Thank you, I'm going to re-write this. I was angry when I wrote the first draft and just posted it.
I've decided to post the original here just so that people can read what was originally there, even though it wasn't very good.
Original Below
OH man this infuriates me. I spent about three months on the ground in Haiti about 6 months after the earthquake. Ii was both in Port Au Prince and Cap Hatien. I am no expert on how to make donations and aid help in a long term manner, but I have seen two different attempts at this.
1) My time before Haiti and in Haiti, American's were telling Haitians how to fix things. They were thinking without consulting their "customers" and doing so in a very authoritarian way. I saw one project, where they came up with compressed board houses that they could live in permanently. When we showed the result of 100s of man hours to the Haitians you know what they said? We want a permanent house.
2) In Bolivia the nuns were given American teachers to teach the students instead of requiring them to pay Bolivians. But the GOAL of this program was to remove the teachers over time. My sister was at the same site about 2 or 3 years after inception. She taught Biology, Math, Science, Etc to all of the High school age kids. There were 4-6 volunteers. When I went there 10 years later we were teaching middle school kids English and traveling out to the boonies (because Okinawa Numero Uno was no longer the boonies) to teach, and play with the kids to give the parents a break.
2 years later they shut down the program. It was the sadest and happiest moment I've had regarding missionary work. They no longer needed American teachers. This community had grown with a culture of calling white people "Teacher" even the adults and now there were no more Teachers going there.
What was the difference? Customer buy in. Just like a successful company, in Bolivia they worked for and with the nuns(and people), in Haiti they worked on the nuns and people.
It appears that the red cross did the same thing by not hiring Haitians to higher positions of power and giving them control over their own lives. If you read Mountains Beyond Mountains, written about Paul Farmer you'll see someone who went and worked with his customers to an extreme level.
Thanks! I'm struck by the time commitment made by organization you worked for in Bolivia. Decades of work indicates a depth of relationship that seems to evade most NGO work done in Haiti, and your experience reinforces that for me.
Did you come away from your Haiti experience with a favorable impression of any other organizations there?
I love the group Partners in Health. Mostly because of their founder Paul Farmer, I don't know how they've made the transition to being a bigger organization but when they were smaller they rocked Haiti in a good way.
I personally met the founder of 1000 jobs. He goes down there a LOT and has personally spend his time and money on Haiti to a degree most people would find staggering. https://www.1000jobshaiti.org/jh/mission.asp
Excellent, thank you for taking the time to tell your experience. I find the most valuable feedback comes from folks like you who are closest to the action.
I've decided to post the original here just so that people can read what was originally there, even though it wasn't very good.
Original Below
OH man this infuriates me. I spent about three months on the ground in Haiti about 6 months after the earthquake. Ii was both in Port Au Prince and Cap Hatien. I am no expert on how to make donations and aid help in a long term manner, but I have seen two different attempts at this.
1) My time before Haiti and in Haiti, American's were telling Haitians how to fix things. They were thinking without consulting their "customers" and doing so in a very authoritarian way. I saw one project, where they came up with compressed board houses that they could live in permanently. When we showed the result of 100s of man hours to the Haitians you know what they said? We want a permanent house.
2) In Bolivia the nuns were given American teachers to teach the students instead of requiring them to pay Bolivians. But the GOAL of this program was to remove the teachers over time. My sister was at the same site about 2 or 3 years after inception. She taught Biology, Math, Science, Etc to all of the High school age kids. There were 4-6 volunteers. When I went there 10 years later we were teaching middle school kids English and traveling out to the boonies (because Okinawa Numero Uno was no longer the boonies) to teach, and play with the kids to give the parents a break.
2 years later they shut down the program. It was the sadest and happiest moment I've had regarding missionary work. They no longer needed American teachers. This community had grown with a culture of calling white people "Teacher" even the adults and now there were no more Teachers going there.
What was the difference? Customer buy in. Just like a successful company, in Bolivia they worked for and with the nuns(and people), in Haiti they worked on the nuns and people.
It appears that the red cross did the same thing by not hiring Haitians to higher positions of power and giving them control over their own lives. If you read Mountains Beyond Mountains, written about Paul Farmer you'll see someone who went and worked with his customers to an extreme level.