Children at Christ-Roi de Grand Savanne School

In the past few weeks the news has been full of reports of super injunctions. It is ironic that while so called celebrities try to keep their ‘stories’ out of the press truly important stories such as Haiti have been long forgotten.

Yet Haiti needs our support now as much as ever. With the rainy season upon us and funding for cholera clinics running out, the cases of cholera in this fragile country are starting to rise and our cholera treatment units are struggling to cope with the new outbreak.

Today, I visited a clinic in Leogane, 40 km outside Port-au-Prince, that was designed to treat 20 patients, but we have squeezed in another 8 beds to try and respond to the recent rise in cases. During my visit, the men’s ward is full which means if more patients arrive we will need to turn them away.

This morning I also visited the school Christ-Roi de Grande Savanne in Leogane where we are constructing new school buildings with the generous support of Freemasons Grand charity.

Bigger school, active parents

The construction is well under way and soon the children will be able to move into their new spacious surroundings from the current cramped classrooms.

During my visit I have the opportunity to meet some of the parents who are members of the new school management committee, which has been formed to encourage parents to become more actively involved in their children’s education.

I can’t help being impressed by their enthusiasm. Enrolment rates in Haiti’s school are worryingly low with less than 50% of children in school prior to the earthquake, but through our education programmes we are working to encourage higher rates.

It’s great to see the progress being made in Haiti but there are many years of work ahead. It is vital that we continue to support that work and don’t allow the world to forget.

Our work helping the Haitian people rebuild their country needs continued support: please donate what you can. You can find out more about our work there at our Haiti emergency page.

Even at this early hour Port au Prince is buzzing with life. The traders and market stall holders are already working hard trying to earn a living.

As we climb into the mountains on the way to Jacmel and pass the beautiful tropical forest it is easy to forget that this is a country that has suffered so much recently but the frequent sight of tents scattered around the countryside serve as a regular reminder of Haiti’s problems.

The following day I meet some farmers who have received seeds allowing them to plant improved crops. It always surprises me how it is such simple things which can often have the greatest impact.

Latrines in Mayard Camp

Next, it’s on to visit Mayard, the newest camp in Jacmel. This camp feels more like an ordinary community than a camp.

Families are being relocated here from other more crowded camps and the atmosphere is far better. There’s much more space for families and many have built gardens around their homes, which are planned to last for 2-3 years.

Children have room to play and the brightly coloured Save the Children latrines and bathing facilities throughout the camp are a testament to the hard work and determination of our staff to build a better future for Haiti.

Our work helping the Haitian people rebuild their country needs continued support please donate what you can. You can find out more about our work  there at our Haiti emergency page.

Recently I saw some of the household latrines that we have been building for families in Port au Prince, Haiti’s capital city.  In such a densely populated city, space is difficult to find.

With many houses perched on the side of the mountains around the city our teams have a difficult task in finding available land on which they can build the much needed latrines.

Logistical nightmare

After clambering up the steep hillside to get see one of the latrines we have built, I start to realise what a logistical nightmare it must be for the teams carrying out the work.

I find it difficult enough walking up the hillside, but our staff also have to find a way of getting the materials to these sites, many of which can only be reached on foot.

It’s no wonder that progress is slow in this environment where so much has to be done by hand.

Even the apparently simple task of rubble removal will take years due to the sheer volume of the destruction and the lack of access to many locations, which means the machinery that we take for granted in the West can’t be used.

Optimism

To add to the complexity there are still a huge amount of unresolved issues around land ownership which the previous government has been slow to resolve.

With a new government in place in Haiti it’s difficult to know what the future will bring, but there is a sense of optimism in the air and a hope that the issues that have hampered Haiti’s ability to recover from the disasters faced in 2011 can start to be resolved.

For the Haitian people’s sake let’s hope so!

In the past year we have reached 870,000 people with life saving aid and programmes. Find out more about our work in Haiti

Today we left Jacmel to visit some of our projects in Bainet. As we left Jacmel town we drove across a river which luckily was quite low at the time. In the rainy season this will often become impassable. We had to wind up into the mountains before dropping down towards the coastal town of Bainet.

It’s a two-hour drive over very bumpy mountain roads but the beautiful views of tropical forest make up for any discomfort, especially as we descend towards Bainet and get the first views of the bay and the crystal clear turquoise waters below us.

Our first stop is at the cholera treatment unit, which is slightly outside the town due to the community’s fears about having it close to their houses. Cholera coordinator Daniel O Flynn tells me that the people here were initially very afraid of the clinics coming to their communities as they thought they would bring the disease – and death – to their doorstep. I’m pleased to say that this attitude is changing and the people are now largely supportive of the units. A hugely important part of the fight against cholera is making sure we get the message across to Haitian people that, with simple steps to improve hygiene, they can protect themselves against this deadly disease. We use many methods to get the message across, including local radio, door-to-door hygiene promotion and sessions in schools and health centres.

After leaving the clinic we visited a training session where newly recruited community health workers were undertaking a week-long training on basic health and nutrition including cholera prevention, before returning to their communities to start their vital work. For most people in this very rural part of Haiti the nearest health centre can be several hours’ walk away from their home, so bringing basic healthcare into the community in this way is vital.

