St. Jospeh's Home for Boys

Port au Prince, Haiti

St. Joseph's Home for Boys

Under construction 2012

400,000 Homeless Still Wait For a Plan: Support Housing Rights in Haiti

[Version française ci-dessous]
[Versión en español a continuación]

[Vèzyon krèyol anba]

Please click here to sign the petition.

Over two years after an earthquake devastated Haiti’s capital, almost 400,000 people still live in displacement camps under shredded plastic tarps and tattered tents. They face high rates of gender-based violence; they lack access to clean water and toilets; and now, in yet another rainy season, they face flooding and a surge in cholera. One in five is also at risk of imminent forced eviction. These are people fighting to hold onto hope.

Join Haiti’s homeless, who demand that the Haitian Government immediately halt all forced evictions until public or affordable housing is made available. The Haitian Government must, with the support of its allies and donor governments in the U.S., Canada, and Europe move quickly to: 1) designate land for housing; 2) create one centralized government housing institution to coordinate and implement a social housing plan; and 3) solicit and allocate funding to realize this plan.

The earthquake destroyed or damaged 175,000 homes, exacerbating the crisis of homelessness in Port-au-Prince. Only 13,198 homes have been rebuilt, and only 4,747 new homes have been constructed. The Haitian Government has no comprehensive plan to relocate the hundreds of thousands of people in camps into safe homes.

Please sign this urgent petition which parallels a Creole petition being circulated by Haitian grassroots organizations. An international outcry now can force the Haitian government to address Haiti’s epidemic of homelessness.

This petition is a joint initiative of dozens of Haitian grassroots groups and these international sponsors. Please click here to sign.

Alternative Chance/Chans Altènativ
Canada Haiti Action Network (CHAN)
Coalition of Classist Tendencies (Venezuela)
Convergence of Movements of Peoples of the Americas (COMPA)
Council of Popular and Indigenous Peoples of Honduras (COPINH)
Fraternal Organization of Black Hondurans (OFRANEH)
Gender Action
Grassroots International

Haiti Justice Alliance
Haiti Support Group
Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti (IJDH)
Just Foreign Policy
Latin America Working Group (LAWG)
Let Haiti Live
Li, Li, Li! Read
MADRE
Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) Haiti
National Council of Campesinos (Colombia)
Other Worlds
Otros Mundos (Mexico)
Quixote Center
Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods (SOIL)
TransAfrica
Trocaire
Zero Evictions Campaign / International Alliance of Inhabitants

2012 Haiti Journal #2 - Red Zones

Dear Friends,

This month, we are headed back into a “Red Zone,” and we need your help to get there. The “Lamp for Haiti” clinic we help support is again under fire and has been catagorized a "Red Zone."

When Children’s Hope first started going into Haiti back in 2004 there were many areas of that country where other, bigger non-profit organizations simply would not go. They believed those places were not safe enough and declared them off-limits. These places are labeled “Red Zones.” In fact, that year the whole country was considered a “Red Zone” and U.S. citizens were advised not to go to Haiti at all. Children’s Hope went anyway.

After the earthquake of 2010 the main airport was closed and most NGO’s couldn’t get into Haiti, though they tried. Children’s Hope was there within three days with hundreds of pounds of emergency medical supplies. Over the years Children’s Hope has hand-carried and personally delivered nearly a half million dollars worth of supplies, thanks to donors like you.

This is our 21st service trip to Haiti. Among other duties, we will take two student interns to the “Lamp For Haiti” clinic in one of Cité Soleil’s “Red Zones” called Bwa Nèf to deliver medical supplies and check on their infant nutrition program.[i]

Cholera still rages, (7,050 dead) from this U.N. introduced pathogen. We support a responsive struggle to urge the U.N. to install infrastructure for clean water, now that they have accepted blame for bringing cholera to Haiti.[ii] Earthquake reconstruction is slow; unemployment and under-education leave lasting scars.

Children’s Hope is committed, for the long term, to providing humanitarian support & solidarity to our sisters and brothers in Haiti. But, we can only do so with your generous support. Won’t you consider making a pledge today, or a donation here online?

Thank you so much for your continued support and solidarity. Men anpil, chay pa lou (many hands make the burden lighter).

