not only provide temporary shelter, but are also launching points for local organizers to promote Haitian voices in rebuilding their society. Outside the city, peasant movements and organizations are welcome displaced victims of the earthquake into their communities. These returnees are part of a massive reverse migration back to their places of origin
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Rebuilding Haiti, with A Rwandan Twist

By: Carol Schachet | February 12, 2010

Today marks the first of many anniversaries in this new phase of Haiti’s history. It has been a month. The earthquake—known simply as “the incident” to Haitians—changed everything, instantly dividing their experience into a before and after. Many large NGOs, international institutions and donor countries are jockeying to get a seat at the table in rebuilding Haiti. Some of their core prescriptions involve the same policies that have kept Haiti near the top of the “Failed State Index” in the first place.
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In Haiti, Support Local Communities, Not Microcredit Agencies

By: Grassroots International | February 10, 2010

The Chicago-based Goldin Institute has been in the forefront of providing research and consultative support to grassroots organizations around the world. They parther with local organizations such as Nijera Kori in Bangladesh -- that have long-established connections to grassroots organizations and movements -- in these efforts. Goldin's Kasia Paprocki recently posted a cautionary note via a blog on HuffPost on some of the solutions being proffered in the rebuilding efforts after the earthquake in Haiti.
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After the Catastrophe: Our Country Can Rise Again

By: Carol Schachet | February 4, 2010

Many of Grassroots International’s partners in Haiti recently released the following statement in the wake of the earthquake in Haiti. Our partners have used this devastating and unstable time to bond together and to work to rebuild Haiti with creative bottom-up solutions.
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Grassroots International Partners in Haiti receive emergency funding

By: Maria Aguiar | January 28, 2010

Since a devastating earthquake shook Haiti more than two weeks ago, Grassroots International’s partners on the ground have been working to assess the situation and respond to the needs of the community – even as they themselves have suffered great losses. With help from hundreds of people who have donated in response to the crisis, Grassroots International has made three initial grants to three of our partners in Haiti.
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From Honduran ally organization: “Solidarity with the Haitian People”

By: Grassroots International | January 26, 2010

The letter below comes from one of Grassroots International's allies in Honduras -- Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH)-- and expresses solidarity with their neighbors in Haiti.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Solidarity with the Haitian People
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Palestinians in Gaza Donate to Haiti

By: Jean Entine | January 25, 2010

Jean Entine

An article I came across recently in the midst of much depressing news around Haiti, and a lot else, was: "Palestinians in Gaza donate to Haiti." It spoke of how Gazans were collecting something -- anything -- to donate to earthquake victims in Haiti. Dr.
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From Gaza to Haiti and Back Again

By: Carol Schachet | January 22, 2010

GAZA CITY—Last night, I dreamt of Haiti. Something about the scene felt eerily familiar. The visions of people trapped under folded sheets of concrete, children crying out to family members they would never see again, and incapacitated hospitals overflowing with the dead and injured were so vivid that even after I opened my eyes, I still thought I was there. And then the early Islamic call to prayer brought me back to where I was—I had made it into the Gaza Strip from Israel the day before.
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From Gaza to Haiti and Back Again

By: Carol Schachet | January 22, 2010

GAZA CITYLast night, I dreamt of Haiti. Something about the scene felt eerily familiar. The visions of people trapped under folded sheets of concrete, children crying out to family members they would never see again, and incapacitated hospitals overflowing with the dead and injured were so vivid that even after I opened my eyes, I still thought I was there. And then the early Islamic call to prayer brought me back to where I wasI had made it into the Gaza Strip from Israel the day before.
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Boston-area Kids Raise Funds to Help Haiti

By: Carol Schachet | January 21, 2010

Over the weekend proceeding Martin Luther King Day, kids from Jamaica Plain, MA took to the sidewalks to raise funds for earthquake relief in Haiti. They set up tables in front of local shops, including JP Licks ice cream store and City Feed grocery. In less than two hours, area residents had donated $356 to help the Haiti reconstruction work of three Boston-based groups: Grassroots International, Oxfam America and the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee.
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Haiti: Roots of Liberty — Roots of Disaster

By: Nikhil Aziz | January 21, 2010

Grassroots International ally Food First's executive director Eric Holt-Jimenez wrote recently -- on HuffPost -- on the long roots of the disaster in Haiti. His point about the "historic bleeding of Haiti's economy and the systematic undermining of its political institutions" being at the root of the disaster as much as the "tectonics that leveled Port-au-Prince" is right on the mark. Grassroots' partners and allies in Haiti have long struggled against that bleeding and undermining, and fought for better Haitian and international policies on agriculture, trade, and food that would sustain their people, and their land.
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Breaking the Chains of Dependence in Haiti

By: Rob Baril | January 19, 2010

As news of the earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince trickled out on Tuesday evening, the Haitian Diaspora held its collective breath. At 6 a.m. the next morning I placed an anxious phone call to my father, who left Haiti’s political violence behind for Miami in 2004. He had no news of his sister, brother-in-law, or nieces. By noon, calls and messages alerted me that all my relatives survived unharmed. Seven days after the quake, I realize how truly lucky my family had been. Every single Haitian friend, co-worker, and acquaintance of mine lost someone in the quake.
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Via Campesina calls for Solidarity with Haiti including Haitian peasant movements in aftermath of earthquake

By: Nikhil Aziz | January 18, 2010

Grassroots International partner La Via Campesina, a global network of peasant, family farmer and small producer movements more than 100 million strong, and with members in Haiti issued this call for solidarity with Haitians including the peasant population.
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Ten Things the United States Can and Should Do for Haiti

By: Nikhil Aziz | January 16, 2010

Bill Quigley of our ally the Center for Constitutional Rights wrote recently on what he thought the US can and should do for Haiti in response to the devastating earthquake.
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Answering the Call Even when the Phone Isn’t Answered

By: Grassroots International | January 15, 2010

In the last 48 hours, my work to gather information from our partners in Haiti has become a puzzle game. As of Thursday morning, I have been unable to talk with our partners and allies in Haiti. The lack of electricity to power the phone lines is probably the main barrier to reaching folks in Port-au-Prince. As I place together the scattered information from colleagues from Dominican Republic, Brazil and Honduras, I keep checking news from different sources. Scarce and brief notes from other member organizations of the Via Campesina and our allies in the U.S. give us hope that they are all well and alive.
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