Baraderes.
I returned early yesterday morning (about 3 am) after a grueling day of travel. There was severe flooding in the South parts of Haiti on Saturday as a result of torrential rains. Baraderes was deluged and people fled for the mountains. When we drove out of Les Cayes early Sunday morning we could see the devastation: the road was passable but still full of mud and rocks in places, crops were destroyed, trees were down, and animals were dead. News reports said that some people were also killed. Then just after we finished driving through the flood-ravaged areas we got into the earthquake-ravaged areas.
Six weeks after the eathquake, many people are living in tents made of sticks and bedsheets.
A lot of people ask me why Haiti is so poor. There are no easy answers, and the history is complicated, but the question is worth reflecting on, especially now that we see that Chile has suffered an earthquake of a greater magnitude than Haiti's but with far fewer deaths, and with a greater ability to recover. What follows is my reflection on one aspect of Haiti's poverty: the role of charitable aid.
In the last 25 years or so, numerous international aid organizations, churches, and governments have sent vast amounts of aid to Haiti. However they have mostly been reluctant to funnel that money through the Haitian government. As a result, aid institutions operate mostly outside of the government, and this has led to a weak underfunded government that does not have the resources or capacity to build the infrastructure that Haiti needs. In many other countries, U.S. development assistance is funneled through governments.
I know that there are a lot of people reading this who do not care too much for government (and truthfully i think that i am one of them) but we need governments for some things, including roads, electricity, water treatment, public health concerns, enforcement of building codes, protection from the greed, violence and stupidity of others, etc.
The problem with outside aid institutions, whether governmental or non-governmental, is that they tend to have their own agendas, and those agendas are often what is best for the sending countries or institutions. For example, the USAID project I mentioned in my last post was bad for small farmers all over the world, but it was good for the United States, because it brought coffee prices way down.
Another problem with aid institutions is that they come and then they go. An example of that is the hospital located about an hour and a half from Baraderes. It was run by a U.S. Baptist group, but then about a year or so ago they pulled out. Now the hospital is there but barely functions. It was the only hospital in the area.
In general, I have lost all confidence in charitable aid as any kind of solution. It often is based on the agenda of the giver, rather than the receiver. It fosters a dependency that over time becomes hard to overcome, because people come to believe that their only recourse is getting things from others. This kind of mentality leads to corruption. Charity also does not recognize the human dignity of the receiver, because human dignity requires us to be able to take care of ourselves: to enjoy the fruits of our own labor, to pay for our own school fees and health care, to provide food, shelter and clothing for our families, and to form communities that develop the structures that sustain life.
What makes sense to me are capacity-building and income-producing projects that are led by and benefit the communities they are in, and the evidence for this would be that the comunities start to be able to take care of themselves. Income-producing projects benefit everyone, because if one group of people has more money, they then spend it at the local stores, and the local schools, and the local clinic. Then the doctors and nurses and teachers and shop-owners get paid, and then they spend their money...etc. What is required by outside organizations in this case is to invest in the income-producing projects of the community and to help them with capacity-building so that they are able to sustain those projects, and then to pull out when the community does not need them any more.
Capacity-building is a term that encompasses training and formation and the creating of structures that can sustain a project.
Is charity ever the answer? For example, what about supporting schools? I think this is a really hard question. I asked myself this question when I was responsible for the St. John the Baptist (SJB) sister parish project, which sustains a lot of schools. The secondary school we built in Baraderes is one of the best schools in the country, and the whole community is proud of it. But at the end I asked myself what we had accomplished. If SJB pulled out, that school would close. What if SJB got a new pastor, or the demographics changed and the parish could no longer sustain the project? We need the community to be able to sustain its own school (and orphanage, medical clinic, and nutrition programs). In other words, it does not make sense to build programs that over the long term communities cannot pay for by themselves.
But then you end up in going in circles, because you need educated people for successful income-producing projects, and you also need training and formation for those who lack formal education. I think the answer has to be that you need both together, and not to support a school without working with the community on how they will sustain it in the long run. Education, training, and income-producing projects go together.
In the U.S., public schools get paid for by taxes, and private schools get paid for by fees and endowments. Taxes, fees, and endowments all come from people who have income. It feels good to outside donors to build something for someone else, but it does not help the community if they cannot sustain it themselves.