Arriving back at the hotel in Jacmel in the late afternoon, I look out at the beautiful views of the sea and can’t help feeling it’s a shame that all we see and read in the news at home are stories of the suffering of the Haitian people – we don’t see the beauty that this country also has to offer.

I was pleased to see some small improvements. Piles of rubble that had previously blocked some of the roads through town were now gone and some construction work was now taking place. Small changes, but nevertheless signs that things are moving along, even if at a slower pace that we would like.

But Haiti is not something we can fix overnight. We need to remind ourselves of how vulnerable this country was before the earthquake. Haiti had been described as the ‘forgotten crisis’  and we must ensure that we continue to support the Haitian people to rebuild their lives.

The people of Haiti have had endure so many challenges in 2010 — the earthquake, Hurricane Thomas and then the cholera outbreak. Because the earthquake hit Port-au-Prince, the capital city, this created other challenging problems in terms of space, land issues and the decimation of an already weak government.

Let’s hope 2011 will be kinder to this beleaguered country.

Despite all of the problems what really strikes me is how people seem to carry on with a smile on their faces and find their own ways of coping. On every street corner there are small businesses, signs of enterprising Haitians trying to make the best of the little they have available. I wonder whether if, in the face of such adversity, we would be able to deal with things in such a positive way. I somehow doubt it!

It’s two months, now, since I joined Save the Children UK as Emergency WASH Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Adviser. Water supply, sanitation and hygiene promotion, or WASH, is a fairly recent priority for Save the Children, which in emergencies traditionally focuses on child health, feeding the hungry, child protection and ensuring education is not forgotten even in a crisis.

“So, why the change?” I asked my new boss, Adam Berthoud.

“We’ve always done some water and sanitation work, but Save the Children has realised that it needs to help the whole community if it’s to help children” was his reply, adding, “We’re committed to WASH.”

The hygiene promotion team from Maissade travelling to a remote village on horseback.

And so I joined Save the Children’s group of emergency technical advisers, who cover subjects from health, nutrition and livelihooods, to education, child protection, shelter and HIV/AIDS, and was almost immediately sent to Haiti to review water and sanitation work there, responding to the cholera outbreak.

The technical advisers are an impressive bunch: you feel you could drop them on a desert island and they would have a functional community running within days.

“How was Haiti?” they asked, also. “I enjoyed it,” I answered, truthfully. True, also, is that I wish our work could progress more quickly. But with cholera affecting isolated communities, where people simply don’t understand the disease, which is new to Haiti, halting the epidemic was always going to be difficult, and is still work in progress.

In addition to its earthquake response, Save the Children has set up cholera treatment units in four areas of Haiti, and is working to reduce the number of cases by sending out health and hygiene promotion teams into the community.

It’s a tall order: during my visit I accompanied a team into a remote area near Maissade, travelling on foot and by donkey, just to make sure another two villages understood how to protect themselves. We distributed water purification tablets, buckets with taps and lids (so people can store drinking water safely), and soap, emphasising the importance of washing hands properly.

The village meeting was fun, because it needs to be: the all-Haitian team knew that people will be much happier to attend, and will learn more, if songs, role plays and laughter are used to spread serious messages.

Now back in London, its time to take stock. I need to stay in touch with the Haiti programme, who have since requested my assistance on funding proposals and technical issues, while getting to know Save the Children’s other programme’s. “How would you like to go to Pakistan?” Adam keeps asking.

It can seem a daily battle for Save the Children to deliver life-saving services to hundreds of thousands of people still devastated by the earthquake in Haiti a year ago, and our logistics managers (or ‘loggies’) are the ones whose heads are on the block.

Responsible for materials, movement and maintenance (the 3 big Ms), logistics in Haiti is challenging. I visited a Cholera Treatment Unit and heard from Charlie Reeves, our loggie in Leogane, on the particular hurdles to overcome in building a clinic like this one, entirely from scratch and within budget.

Imagine trying to build a life-saving clinic when rubble fills the road, electricity that relies on an unreliable generator cuts out and you have no water for the cement. Or getting urgent medical supplies delivered when violent riots and burning tires mean your team can’t leave the house.

But it’s not all challenges and setbacks — Charlie tells me that one of the best things about his job is working alongside the local workforce — all Haitian, all eager to help rebuild their country. He also says that one of his proudest moments was seeing the treatment unit opening to accept its first patients — including a 12 year old boy suffering from cholera who was quickly given a life saving mix of water, salt and sugar.

Charlie began his career in the army; transporting weapons, ammunition and troops. A few years (and one MA in Humanitarianism and Conflict Response) later, and now he’s moving cholera beds, wood and school kits.

Find out more about our work in Haiti

When the earthquake hit Haiti, it became nearly impossible for many families to trace the children living apart from them. Desperate parents sought their children but found only decimated buildings and heaps of rubble at the address. Where could they have gone? Even a year on, there are still well over 1,000 camps, housing over 800,000 people. It’s a daunting task to attempt to reunite separated children with their parents. But Save the Children is leading a multi-organisation process called Family Tracing and Reunification – which does just this.

