- ATD Fourth World

One volunteer explains: “Now everybody is aware of the situation in neighborhoods where no aid has arrived yet. But people are scared and they speak about insecurity prevailing there. And it’s true that it’s not safe all the time. But if we’re all mobilized, we can overcome it, on condition that we do not allow the strongest people to intimidate others in order to take food, and sometimes steal it without a word. We have to believe that it is not inevitable. We must all be as determined as the families are to survive.”

She continues: “It’s impressive to see how people haven’t given up. Maybe that’s why international aid has taken its time to get here. Despite all the difficulties, even families who are very poor find small solutions day after day, as they’ve always done. Sleeping outside, living without electricity, walking great distances to get water, they are used to doing all of those things. That’s not enough to knock them down. What can knock them down is seeing injustice, seeing that they struggle every time, but that their efforts backfire. Since they never give up and keep trying to manage somehow, they are told that they slow down the flow of aid, that they are in the way. And the aid doesn’t make it to them. The country cannot die because the families have not given up, but once again, they are the ones who pay the highest price for it.”

Our team in Haiti, reinforced since February 3rd, is working in three directions:

• Food Aid: the goal is to ensure that food aid reaches the most outlying neighborhoods where the poorest families that we know live. Thanks to the Venezuelan Consulate, an initial distribution took place. A partnership with the NGO Action Against Hunger will lead to a nutrition project for children age 6 months to 5 years. Among these partners, the team has found people with whom it is possible to respect the families’ pride and think about the humiliation that the distribution of food aid can sometimes lead to. Members of the team, accompanied by young people, have begun taking a census to ensure that no child is forgotten, by going to visit each family. They have already listed over a thousand children and are continuing.
• Cultural project with children: a street library has been set up with children in a camp close to the neighborhood where the team lives, with the hope that the families whom we know could participate. But so far, they have not left their neighborhood, out of fear of losing the security that they have there: a place that they know, neighbors who help them and vice versa. In the camp, where the the population is mixed, the parents react strongly at the sight of the team arriving with books. The children rush toward them. Another street library takes place in Lakou, in the town center, in a center that welcomes children living in the streets.
• Resuming work at the St Michel health center, facilitated by the Haitian NGO “Service Oecuménique d’Entraide” (ecumenical mutual aid service), and which was created in partnership with the Movement many years ago to enable families to access free medical treatment. Despite the fact that they are mourning the loss of many people and the destruction of their own homes, the core medical team is still there: neighborhood health workers, nurses, a social worker, and a doctor. Members of ATD Fourth World’s team are supporting them in coping with the extra workload.

The team puts a lot of energy into making the families and the neighborhood known, and into reaching out to other NGO’s who have the same perspective: that no one should be abandoned. They are investing in building partnerships and developing with others a joint awareness that we need to think and act in a more subtle way. The team is working tirelessly to share the knowledge they have regarding what very poor families are experiencing, and to bring people into these neighborhoods, meet the families there, and overcome their fear. Because many of the aid workers haven’t distinguished between the destitution that all the victims are experiencing, and extreme poverty. One volunteer observes: “There are people who are housed in the camps and who have gathered their belongings in bags, people who need to be helped. But behind them, there are others whose existence the aid workers don’t even imagine, people who don’t even have belongings to protect. The workers don’t look further because they haven’t learned to. What they’re lacking is not knowledge of the country, it’s knowledge of people living in extreme poverty. Maybe what they’re lacking is the opportunity, in their own country, to have met people living in extreme poverty.”