A teacher from the San Francsico bay area volunteered to show children how to design and create solar ovens at the summer camp last week. Solar ovens allow people to cook meals without having to pay for propane or charcoal, thus saving money while enhancing self-sufficiency.

The teens gave him rave reviews for his presentation about solar cooking, which included a demonstration of how to cook eggs in a solar oven. (See photos above.)

Then, with supplies the teacher generously purchased in Port-au-Prince, each teen had a chance to create his or her own cooker. The children so appreciated this unique opportunity to learn about solar cooking.

The children so appreciated this special class.

Thank you John!

Our Haitian partners just built 4 compost toilets on the land we purchased, for use by those attending summer camp. They did so with the help of Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods (SOIL), a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting soil resources, empowering communities and transforming wastes into resources in Haiti. We appreciate how everyone worked together to get them up in time for the first day of camp.

A small marching band led the parade from the St. Clare’s rectory (the site of the camp in the past) to its new location about a mile away – a rented building next to the land we recently purchased.  This building is the new home of the education programs we support (summer camp, school scholarships, and after-school program).  Summer Camp classes will take place inside the building as well as under tarps that have beenarranged on our land across the street.

As in the past, the camp staff will teach classes in music, dance, cooking, sewing, and various arts and crafts. The six-week camp will also give the children, aged 4 to 16, healthy lunches from the food program and plenty of time to exercise and play games.

In addition, three Haitian doctors will volunteer at the camp 2 to 3 times each week. They will engage the children in discussions, games and exercises designed to help them explore and process their earthquake experiences. Camp coordinator Jean Marie Noel says “the camp and the work with the doctors will be particularly critical for many young people this summer, given deteriorating conditions in the aftermath of the earthquake.”

The What If? Foundation has funded this camp for the last 8 years. We are so grateful to all of you for your support, which has made it possible again this year.  We’ll be putting camp photos on our website gallery and will keep you updated on what’s happening through our blog.

Relocation Update

We’re still in the beginning stages of planning for the building of a kitchen on the new land and the relocation of the food program. Thankfully, the food program can stay at the rectory kitchen for the next several months as we continue to work with our Haitian partners to explore and identify the best construction option for the new building, raise the money needed, and transition to the new location.  We look forward to sharing more information with you as we take steps forward.

Thank you for your ongoing donations.  They continue to provide children in the Tiplas Kazo neighborhood of Port-au-Prince with not only desperately needed nourishment, but also opportunities for fun and a break from the daily challenges they face.  As one camper said, summer camp is “the best part of the year!”

The area they are clearing is right next to the building we rented to house this year’s camp.

Children enrolling in this year's summer camp

Members of the summer camp staff are busy getting ready for the first day of camp, which will be Monday, August 16th. Over 500 children are in the process of registering  and soon will be enjoying arts & crafts, music, dance, cooking, and computer classes. They’ll also get healthy lunches and time to play games. We’ll share photos as soon as we receive them.

We’re so grateful that this camp will be able to take place this summer, as are the children!  Thank you all for your support, which is making it possible.

I agree fully with your personal and Lavarice’s opinions on the progress since the earthquake. I was there 12 days after the quake, my team members were there in Feb. and I was back a few weeks ago. The conditions in the tent cities are horrendous at best and the rainy season has complicated the problems beyond belief.

I am glad that things in Tiplas Kazo are going O.K.  I wanted to reaffirm the CCHMP’s commitment to all of your friends there and tell them (and Lavarice) we are thinking of them. We’ll bring another truck load of food in October…”Piti, pitit na rive.”

Kimbe La

Bill

CCHMP  (Carroll County Haiti Mission Project, Mt. Carroll, Illinois)

Bill and his team have brought two truckloads of rice, beans, and cooking oil to the food program since the earthquake.  We are so grateful to the CCHMP for their support!

It’s been 6 months since the devastating January 12^th earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.  I’ll never forget that Tuesday afternoon and the shock and grief we all felt with the news that poured in about the tremendous destruction and the 300,000 people who lost their lives.  While there was an exhale of relief and a feeling of tremendous gratitude when the news came in that our Haitian partners and those we serve in the Tiplas Kazo neighborhood had survived, there was such deep sorrow for the extraordinary suffering being experienced throughout Haiti’s capital.

Since that time, I wish I could tell you that things are getting better for the majority of people in Port-au-Prince, but that is not the case.  Lavarice Gaudin, our program liaison, has been in Haiti since the earthquake and tells us that signs of clearing the rubble and rebuilding are difficult to find. The National Palace is still slumped on its side, and almost all the buildings that were reduced to piles of concrete and twisted metal by the earthquake remain untouched.  Little has changed since my visit to Haiti in April (click here to see photos from this trip).

