Dateline ACT

Haiti 01/04

By Paul Jeffrey, ACT International

Hope is a scarce commodity for Francois. She has planted some peanuts, corn, and lentils in the dusty earth behind her home, but the wind seems determined to blow the soil away before even the promise of rain appears on the horizon. The region has suffered from a persistent drought for four years. The nearest water is an hour's walk away. What little income Francois earns comes from selling charcoal to a truck that passes every week. But the search for wood to turn into charcoal is getting more and more difficult, and the devalued currency she earns for each sack of charcoal only buys her oil, salt, beans and rice for a few days.

Francois, who doesn't know her age, never learned to read and doesn't have a radio. Yet, she heard that President Jean-Bertrand Aristide fled the country in late February. Such news has little impact on her life, however. "So he left. That's just normal here. He promised he would do things for us, but he didn't. That's neither good nor bad. It's just the way it always is. New people will take over, but nothing will change here," Francois says.

In political as well as geographic terms, Francois' village in the Northwest Province is a long way from the capital. According to the United Nations, 81 percent of the population of this province lives in extreme poverty. It's a region many Haitians call "The Far West".

"The province has possibilities to improve life for the poor, but as long as everything has depended on Port-au-Prince, development was always thwarted. The people in Port-au-Prince have never understood the need for people here to participate in decision-making about this region," says Lesly Jalin, a professor of social work in the provincial capital of Port-de-Paix.

While the political struggle about the region's fate goes on, Francois and her neighbors are trying to figure out what they'll eat tomorrow. Food insecurity increased in recent months as political and military conflict brought transportation to a standstill. Most food prices in this remote region rose more than 50 percent. The lingering drought had already exhausted the coping mechanisms of poor families, so there was little ability to deal with the new problems created by the fight over Aristide. Many families were forced to consume the seeds they had hoped to plant. "When you mix the political crisis with the drought, you get a real disaster for the poor," says Prospery Raymond, a program officer for Christian Aid in Haiti.

Christian Aid is a member of Action by Churches Together (ACT), a worldwide alliance of churches and church agencies working in emergencies. In late March, ACT issued an appeal for $782,031 to support Christian Aid's relief work in the Northwest Province and other areas of Haiti, as well as the emergency work of the Lutheran World Federation, another member of the ecumenical alliance.

In the Northwest Province, the funds will help Child Care Haiti, a local partner of Christian Aid, to carry out a food security program with 290 families, including that of Mercidien Francois. A similar project with another local partner will assist an additional 2,500 families.

According to Burnet Cherisol, an Anglican priest and executive director of Child Care Haiti, the assistance is focused primarily on children.

"We're literally trying to save the children, and in recent months much of the progress we'd made has been set back. When they don't eat enough, they're weak and tired and their mental development doesn't advance," Cherisol says. "So we developed an ambitious project to offer one glass of milk a day to each student in the schools. There are lots of children who won't eat anything all day. How can they learn anything?"

According to Elena Tiffert-Vaughan, Christian Aid's emergency response manager, the ACT funds will provide six months of food for affected families, particularly those with members living with tuberculosis or HIV/AIDS. The project will also distribute seeds and tools to help give the same families a chance to survive at the project's end in six months. Christian Aid will then implement a second project aimed at helping families develop long-term livelihoods.

"We're talking about very small income-generating projects, something that will give families a small surplus and access to the market. We don't want people to be dependent on food aid in the long-term, but this is a very difficult place to survive. There is no other group supporting food security here, and we have a long relationship with Child Care Haiti. It's an organization which was born in this region and understands the challenges and opportunities of emergency work with the most marginalized families," says Tiffert-Vaughan.

Christian Aid and the Lutheran World Federation have been doing long-term development work in Haiti for years. Both are determined to shape the emergency response in a way that it encourages long-term empowerment and development.

"The situation for many Haitians is the same as it was before the current situation, but few people cared then. This isn't a crisis for most people, it's what they call normality," says Michael Kuehn, the LWF's representative in Haiti. "Yet now that CNN has reported on the political conflict here, there's a lot of attention being paid to Haiti. Such attention, if it's just for the short-term, won't solve Haiti's problems, however. Only long-term development, in which the people are involved in making decisions about their lives and communities, will begin to change things here."