Summer Internship Program's blog

I always knew I wanted to come to Haiti. My cousin married a Haitian woman and had four beautiful children with her and, through them, I was given the opportunity to experience the beauty and culture of the nation. As i studied politics and development, the story of the country wove back and forth through the books, exemplifying misery, oppression and bad luck. The horrors and struggles the people of this country have been through are terrible and shouldn't be forgotten. But they also shouldn't be the focus!

 
This week was a fantastic week for the public health and nutrition program. We have been working with 5 women in the community to conduct the needs assessment surveys. Working with them has been wonderful and productive; we are getting lots of good data! As we collect the surveys we have noticed some hopeful windows for progress amidst stories of poverty and struggle.
 
A single mother with 8 children. None of these children are in school, and there is no source of income.

One of the most systemic and troubling problems of the aid industry is how, more often than not, the people being assisted by the aid are left out of the dialogue and distribution process. I have seen this repeatedly in my research; an NGO enters a community with their project already determined, ignores the needs or requests of the community, builds their project, documents it to show their donors in the States, and leaves. Rather than creating a dialogue with the community about their needs, NGOs implement, give, or build whatever it is they want to implement, give, or build.

Life was pretty relaxed during my first week here, but things definitely picked up for Week Two. On Monday morning, 150-ish kids arrived at the compound, hoping to participate in the vaguely defined “summer camp” that started that day. We recorded some basic demographic information, divided them into groups based on their age, tied a colored piece of yarn around their wrists, and attempted to engage them for three hours at five different stations. It was… challenging, to say the least.
 

 
 
It’s difficult and presumptuous to come into any Haitian community and identify what the most pressing needs are. I tend to focus on health, but after talking to some focus groups in Ti Goave yesterday it’s hard to know where to begin in terms of development. The men’s focus group felt that it’s premature to ask questions about health when they don’t even have a school. Regardless of where health should go on a list of priorities, the Public Health Program had a good day yesterday.