Thoughts on Helping Haiti

In the outpouring of support that ICC received in the days and weeks after the January 12 earthquake that struck Haiti, there were many, many offers of help from around the world, and practical aid and assistance flowed into the country at unprecedented rates. This assistance saved lives, and continues to help sustain the people of Haiti as the government works to recover from the earthquake.

Many of our supporters have traveled to Haiti with ICC as part of our MEET program, and in the agonizing aftermath of the earthquake, were ready to return to offer their assistance to the people of Haiti. Much assistance was needed, and thousands of rescue and medical personnel descended into Haiti offering life-saving care.  You can read about ICC’s response to the earthquake here.

ICC is committed to Haiti, to the rebuilding of the country and to the well-being of our friends there. This is why we have established the Relief and Reconstruction Office in Port-au-Prince, which will oversee the reconstruction of Grace Children’s Hospital and offer assistance to other projects in the country.

While we have a deep love and concern for the people of Haiti, especially in this time of crisis, ICC has not yet offered opportunities for our North American supporters to travel to Haiti. We are grateful for these offers of help, and please be assured that if you have contacted our offices offering help, we may still call on you to travel to Haiti. We will be putting together some teams in the fall or winter of 2010.

ICC is committed to a model of sustainability in our work in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Instead of flying teams of North Americans to Haiti to aid with the reconstruction process, ICC tries to employ local workers for projects as much as possible. The rates of unemployment in Haiti are staggering, and most Haitians earn less than $2.00 per day. We seek to employ Haitians for skilled and unskilled jobs, providing support and a fair wage. Haitian workers are already adjusted to the extreme temperatures and the difficult labor that must be undertaken to rebuild the Grace facility. They do not need housing, food or translators that North American teams would require. ICC Haiti is operated by an all-Haitian staff, and they have not requested work teams in Haiti at this time. One request that our friends in Haiti have made is for the skills of eye doctors or those with eye care experience. If you can offer these skills to us, please let us know. The commitment to sustainability and empowerment for the people of Haiti has led us be cautious in the way that we utilize our resources so that the outpouring of aid doesn’t become a deluge that hurts more than helps our friends in Haiti. An African proverb describes this situation:

Elephant and Mouse were best friends. One day Elephant said, "Mouse, let's have a party!" Animals gathered from far and near. They ate. They drank. They sang. And they danced. And nobody celebrated more and danced harder than Elephant. After the party was over, Elephant exclaimed, "Mouse, did you ever go to a better party? What a blast!" But Mouse did not answer. "Mouse, where are you?" Elephant called. He looked around for his friend, and then shrank back in horror. There at Elephant's feet lay Mouse. His little body was ground into the dirt. He had been smashed by the big feet of his exuberant friend, Elephant. "Sometimes, that is what it is like to do mission with you Americans," the African storyteller commented. "It is like dancing with an Elephant." (Miriam Adeney, "When the Elephant Dances, the Mouse May Die," Short-Term Mission Today, inaugural edition, 2000, as reprinted in When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor … And Yourself by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert. )

For more information about ways that the North American desire to go and help in time of crisis may not be the best way to serve those in need, read the Relevant Magazine article at this link.

The article carefully points out three key ideas that those who deliver aid must consider. These ideas are to limit what is given away, following the adage that if you “give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.” Secondly, do not do for others what they can do for themselves, and finally, enable local ownership through partnership, which is a key commitment for ICC.

If you have questions about this article, or how you can best offer help, please feel free to contact ICC or discuss in the comment section below. Comments are moderated.