By Bev­erly Bell, Other Worlds

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At the request of the Plat­form to Advo­cate Alter­na­tive Devel­op­ment in Haiti (PAPDA), Other Worlds has pro­duced a new report, “From Dis­as­ter Aid to Sol­i­dar­ity: Best Prac­tices in Meet­ing the Needs of Haiti’s Earth­quake Sur­vivors.” Writ­ten by Other Worlds Coor­di­na­tor Bev­erly Bell, “From Dis­as­ter Aid to Sol­i­dar­ity” doc­u­ments the prob­lems with the inter­na­tional aid and recon­struc­tion efforts in Haiti, and presents inno­v­a­tive alter­na­tive mod­els of human­i­tar­ian relief.

From the exec­u­tive summary:

The inter­na­tional response to Haiti’s earth­quake, involv­ing bil­lions of dol­lars and led by the U.S. and U.N., comes with many prob­lems. Notable ones are con­trol of aid dol­lars, impo­si­tion of eco­nomic recon­struc­tion plans, and mil­i­tarism. More­over, the Hait­ian state and grass­roots have largely been denied for­mal oppor­tu­ni­ties to shape, or even engage in, the process. Nev­er­the­less, ordi­nary Hait­ian cit­i­zens are engaged in their own human­i­tar­ian aid. With no more than their own hands, their slim resources, and their com­mit­ment to com­mu­nity, cit­i­zens have com­prised the bulk of search-and-rescue teams, first respon­ders, and ongo­ing aid providers. Behind the ges­tures are philoso­phies of sol­i­dar­ity, mutual aid, col­lec­tive resilience, and resourcefulness.

Some grass­roots groups have taken the same impulses and turned them into orga­nized pro­grams. They are offer­ing shel­ter, med­ical care, com­mu­nity men­tal health care, food, water, children’s activ­i­ties, leisure activ­i­ties, and secu­rity. Some of the pro­grams also offer edu­ca­tion and a sup­port­ive social struc­ture, while oth­ers pro­vide a launch­ing pad for com­mu­nity orga­niz­ing to shape their country’s future. This report explores ten of these aid and sup­port ini­tia­tives, which are only a small sub­set of those now under­way through­out Haiti. Together, the efforts offer a dif­fer­ent vision and prac­tice of what ‘human­i­tar­ian’ means. And they serve as a guide to what a soci­ety which priv­i­leges mutual aid over profit, and demo­c­ra­tic par­tic­i­pa­tion over dom­i­na­tion, could look like.

http://www.otherworldsarepossible.org/another-haiti-possible/disaster-aid-report