In Peace & Solidarity,
Leisa Faulkner and Paul Burke
Co-Founders, Children’s Hope

[i] http://www.lampforhaiti.org/~lampforh/sites/default/files/2012%20vol%201%20Spring%20newsletter.pdf
[ii] http://ijdh.org/archives/22789

Leisa's Haiti Journal #1, January 2012 - "The Good Life"

Leisa and the children at the Lamp
for Haiti clinic in Cite Soleil

Haiti Journal #1, January 2012 - "The Good Life"

I had always thought a good life should roll smoothly along like a sauntering stream through a meadow. Lately, I noticed that the good life is not always milk-toast (no offense to my mother – who used to make us the best hot sweet milk-toast). Sometimes, the “good life” is chock full of surprising twists. Just this week our first grandson tried to rush his way into the world 2 ½ months early, but was gently persuaded by his anxious parents and a good doctor to wait a titch longer to make his mark on the world.

So last night we raised a bit of Guiness at the Elephant Bar in relief. (“How can an elephant own a bar?” Luke wanted to know.) Then we toasted in the first night of the new school year. Tomorrow, after our second class, we catch a red-eye pointed toward Haiti.

We celebrate the almost $6,000 of support designated for Children’s Hope sponsored feeding programs in Haiti. (Thanks to Empty Bowls and the El Dorado Peace & Justice Community!) We celebrate the “Jam Cruise” shipping us 500 pairs of school shoes to Children’s Hope in Haiti. Thanks to “Positive Legacy” for taking on this project. (These shoes mean so much more than just shoes – school shoes can mean the chance at an education – a chance to change a life.) We celebrate our friend Marcorel who on one day’s notice agreed to drive twelve tortuous hours eating dust to pick up those shoes. We celebrate our Children’s Hope team members who regularly and quietly send the exact supplies and donations we need from as far away as Switzerland, and we dearly celebrate four year old Charlotte’s gathering her toys and asking her parents to send them to Haiti.

At the start of this new year, I raise my pen and pound my yellow pad in honor of those amazing folks who take on the twists and turns with grace and resolve. May they continue to have rich abundance – not of wealth – but of service and surprise.

We celebrate those like little Charlotte, who found ways to serve without money of their own, like the students at Sac State who sold wrist bands and bought new beds for Mabe Orphanage, like the woman who got her friends to commit to a small amount each month and ended up sending us several thousand condoms for distribution.

If you want to join the Children’s Hope team there are many ways to help out. You can make a monetary donation by clicking on the "donate" button on this page or by sending a check to the address below. You can start a children’s vitamin drive at your soccer club or church. You can collect used graphing calculators for the future doctors in Haiti, cell phones for the women’s group leaders, or laptops for schools. You can get your fourth grade class to draw pictures of friendship and solidarity for the Sopudep School children in Port au Prince or for the disabled children up at Wings of Hope orphanage to put on their walls, as our friend Stacey did with her class recently. The need is great, the possibilities are endless, and every little bit helps.

We always find a next need. Right now, for example, we need to find $400 to pay for gas and a rented truck that can make the twelve hour trip on rutted roads for children’s shoes sake.

As Luke lugs in our worn-out duffle bags we wonder what Haiti has to teach us this time. On my last trip to Haiti in August, I stumbled onto folks who needed someone to distribute four cargo containers full of free medical supplies that had arrived in Haiti after their doctors had returned to the states (approximately $20,000 worth). I thought I was there to do work at the U.S. Embassy, instead I had the happy errand of meeting with Haitian women’s groups who facilitated the distribution of all these valuable supplies. What an experience it was for me to see these magnificent women pull together the security and networks necessary to get these supplies fairly spread to clinics and groups throughout the tent city. It was like magic. There were streams of women in place carrying bundles of diapers, cases of soap and bleach, boxes of first aid supplies and sanitary goods and more – mostly on their heads to a make-shift tent with a dirt floor. No bossing, no fighting, no theft. Just by the quiet order of women. Haiti has its lessons. Whatever it turns out to be this time, we’ll take it – ruts and bumps in the road and all.

You are part of the Children’s Hope team, even if you just share these journals with one friend. You never know where that may lead. Thousands of lives have been changed through this work. And after all, Marx once said, “the philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways…The point, however, is to change it.”

Peace, all ways and always, Leisa

Leisa Faulkner, Founder of Children’s Hope and Adjunct Professor of Sociology, University of the Pacific

Checks may be sent to:

Children’s Hope, 3025A Cambridge Road, Cameron Park, CA 95682. 

Leisa Faulkner, Executive Director

Children's Hope

3025 A Cambridge Road
Cameron Park, CA 95682
Text me @  916.801.4184
Email: childrenshope@live.com
Blog: http://coalitionfordemocracyinhaiti.blogspot.com/