Dear Haiti Friends,
As Hugh Locke says below my signature, there are so many crises in Haiti from which to choose, but this one of our making, piled on top of bad rice policy in the past, is particularly offensive. You may have driven past the rice fields in the Artibonite Valley, beautifully laid out and tended, with original assistance from Dutch engineers who know a lot about how to arrange dikes and canals, now battered by hurricanes and in disrepair as farmers for years have tried unsuccessfully to compete with artificially low-priced rice from the US.
Small rice field near Gonaives, 2009
Our response to natural disasters and other problems in Haiti is so often to send (at enormous expense) boatloads of stuff, particularly food, when a smaller sum could be spent with much more effect to assist local producers with better training, assistance to purchase better quality equipment, seeds, and fertilizer, support for repairing and building roads and bridges to get goods to market, and so on. And it often comes down to simply asking Haitians who are already doing the work what they need to do it better.
I often recommend the film, "Poverty Inc." which chronicles how good intentions without local context or information often end up doing harm. Several of the examples are from Haiti, one of which was the importation of solar panels after the earthquake. ("They need power, right? Let's send boats full of solar panels!") This very nearly put the Haitian solar power industry out of business and many people out of work. The 14 years since then have been a struggle for the local companies, exacerbated of course by the current political situation. Support for them at that time to ramp up production and training would have led to a very different outcome.
What to do? I know you are already doing it yourselves, but tell your friends: Buy local whenever possible, and support efforts that have to do with all levels of local education, sustainable agriculture, health care which includes training of Haitian professionals, efforts leading to opportunities for self-determination, support for healthy leadership training and practices, job creation, sustainable energy, and so on, and always with Haitian involvement at every level. As Haitians and people in every developing nation say, "If you want to help, please do it WITH us, not TO us."
Yours,
Sabrina Beeks
Canon Serena Evans Beeks, D.Min.
US Coordinator, Haiti Episcopal School Partnerships
National Association of Episcopal Schools
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