Progress in Haiti

Yesterday morning, I heard yet another news report about how so much money has been spent in Haiti, and how there is nothing to show for it. I think we all share the same frustration, but I also wish that journalists would come and visit our project and see the hundreds of kilometres of soil conservation barriers that have been built on hundreds of hectares of land, the thousands of trees that have been planted and are thriving, hear the stories of the thousands of families who have received crops seed, tools, and jobs. It's not nothing. Lives have (it may be going too far to say 'saved') been stabilized, vulnerable land protected, farms have been made productive. Yes of course I'm defensive, because I have been a part of the earthquake response effort, but I just feel that the press is looking at this thing the wrong way. I challenge any journalist who was there in the early days after the quake--and I know there were swarms of them, I saw them myself--to recall just how grim and overwhelming those days were. Personally, I think the relief response was pretty incredible. In those early days, the country was at a tipping point, and things could have easily been much worse. In fact there was no major starvation, no collapse of the transportation or communication system, no widespread violence, and no major disease outbreak (cholera came later and is non-earthquake related). All of these were predicted, and none happened. So in fact journalists claiming that nothing has happened in Haiti is in a sense, a good thing. Of course, it is hard to prove a negative, but I think the relief efforts contributed significantly to ensuring that nothing happened. Yes, we've still got a long long way to go, and I too am frustrated, but I invite any journalist or other skeptic to please come and visit our project and still go home and say that nothing has been done. We are small, granted, but there are hundreds of efforts just like ours all across the country, that are doing something, and at least set the stage for families to build a better future. (assuming there is not another Biblical-scale plague)

A work crew in Fonds Verrettes, Haiti, posing next to a soil erosion barrier they had just built.

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