News Archive

Working with an open heart

Picture: Jens Großmann

The five months gone by after one of the worst natural disasters in the history of mankind, Haiti's earthquake of January 12th 2010, which left over 220,000 dead, have meant for Kindernothilfe new challenges every day and forced learning processes. In Port-au-Prince, the Chilean journalist Nélida Pohl talked with Jürgen Schübelin, who took charge for a year of the Humanitarian Campaign of Kindernothilfe in Haiti, and the coordination of the reconstruction of the destroyed projects' infrastructure.

As a development organization committed to defend children's rights, was Kindernothilfe prepared for a catastrophe the size of Haiti's earthquake of January 12th, 2010?
No one can ever be prepared for such a substantial disaster. We always knew Haiti was a country with a high risk of hurricanes, and in fact we accumulated a lot of experience with hurricane Jeanne in 2004 and Noël in 2007, but the earthquake left, in such a small country, over 220,000 dead, 300,000 injured, and overall more than a million victims. Such a catastrophe escaped our imagination, and constitutes the worst nightmare for an organization dedicated to defend children's rights.

What was the first reaction of Kindernothilfe after the earthquake?
The first 48 hours were the worst because we had no contact with Alinx Jean-Baptiste, director of KNH-Haiti; we had no idea if our colleagues from the KNH-Haiti office had survived. At the moment of the earthquake I was in Chile, and managed to get to Haiti via Dominican Republic on January 16th. The day before a first team had made it into Haiti; in this group came our colleague Ruben Wedel and the first doctors of the humanitarian aid organization Humedica. I led the second group. In Dominican Republic the Civil Defense Corps got us on a public transportation bus and that is how we got to Haiti, carrying 2000 liters of water and 1000 liters of gasoline and diesel, plus medicines and surgical equipment. Our first headquarters here in Port-au-Prince were at Quisqueya School in Delmas # 75, where we were generously received together with several other humanitarian aid organizations.
Our first priority was to gather information regarding the state of our long-term projects and partner organizations, such as the Salvation Army, the Little Sisters of Saint Therese and their rural community development organization EPPMPH, Foyer Maurice Sixto, GADRU etc. The earthquake shook Kindernothilfe to its core, of the 12 schools we supported before the earthquake, 9 were either completely destroyed or their structure had been irreparably compromised, it was a heartbreaking scenario.
I will never forget what we saw at the Salvation Army emergency camp in Delmas # 2, thousands of children walking among the ruins, begging for water because there was not enough drinking water during the first few days. The stench of death in the streets, people looking for survivors among the debris, by hand because the available machinery was so precarious. At night the city was completely in the dark, except for some photovoltaic traffic lights, which created an even more sinister and apocalyptic panorama.

And which were the first actions taken by Kindernothilfe?
We immediately implemented the experiences learnt after the tsunami that affected the countries around the Indian Ocean, after the recent Indonesian earthquakes, and, here in Latin America, after the 2005 hurricane Stan in Guatemala and the 2007 earthquake in southern Peru. In all those opportunities KNH and its partners created Child Friendly Spaces (CFS), which are areas where only children can come, where we can separate them from the stress and panic, where they can eat and drink water without it being taken away by adults, and where trauma symptoms can be treated. Here in Haiti CFS are operated by our local partners such as the Salvation Army, AMURT, EPPMPH, MHDR and others. Today Kindernothilfe funds and provides assistance for a total of 14 CFS in Haiti, reaching almost 8000 children. We had experience with these safe space strategies, which have been now adopted by many other organizations, but it was never as complex as in Haiti because we had never before been in a completely devastated area of such vast proportions. To protect the children as soon as a catastrophe hits is one of the most fundamental tasks, and at the same time one of the least considered. There is no time of higher risk for children as after a disaster, their rights are never in more danger of being violated, neither are they more exposed to abuse. When the family disappears, children are left exposed to all kinds of abuse, for example in emergency camps, where overcrowding destroys the normal social controls, there the children suffer physical and sexual violence. CFS also make the children visible, they go every day, their names are recorded, as well as information regarding who are they living with and where, we register their contacts and that is how we identify children that have no family support. We cannot underestimate the capacities of children, for example the ones that lost their families quickly got together, or looked for acquaintances, school mates, etc.

Which are the next phases of the work of KNH in the medium and long term?
Well, after the first phase come big tasks in the near future, first we have to rebuild the school infrastructure, which will take us 2 to 3 years to complete. We have to remember that before the earthquake only 50 to 60% of children attended school, so our second big challenge is to expand the school coverage, now through the reconstruction projects we have already started.
Our third big challenge is to include in the reconstruction strategies of auto-sustainability and community development, because we want to transform the reconstruction process to strengthen community identity and improve life conditions. A huge task evidenced by the earthquake more than ever before was the fight against the reality of the Restavèk children (literally "stay with" in Creole), the worst affected by the disaster. Restavèk children do not have families, and do all house work for extremely poor families in exchange for a place to sleep and little and poor quality food. As the earthquake destroyed many of the houses where they lived, the demand for their work diminished, but in contrast the supply increased because many children lost their families. The Restavèk system is a flagrant violation of children's rights, intolerable after more than 200 years of no official slavery in Haiti. One of the most crucial problems is that the vast majority of Restavèk children do not go to school, which compromises their future without repair. The first step to improve their situation is to convince their employers to let them attend school, because education is a tool that will allow them to fend for themselves and provide opportunities once their employers get rid of them upon entering adolescence.
These children do not belong to the families they work for; they sleep on the mud ground while the family crowds on their single bed, and feed on leftovers. They wake up at dawn to fetch water on 18 to 20 liter buckets, which they carry on their heads. After that they need to clean the house, empty the urine containers they use during the night, they wash and cook, working from sunrise until way into the night.
Even considering all these aspects we cannot forget that the Restavèk system is a consequence of the extreme misery these children and the families live within, so in our work we cannot consider the families our enemies because they are part of a vicious exploitation circle of extreme poverty. Our job is to organize psychologists, social workers, local pastors to go knocking door after door, convincing the families that it is important to let the children go to school, emphasizing that school will not deter them from doing the house chores.
Before the earthquake we were working on the Restavèk issue with one partner organization, supporting approximately 450 children, now we have three partners and reach more than 3000 children in Port-au-Prince and Carrefour, but there are many more children we have not reached yet. The heart of the problem is doubtless in the cities, but we also know cases of people who recruit Restavèks in the countryside, selling the parents the fantasy of a better life for their children. That is why in recent years Kindernothilfe has strengthen its presence in the countryside, where we have to break with the lie that children will be better off in the city, by encouraging the debate about children's rights through the training of teachers, local community leaders, etc.
In this sense it is important to highlight that the first school reconstruction project KNH is doing is in the rural community of Coupeau (with the technical assistance of the Chilean architecture firm Habiterra, see articles on Coupeau), which constitutes a symbolic and political statement, we are sending a signal that says that rural education is extremely important, without it a country cannot exit the circle of poverty. This is a fundamental notion for us, one that few organizations have grasped. This has to do with the lack of rural infrastructure, there are no roads and all commerce and transport is done by foot with huge efforts, but it is a sacrifice we have to do in order to get to the people.

How is Kindernothilfe adapting to these new challenges?
For example we have increased our staff, our KNH-Haiti office grew from 3 to 10 members, and our main office in Duisburg created a special department to coordinate the projects in Haiti. It is also important to highlight that without the experience of our colleagues and partners in Latin America, who have already dealt with many catastrophe situations, we would not have the lessons, the knowledge needed to face these new challenges.