The problem is that it is not so hard to find people willing to start up or support charitable aid projects, including schools (or orphanages, or feeding programs, or homeless shelters), but really hard to find a genuine community-led income-producing project that benefits the producers and the community they are in, as opposed to one that primarily benefits some multinational corporation and its stockholders in developed countries. Just Haiti is a lot of work and it will take a real investment in time and money before the growers are independent. But we are working for that day.
But now the conversation gets even more complicated. Those multinational corporations and their stockholders are providing the income that enables the high standard of living in developed countries. One of the ways that they do that is to pay producers and laborers in underdeveloped countries wages that do not provide a sustainable living. In other words, they keep them poor. So actually those income-producing projects that benefit producers in underdeveloped countries that we are talking about are not in the interest of wealthy people in developed countries if they want to maintain their current standard of living.
Hmmm. So now we begin to understand why there is so much more charity than justice. Charity keeps people poor and dependent, and poverty makes people willing to accept substandard wages, and then they take more charity, and the cycle continues. And because of Haiti’s history (which I have not gone into) Haiti has been on the receiving end of charity in the extreme. As such, Haiti becomes a case study in what not to do.
My deep frustration (to the point of sarcasm) with this lies in the fact that so many of the charities providing aid are church-based, including the vast network of sister parishes in Haiti. The people involved usually do not understand the difference between charity and justice, and have not been educated to understand the difference or how it connects to their faith. Many church people want to be heroes, swooping into Haiti to save the day. I think that this feeling is fine and normal, but needs to be channeled in a more productive way.
Many people, including church people, are suspicious of income-producing projects as somehow threatening to our capitalist culture. And it is true: if everyone did as i am suggesting, the incomes of those who profit from the labor of others would go down, or prices would go up (which amounts to the same thing). This is what gets people really upset: my view is that would be fine. People in the U.S. are not accustomed to paying the full value of the goods they consume, because they get them from cheap labor that does not sustain life. And just how many houses and cars do people need?
Catastrophes are the one time that institutional charity makes sense to me. People need help to pick up the pieces (and to pay school fees) after everything has been destroyed. But it should not end there, and ususally it does. And there is something seriously wrong with our system of disaster relief: why are there so many relief workers driving around in new jeeps, while Haitians are still living in tents made of sticks and bedsheets?
Six weeks after the eathquake, many people are living in tents made of sticks and bedsheets.
A lot of people ask me why Haiti is so poor. There are no easy answers, and the history is complicated, but the question is worth reflecting on, especially now that we see that Chile has suffered an earthquake of a greater magnitude than Haiti's but with far fewer deaths, and with a greater ability to recover. What follows is my reflection on one aspect of Haiti's poverty: the role of charitable aid.
In the last 25 years or so, numerous international aid organizations, churches, and governments have sent vast amounts of aid to Haiti. However they have mostly been reluctant to funnel that money through the Haitian government. As a result, aid institutions operate mostly outside of the government, and this has led to a weak underfunded government that does not have the resources or capacity to build the infrastructure that Haiti needs. In many other countries, U.S. development assistance is funneled through governments.
I know that there are a lot of people reading this who do not care too much for government (and truthfully i think that i am one of them) but we need governments for some things, including roads, electricity, water treatment, public health concerns, enforcement of building codes, protection from the greed, violence and stupidity of others, etc.
The problem with outside aid institutions, whether governmental or non-governmental, is that they tend to have their own agendas, and those agendas are often what is best for the sending countries or institutions. For example, the USAID project I mentioned in my last post was bad for small farmers all over the world, but it was good for the United States, because it brought coffee prices way down.
Another problem with aid institutions is that they come and then they go. An example of that is the hospital located about an hour and a half from Baraderes. It was run by a U.S. Baptist group, but then about a year or so ago they pulled out. Now the hospital is there but barely functions. It was the only hospital in the area.
In general, I have lost all confidence in charitable aid as any kind of solution. It often is based on the agenda of the giver, rather than the receiver. It fosters a dependency that over time becomes hard to overcome, because people come to believe that their only recourse is getting things from others. This kind of mentality leads to corruption. Charity also does not recognize the human dignity of the receiver, because human dignity requires us to be able to take care of ourselves: to enjoy the fruits of our own labor, to pay for our own school fees and health care, to provide food, shelter and clothing for our families, and to form communities that develop the structures that sustain life.
