Thought for the Day: “Low cost, high impact, long term”

I'm come to greatly respect a man here in Haiti, Rev. Walliere Pierre (at center in the photo). His humility and grace seems an antidote to all of the blowhard Haitian politicians that have spoiled Haiti throughout its history and who look poised to do so again in flawed upcoming elections. His organization, called CEC-FOP, works on educational and agricultural projects in several different corners of Haiti.

A near mantra of all CEC-FOP projects is the quotation mentioned above. If a proposal doesn't meet all three criteria, he's reticent to commit. It's basically a philosophy, as I see it, of looking for the low-hanging fruit. Where countless large international NGOs are spending millions of dollars to carry out projects of dubious worth, CEC-FOP is doing its work on a shoestring budget and showing a sustainable way forward for some of the rural poor they serve. It would be amazing if these international organizations implemented their projects according to these simple principles rather than merely giving them lip service.

To creep or not to creep?

A little over a week ago, we held a meeting with several members from the community who consider themselves leaders in Cite Soleil. Though the comments of our staff and the participants were filtered through partial English translation and my weak Kreyol, they presented a stark picture of how government and LAMP are understood in Cite Soleil.

Tom Griffin, one of the founders of LAMP, was visiting on a short trip and called the meeting to hear the community's perceptions of the clinic and take suggestions for improvement. After a brief introduction, the comments of the most outspoken participants changed course, instead steering away from the clinic towards a litany of requests for LAMP to undertake in the community.

Job creation, free food, clean water, tidy streets, university scholarships for adults and the construction of a school. The thing most of these requests share in common is the continuing responsibility or even obligation of government to concern itself with these services, both because of the Haitian constitution and the ratification of human rights treaties that speak to most of these matters.

Now, Tom has an excellent metaphor for the impact of foreign NGOs (non-governmental organizations) introduced into the context of a functioning democratic country. Consider the Haitian government and polity as a part of a closed biological system, such as a body. Ideally, the body is self-regulating; an infection in one place (i.e., a public demonstration petitioning the government for clean water) receives a response from the immune system (i.e., the government finds a way to provide the water). This partially meets the body's need and returns it to a state of equilibrium until the next outbreak. Now, imagine a machine implanted into the body--this is the foreign NGO. The foreign implant serves a vital function that maintains the health of a section of the body (providing medical care, clean water, a feeding program, etc.). The result is wonderful for the particular part of the body that benefits from the implant. But that's not looking at the big picture. With the introduction of hundreds or even thousands of competing implants responding to outbreaks, the natural responsiveness of the body's own systems begin to break down. No longer does the body have to trouble itself tending to certain diseases or outbreaks, as foreign technology and resources have effectively wrested control of functions originally controlled by the immune system. Tending to outbreaks is now so piecemeal that the original system stops being responsive to the whole body. This is a concern with foreign NGOs like ours doing what we do.

One of the most telling moments in the meeting came part way through. Tensions were high (like they almost inevitably are in political discussions here) and Tom explained that if the community wants change it has to organize, taking their concerns to the powers that be to create the change they want to see. LAMP is not the government, Tom insisted, and all of the Haitians in Cite Soleil have the responsibility to make the system work. Tom is not naïve and knows the difficulties that such an approach poses here, but this is the paradigm that leads to a healthy body—not countless foreign implants filling the gaps left by the government.

The response from one individual, speaking for the first time in the meeting, struck us. "What you are saying is very, very discouraging to us." We paused, surprised because it seemed Tom's words were supposed to be empowering. "If all blan [white people, but also a general term for foreigners] thought the same way as you do, then we would have nothing. Everything that we have comes from them."

Now, I don't relay this to show the importance of LAMP or its work. Far from it. The fact this may be the prevailing notion in the community is the complete inversion of what good aid wants to accomplish. When Haiti is the land of 10,000 foreign NGOs, this seems the epitome of a learned dependence that's both disheartening to us as an organization and a signifier of the difficult context in which we work.

So this leaves LAMP in an interesting position; like any nonprofit, funds are limited and meant for certain purposes and can not, and should not, fill each niche request made at the meeting.

But what to do when the people you serve want your organization to become a de facto local government? Do you let your organization creep from its mission of health and human rights? Can that mission expand to fit what they want? And how to step back once dependency becomes the norm? Yikes.

Thought for the Day: Communion with the Oppressed

"Those who authentically commit themselves to the people must re-examine themselves constantly. This conversion is so radical as not to allow ambiguous behavior. To affirm this commitment but to consider oneself the proprietor of revolutionary wisdom—which must be given to (or imposed on) the people—is to retain the old ways. The man or woman who proclaims devotion to the cause of liberation yet is unable to enter into communion with the people, whom he or she continues to regard as totally ignorant, is grievously self-deceived. The convert who approaches the people but feels alarm at each step they take, each doubt they express, and each suggestion they offer, and attempts to impose his "status," remains nostalgic towards his origins.

"Conversion to the people requires a profound rebirth. Those who undergo it must take on a new form of existence; they can no longer remain as they were. Only through comradeship with the oppressed can the converts understand their characteristic ways of living and behaving, which in diverse moments reflect the structure of domination."

-Paulo Freire

Paulo Freire was a Brazilian educator. His seminal work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, from which the above excerpt originates, has been stopping me dead in my tracks page after page. I highly recommend it.

It's a work about liberation for the oppressed from their oppressors, and the subsequent liberation of oppressors by the formerly oppressed. It primarily elaborates a new mode of teaching, or pedagogy, to illuminate the dehumanizing systems and acts of oppression that shape the day-to-day realities of the oppressed. His observations are informed in part by a descent from a middle-class existence to shared poverty and starvation alongside the Brazilian masses in his early childhood, circumstances catalyzed by the economic fallout of the Great Depression.