There are now more than 1,000 camps in the city, where an estimated 1.5 million displaced Haitians live without electricity, without adequate sanitation, without any reliable sources of food and water.  There is pressure to relocate the camps, since most of them are on private property.  But there is no place for the people who live in them to go.  The hurricane season has started, the rains are coming, and children and their parents and grandparents are living in the mud, under leaky tarps and tents.  The conditions are horrendous, as you can imagine.

But in the Tiplas Kazo neighborhood, where the food and education programs we fund take place, there is hope thanks to the 3,000 hot meals that are served out of the St. Clare’s rectory each weekday to children and adults (many of whom live across the street in a tent community).  And you cannot imagine how important the 200 school scholarships and the upcoming summer camp are to the children who have endured so much since the earthquake. They cannot wait for camp to start in August!

Thank you for holding Haiti in your thoughts and prayers over the last six months and for your generosity in supporting these programs in Port-au-Prince.  We are so grateful for all we have been able to do to help so many since the earthquake, and we could not have done it without the help of you, our donors and friends.  On behalf of all the children and adults in the Tiplas Kazo neighborhood, Meci Anpil.  (Thank you so much!)

With love,  Margaret

by Tom Leonard in New York;   Source: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/07/09-6

Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow, founder of the British aid charity Mary’s Meals, has given the verdict after returning to the shattered Caribbean country.

On his first return trip since he went into Port-au-Prince just a few days after the quake in January, Mr MacFarlane-Barrow said he saw little evidence of the billions in aid that was pledged by a world stunned by the scale of the catastrophe.

“My overriding feeling has been one of great disappointment. I can’t see that anything has changed for people since the earthquake,” he said yesterday.

Before the earthquake, his charity, which has been a beneficiary of The Daily Telegraph Christmas Appeal, was feeding thousands of Haitian children, particularly in Cité Soleil, the shanty town on the edge of Port-au-Prince which has long been regarded as one of the world’s worst slums.

“Driving about in the centre of Port-au-Prince, very little appears to have changed from six months ago,” he said. “Most of the buildings are exactly as they were immediately after the earthquake, even the iconic buildings like the presidential palace and the cathedral are just standing there as they were.” He said he was particularly struck not to see any “big earth moving equipment”, adding: “I expected there would be lots of that. Any work that is being done is people working through the rubble by hand.” Others report that, in stark contrast to the weeks after the earthquake when the major charities poured into Port-au-Prince, their vehicles are far thinner on the ground now.

To a degree, Haitians are getting on with their daily lives. The markets are open as are many of the schools. However, an estimated 1.2 million are still camping out in tents and tarpaulins, many without basic sanitation. Chaos over property ownership has complicated rebuilding efforts while the onset of what is expected to be a particularly wet storm season has prompted the United Nations to warn that a serious hurricane could be “devastating” to Haiti.

“The tents are everywhere – on the central reservation of the highways, on the pavements, and in places where houses used to be,” said Mr MacFarlane-Barrow. “In the past couple of days it has been raining so there are streams running between the tents.” A new report by the British Red Cross has warned that aid agencies providing water and sanitation are stretched to capacity and cannot keep going indefinitely.

The charity blamed the snail’s pace reconstruction on a combination of government “dysfunction” and the scale of the disaster. It has not helped that only two per cent of the pounds 3.5 billion promised in short-term international aid has reportedly got to Haiti.

Certainly, the nightmare scenario – mass starvation and large-scale outbreaks of diarrhoea or cholera in the camps – has not happened. Jean-Max Bellerive, Haiti’s prime minister, feels justified in saying that the “total chaos” immediately after the quake is now “organised chaos”.

Ordinary Haitians are “surprisingly upbeat”, said Mr MacFarlane-Barrow, although he acknowledged they are “incredibly resilient people they’re not sitting around worrying about hurricanes coming”.

He said he had been struck by the progress made by ordinary people in Cité Soleil to rebuild their lives. “Yesterday, I saw them rebuilding local schools, the men filling cement mixers, queues of women walking in with buckets of water to pour in.” he said.

Cité Soleil has been the focus of security concerns after many of the country’s most dangerous criminals were feared to have fled there after the earthquake destroyed the main prison.

But Mr MacFarlane-Barrow said he was cheered to see that the children had come back to the slum’s schools where Mary’s Meals had also been able to feed many of the elderly without disruption from criminal elements.

The main priority, he believes, must be proper clear-up operations and rebuilding, preferably involving local people themselves to create employment.

Many Haitians do not have running water, electricity or adequate food – but, then, they didn’t before the earthquake. “With the best will in the world those problems can’t be solved overnight,” said Mr MacFarlane-Barrow. “But I remain optimistic – I just hope for the people’s sake it happens sooner rather than later.”

The Giraffe Heroes Project spreads the stories of Giraffe Heroes like Margaret in an effort to foster courageous compassion and to inspire more people, young and old, to active citizenship. Check out the Giraffe Heroes Project website to learn more.