What makes sense to me are capacity-building and income-producing projects that are led by and benefit the communities they are in, and the evidence for this would be that the comunities start to be able to take care of themselves. Income-producing projects benefit everyone, because if one group of people has more money, they then spend it at the local stores, and the local schools, and the local clinic. Then the doctors and nurses and teachers and shop-owners get paid, and then they spend their money...etc. What is required by outside organizations in this case is to invest in the income-producing projects of the community and to help them with capacity-building so that they are able to sustain those projects, and then to pull out when the community does not need them any more.
Capacity-building is a term that encompasses training and formation and the creating of structures that can sustain a project.
Is charity ever the answer? For example, what about supporting schools? I think this is a really hard question. I asked myself this question when I was responsible for the St. John the Baptist (SJB) sister parish project, which sustains a lot of schools. The secondary school we built in Baraderes is one of the best schools in the country, and the whole community is proud of it. But at the end I asked myself what we had accomplished. If SJB pulled out, that school would close. What if SJB got a new pastor, or the demographics changed and the parish could no longer sustain the project? We need the community to be able to sustain its own school (and orphanage, medical clinic, and nutrition programs). In other words, it does not make sense to build programs that over the long term communities cannot pay for by themselves.
But then you end up in going in circles, because you need educated people for successful income-producing projects, and you also need training and formation for those who lack formal education. I think the answer has to be that you need both together, and not to support a school without working with the community on how they will sustain it in the long run. Education, training, and income-producing projects go together.
In the U.S., public schools get paid for by taxes, and private schools get paid for by fees and endowments. Taxes, fees, and endowments all come from people who have income. It feels good to outside donors to build something for someone else, but it does not help the community if they cannot sustain it themselves.
The problem is that it is not so hard to find people willing to start up or support charitable aid projects, including schools (or orphanages, or feeding programs, or homeless shelters), but really hard to find a genuine community-led income-producing project that benefits the producers and the community they are in, as opposed to one that primarily benefits some multinational corporation and its stockholders in developed countries. Just Haiti is a lot of work and it will take a real investment in time and money before the growers are independent. But we are working for that day.
But now the conversation gets even more complicated. Those multinational corporations and their stockholders are providing the income that enables the high standard of living in developed countries. One of the ways that they do that is to pay producers and laborers in underdeveloped countries wages that do not provide a sustainable living. In other words, they keep them poor. So actually those income-producing projects that benefit producers in underdeveloped countries that we are talking about are not in the interest of wealthy people in developed countries if they want to maintain their current standard of living.
Hmmm. So now we begin to understand why there is so much more charity than justice. Charity keeps people poor and dependent, and poverty makes people willing to accept substandard wages, and then they take more charity, and the cycle continues. And because of Haiti’s history (which I have not gone into) Haiti has been on the receiving end of charity in the extreme. As such, Haiti becomes a case study in what not to do.
My deep frustration (to the point of sarcasm) with this lies in the fact that so many of the charities providing aid are church-based, including the vast network of sister parishes in Haiti. The people involved usually do not understand the difference between charity and justice, and have not been educated to understand the difference or how it connects to their faith. Many church people want to be heroes, swooping into Haiti to save the day. I think that this feeling is fine and normal, but needs to be channeled in a more productive way.
Many people, including church people, are suspicious of income-producing projects as somehow threatening to our capitalist culture. And it is true: if everyone did as i am suggesting, the incomes of those who profit from the labor of others would go down, or prices would go up (which amounts to the same thing). This is what gets people really upset: my view is that would be fine. People in the U.S. are not accustomed to paying the full value of the goods they consume, because they get them from cheap labor that does not sustain life. And just how many houses and cars do people need?
Catastrophes are the one time that institutional charity makes sense to me. People need help to pick up the pieces (and to pay school fees) after everything has been destroyed. But it should not end there, and ususally it does. And there is something seriously wrong with our system of disaster relief: why are there so many relief workers driving around in new jeeps, while Haitians are still living in tents made of sticks and bedsheets?