The above passage is about the "converts" from the oppressors who wish to seek solidarity with those who they have formerly oppressed. While this may all sound a bit obtuse in brief, his words speak great truth to those who read them in context. As Freire describes the awakening of the oppressed to their dehumanizing surroundings, the people of Cite Soleil flash before my eyes. In my work and life, I wish to be one of those converted, to avoid the "old ways" and continue seeking another way of living in true communion—to learn to leave behind fear of the other, my status and any other paternalistic ways.

Oh, how I need greater humility!

La Gonave

Several weeks ago, Katharine and I traveled along with friends Sarah and Gina to La Gonave, an emerald island just off the coast of mainland Haiti. We went to participate in a youth conference put on by the Nazarene Church, the hosts for Katharine and her classmates' internships. This particular conference is a local tradition, where for the last 66 years youth have come from all over the island to the same remote village for a week of programming. It's grown steadily to the point that 300 participants turn out each year.

Something exciting: I had been asked to give a presentation on "children's rights" to the youth. I was excited for the opportunity, but found myself relying on my legal background less than expected. How to explain that kids are promised constitutional rights by their government when the audience already knows the same government has done little to protect them? Instead of fighting the uphill battle of getting chatty twelve-year old girls to care about the law, I tried to inspire the kids to grow into children's advocates; that they should prepare themselves for lives where they will step into the gap to protect the rights of vulnerable youth even when their governments may not. I've no clue whether this message was translated clearly, but several questions and statements from the youth in response to the lecture were heartening. It was a real privilege to be given the chance to share.

Something bizarre: The youth conference culminates each year with a highly anticipated event, the "Miss" competition. You may have guessed based on the name, but it's basically a beauty pageant. In a church. It was a . . . new . . . experience seeing three teenage girls awkwardly strut down the center aisle of a church sanctuary like it was a model's catwalk, while all the while several hundred people cheered them on. Slightly unsettling? Yes. But also priceless.

Something uniquely Haitian: To reach our return ferry that departed at 6am, we awoke at 2am to catch an old 4x4 pickup that would take us down the mountain. We started off with six people including the driver. By the time we reached the pier we had accumulated 16 passengers plus luggage in the truck bed, three people in the cab, and one person on top of the cab. There was something pretty wonderful in all this.
The only things piercing the thick darkness on our descent were our headlights and the beautiful sound of Kreyol hymns rising up from my fellow passengers. All at 2am.

Thought for the Day: A More Costly Advocacy

"Advocacy is the making of oneself vulnerable on behalf of another, even unto death."
-William Stringfellow

Stringfellow was a civil rights attorney whose writings I've enjoyed exploring recently. He went from the halls of Harvard Law to start a practice serving the residents of East Harlem in the fifties, and I appreciate his simple definition of advocacy far more than the cheap advocacy so commonly witnessed in the lawyering profession.

That vision usually involves the lawyer as a mere mouthpiece for hire.

Stringfellow's is a far more costly advocacy, one that represents "an invitation to share pain and vulnerability and a call to set [oneself] free in relationship to those the world condemns" to quote Prof. Emily Fowler Hartigan's exposition of his idea. I'm still struggling to come to grips with what this might mean in a place like Cite Soleil, or back in North Philadelphia, but it's far more reflective of who I aspire to be as a lawyer and person than the cheap advocacy I so often see.

What am I doing here?

Don't let the title fool you – this entry won't be full of the same self-indulgent angst of some past entries. It's instead a straight-forward account of what I've been doing here in Port-au-Prince so far.

The LAMP for Haiti, if you're not familiar, has a mission of promoting health and human rights in Haiti, with its chief focus being the slum community of Cite Soleil. During its first few years of existence, LAMP's main focus has been upon providing free medical services several days a week via their clinic. What started informally in an alley has become a full-fledged clinic and an integral part of the health infrastructure in the Bwa Nef quarter of Cite Soleil.

Meanwhile, the LAMP has recently decided to strengthen its human rights work, which has heretofore focused on ad hoc reporting and advocacy. The goal is to gradually work towards a full-service law office that balances its national advocacy with its provision of free legal services to the people of Cite Soleil. Regine Theodat is the office's new Haitian-American staff attorney, supervised by Tom Griffin, one of LAMP's founders and its current legal director.

Injected into this situation is me. I'm a third-year law student at Drexel University interning with LAMP for the semester, trying to figure out how my skills and perspective can contribute to this nascent work.

Thus far, the experience has been eye-opening. I first visited Haiti and LAMP a year and a half ago, well before the January 12^th earthquake. The quake was cataclysmic to the point that time now seems to be separated into BQ and AQ rather than just BC and AD. The most obvious difference in Port-au-Prince, besides the rubble and debris still seemingly untouched, are the camps. Estimates are up to 1.5 million people living in the camps, over one-tenth of the national population. LAMP had a significant role in a recently-published report mentioned in a previous post, detailing the experience of families in some of the camps.

The most significant portion of my time so far has been spent trying to understand the upcoming elections and figure out a means of disseminating information to the voting public. There are 19 presidential candidates, 96 senatorial candidates, and 827 candidates for deputy seats. Our goal has been to accumulate knowledge about the presidential candidates and share it with the voting public in Cite Soleil to make sure their collective voice is heard on November 28^th, election day.

Also, our office has recently started meeting with community leaders in Bwa Nef. We want to better figure out what the needs of the community are, both medical and legal, so that LAMP's efforts can be better focused at addressing the issues that residents are most concerned about.

This isn't all that's underway, just what's been in play while I've been here. I'll be able speak to some other projects in later posts, once they're more developed.