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.