For the past two years, starting with my time in Ounaminthe, I’ve lost countless hours of sleep struggling with a very real issue: what works?
In Haiti, I was blown away by how much money was being invested in huge economic-expansion projects, government subsidized medical care, countless NGO salaries, and things as simple as orphanages and sponsored schools. The economy expansion projects were building multi-million dollar structures with imported materials and foreign labor, while international medical care kept people from supporting, or even developing, Haitian hospitals, and orphanages were an excuse for children to be separated from their parents by something as insignificant as ten dollars a day. It seemed like these billions of dollars were just being thrown away- or invested solely in making a nation of dependents.
What is a man to do when his own children are starving because he makes less than $100 a month working 70 hour/wks making sure that the over-fed, nicely clothed, and well-educated children in the orphanage never miss a meal or have a few hours without electricity? What sharp minded man wouldn’t love his children enough to want the same things for them? His salary per month is the same price as the diesel the orphanage used for it’s generator in an afternoon. The sad thing about this man’s story is that he was actually doing well, according to Haitian wage standards because he had a steady income. When 95% of the children in orphanages are only there because their parents couldn’t afford to keep them, we must realize that there is something vastly wrong with the way we are approaching family care. Patronizing a system of economic orphans plagues a nation with an even larger culture of orphanhood, one that is passed from generation to generation.
So what is the solution to overwhelming, deeply embedded problem? I wish those hundreds of sleepless nights had produced some sort of solution- an answer that made perfect sense. But there is no quick fix for this problem; this nation of broken families. So before we come into this place, with our big donor money, fancy jeeps, and high-end, all-american standards for doing “life,” we just need to learn. For someone that easily relies on my initial assumptions and rash conclusions, it’s refreshing to be in a place where I’m just a wide-eyed kid again. Everything is new: new language, people, culture, and lifestyle; we’re just soaking it all in.
A localized solution to some of the things I’m learning about, come from the ApParent project. It’s a business that started by learning from people, learning what the needs of a nation are, and beginning with a tiny community of artists. Shelley and Corrigan Clay have been developing a non-profit social business for three years and their labor (along side of 180 Haitian artists) is apparent within the community. The nature of this business, and it’s innovative team of designers, keeps them out on the forefront of their peers. I’ve seen many small missions and organizations take their ideas, but none compare in quality or creativity because the people in power work in very separate spheres from those actually creating the product. AP has spent years working side-by-side with the real artists and this makes them unique. I feel very honored to be working with them.
Localized solutions, like AP, may be the beginning of a much more global resolution to end poverty and aid-related dependency. I advocate what the ApParent Project is doing because they’ve learned to learn- which is more exciting, to me, than anything else.
Haiti's Jewels 