Caseworker co-ordinator Dominique vividly remembers the case of Lespagne, a 10-year-old boy who was a ‘restavek’. After going door-to-door to find his immediate or extended family, Save the Children managed to trace his parents. They had thought he’d died in the quake. When they realised how badly he had been treated by his ‘host family’, they were angry, but were delighted to have Lespagne back with them.

Despite being poor, they are now a happy family once again. Just under 5,000 children have been registered as separated, with over 1,200 reunited. That night Dominique celebrated one more successful reunification. The next day he started all over again.

Find out more about our work in Haiti

Some of the criticism levelled at us will of course be quite reasonable and take into account the dreadful levels of poverty that existed in Haiti before the earthquake.

As many of you will know, Haiti is the poorest nation in the western hemisphere.  Before the quake half of Haiti’s children did not go to school, and one-third of Haitians did not have access to clean drinking water.  There is hardly any Haitian industry to speak of apart from the export of mangos and coffee.  Food here is also in short supply – up to 40% of food supplies have to be imported – making even basic foods expensive.  The government of Haiti is not strong and was even less able to cope following the quake since many civil servants were killed.  For a fuller account of Haiti’s woe, read Jon Henley’s “Haiti: a long descent to Hell” published in The Guardian this week.

Clearly mounting a well-coordinated disaster relief effort was always going to be an enormous challenge.  I’m not making excuses though. Twelve months since the quake it is not acceptable to aid agencies like Save the Children that nearly one million people are forced to live in squalid camps – including 380,000 children who we fear are at risk of exploitation and abuse.

But I’m in danger of veering away from what I wanted to share in this blog.  If you’d like to read more on Haiti’s slow pace of post-earthquake recovery, read my opinion piece in Australia’s The Age newspaper.

Now, I want to draw your attention to the Institut Abellard, a pilot school construction project we opened last October on the outskirts of Leogane – the epicentre of the earthquake where 90% of the buildings were destroyed.

Built to better withstand hurricanes and earthquakes, the Institut Abellard schools 364 children five days a week.  Here in two smart timber framed buildings – concrete is not used for reasons I’m sure you can fathom – primary school children receive lessons in elementary French and mathematics – at least, these were the two subjects taught on the day of my visit.

I must say this feels and looks like progress.  It’s great to see children enthusiastically embrace their classroom studies.  There is a cacophony of noise from one classroom as a group of children break into song.

Over on the sports field a session of physical education is taking place. Meanwhile orderly queues of children are waiting to wash their hands in soapy water following a visit to the toilet.

Before I start to paint too rosy a picture, it’s important to point out that these school children are the lucky few.  Before the earthquake, less than half of Haiti’s children attended school – goodness knows how many children miss school now. The problem is, in Haiti the authorities do not provide free education for all.  In fact before the earthquake, 80% of Haiti’s schools were privately owned – that is to say they were run by individuals, or as small business enterprises within the community.

Today few parents can afford to pay the few hundred dollars it costs to send a child to school each year – they have more pressing needs such as finding a place to live, or finding sufficient food for their families. But here at Institut Abellard, hundreds of children actually have the opportunity to attend school because we built them one.  Over the next year we will build at least another 50 schools like this one so that even more children can have a chance to learn in a nurturing and caring environment.

So, despite the criticism meted out to aid agencies and the international community this week, I will leave knowing that – one child at a time – we are helping to build a better future for Haiti’s children.

Find out more about our work in Haiti

• At least 230,000 people died
• 3 million were made homeless
• Nearly 1 million are still living in camps
• There were 1,354 spontaneous settlement sites across the earthquake-affected area
• 8 million cubic metres of rubble still need to be cleared
• 7,000 babies have been delivered every month since the earthquake.

But I don’t know if they help me to understand the true extent of the emergency any better.

Much has happened since the quake – not least a cholera outbreak, election-related violence and a hurricane. None of these crises have helped people ‘get back to normal’ – whatever that might be. And all of this is on top of the daily struggles of living in one of the world’s poorest countries. But what is clear, is that progress is being made. The road ahead is full of challenges, but the recovery is moving forward, despite media reports to the contrary.

The 12 January 2011 was a National Day of Mourning. Save the Children staff spent the day with their family, or friends, or on their own – doing whatever they felt they needed to do to mark the day and remember the moment their lives changed forever. Today they are back at work – driving cars, tracing the families of separated children, nursing patients, delivering school supplies, and all the other multitude of tasks that are required to meet the needs their countrymen.

As we mark 12 months since the earthquake, it’s only right that we acknowledge the enormous challenges ahead of us, but also recognise the lives we’ve undoubtedly saved. For instance, Save the Children has provided nearly 350,000 people in camps and communities with clean water, toilets and sanitation – an incredible achievement when we remember that even before the quake more than half of the population had no access to safe drinking water and 70% lacked safe sanitation facilities.

Not nearly enough has been done – there will be years of work ahead. I really hope the world doesn’t forget Haiti when it drops off the media headlines again.

Find out more about our work in Haiti