Sustainability

Please excuse any redundancy in post. I have been informed that some people who received the post didn\’t receive the correct post to go with it. So here goes again.

Our last several blogs have been dark. I have not meant to sound negative or discouraged; rather I hoped to give you a sense of being immersed in the daily struggles here, to make real the despair that our hearts have become hardened to amid the bombardment of sensationalized media.
I hope it gives you, our partners, an insight into why Denise and I share such a passion for being instruments of hope and change.
As we have gone through these events with the people here, we have seen the futility of so many efforts. And we confess some of ours. But that makes it all the more important that the work we do leads to true self sustainable changes.
Recently I was part of a conversation with Elwood and Robert. Elwood stated that some people define sustainability to be providing jobs, but the jobs are based on an external revenue stream from charitable foundations; we all agreed, that is not sustainable.
Based on that conversation I have come up with the following working definition of sustainable:
Use the resources you have, add value and monetize the results.
On Friday, February 7th, we had two meetings that illustrate our attempts at developing sustainability.
The first was a meeting about agriculture. Present at the meeting was Fr. Gracia, Sr. Pat, Guy Marie, our agronomist, Denise and I. During the course of the meeting we addressed many hindrances and problems we are facing. After two hours of intense discussion we condensed all the issues down to two root problems: Fear and lack of communication.
The fear is a very deep-rooted cultural issue. When someone leaves a job and someone is hired to fill the position, in Haiti, people believe that the person hired stole the job, often with dangerous consequences ranging from making life long enemies to revenge actions, sometimes death.
Sr. Pat told of one instance when a manager of chicken house project died after only working three months, they could not hire another manager for some time because people would believe that the new manager had killed the previous manager to get his job.
When John Louie quit his job as overseer of the Fr. Jim agriculture project he did not understand that it was under the umbrella of that position that he provided other services to us. He does not understand that he did not work for us, he worked for the parish. He quit his job because he did not want to work for Fr. Gracia and Fr. Gracia is in charge of the parish, not us. We work for the parish as well.
He did not want to work for Fr. Gracia because in his mind, Fr. Gracia “stole” Fr. Jadotte’s job. John Louie does not understand the concept of the structure of the church. Ignorance combined with stubbornness and pride is a very powerful force.
Unknown to us, this fear has affected all the Haitians that have worked at the center. Guy Marie explained that technicians that he sends to work at the center stagger their arrival and departure times so that no one can predict when they will be there.
Fear is a very difficult thing to overcome. I believe that it can be overcome with faith, love, education, patience, and communication.
Lack of communication is the second root problem and something we can overcome. As our agriculture group, APWOKAPRIM, has developed it has grown in an organic process. It now has over 500 members and communication has become clumsy at best. We realize that it is time for the group to develop and adopt a formal structure with defined lines of communication.
It is not our intention to mandate a structure, rather to provide an environment and assistance for the group to develop a structure that works for them.
This develops sustainability of APWOKAPRIM by taking the resource available, the group, adding value, the structure, and ending up with a valuable resource to help carry out the goals of the group which is to increase the income of the farmers.
Our second meeting was with Fr. Gracia and Sr.Julien, the nurse who runs the clinic in Kalabat. This meeting was to develop a mobile clinic at Garcin. This will be an experiment with two goals, one to provide medical services and two, that it be partly self-sustaining.
To begin with patients will pay 150 gourdes, about $3.25 US. 100 gourdes of this is for the service and 50 gourdes goes into a fund to replenish medicines. This is only partially sustainable because 50 gourdes does not come close to covering the true cost of medications. The majority of the medicines that we have are donated and we have agreements with the donors not to sell any donated medicines. However there are medicines needed that are not donated and we will have to replenish stock between donations of medicine.
If we had to buy all the medications, it would be impossible for the people here to afford health care.
The clinic will be held once a week beginning on Tuesday February 17th.