Haitian Relief Through Fair Trade

Now you can support relief efforts in Haiti by purchasing beautiful Haitian fair trade crafts and jewelry. AlterNatives, HSP's sister fair trade boutique, has created a Haiti Relief section of its web page for products from fair trade producers in Haiti. We are going to donate 50% of sales from the Haitian product to Lamp for Haiti.

While emergency assistance is very important, assisting in job creation and opportunity in the next few weeks is going to be critical in rebuilding a positive and transformed Haiti. I’ve experienced in Guatemala that the communities who were helped through the market and business development had far more sustainability and positive results then their neighbors who were supported as long as it was the cause célèbre, but then abandoned when the next crisis took precedence. We can all see how the widows of Chontola are much better off for the investment in threads then corn 25 years ago. Chontola was one of the very first villages HSP worked with, first helping the women literally rebuild their community and then critically helping them form their own cooperative, Ruth y Nohemi, now an internationally successful business.

After hurricane Mitch hit Nicaragua, we focused on marketing the pottery from San Juan del Oriente. It really worked out that they were able to not only recapitalize from lost inventory but to sustain growth that continues today.

We do not feel that it is correct to “profit” off of the calamity and therefore are donating all proceeds from the sales of the product to sustained efforts to train and advocate for the poor of Haiti.

Blame for the Victim and Praise for the Predator: Haiti in the Wake of Devastation

A recent Op-Ed piece in the New York Times by David Brooks demonstrates the worst colonial mentality of blaming the victim. In a piece titled The Underlying Tragedy, Brooks argues that the voodoo culture and poor work ethic are the underlying causes of the economic woes of the country. He postulates that other former colonies have been able to pull themselves up by the boot straps and ask why not Haiti. He proposes to fix Haiti by changing the Haitian culture through programs to teach hard work, responsibility and thrift.

Mr. Brooks is either ignorant or overlooks a critical difference in Haiti’s history. The Haitian people have struggled under a significant debt load since colonial times as a price for their “freedom”. The islands example of liberation has caused fears in Northern capitals for two centuries and to this day the island’s attempts at self rule are blocked by anxious outsiders worried by the example Haiti could represent to its neighbors.

Haiti became the third revolutionary republic of the modern era, joining the USA and France, when François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture successfully defeated the French, then the Spanish and finally the English to obtain liberation for the enslaved population of the island. This liberation was short lived as chains of force were replaced by chains of debt. While the United States initially supported the revolution through the policies of President John Adams, this was changed by Thomas Jefferson who feared an independent state of black people so close to the United would influence the South’s enslaved population. Jefferson went so far as to advocate the emancipation and colonization of American slaves to Africa to prevent another Haiti.

Haiti was left isolated after the revolution and had no friends in the colonial West. Besides slave holding United States, all of her neighbors were colonies that depended on slavery.

In 1825 Haiti was forced to sign a treaty with France to prevent another invasion and forced slavery by European forces. France’s king agreed to recognize Haiti's independence only if the new republic paid France an indemnity of 150 million francs and reduced its import and export taxes by half. By comparison, the United States paid France 60 million francs for the much larger Louisiana Territory.

Haiti was forced to borrow money from private European banks to pay the indemnity. The banks charged high interest and administrative fees that further increased the debt burden. The nation did not finish paying the French for their freedom until after WWII. The repayment of these loans has been a major factor in the continued invasion and occupation of Haiti by the United States. From the 1960’s and beyond, Haiti has suffered under International Monetary Fund management that has done little but assure that all GDP would be channeled to serving debt hosted upon the Haitian people by the governments imposed upon this people by governments acting on behalf of international banking.

While CNN commentators are praising the American response to this crisis, there seems to be little understanding of why we invaded Haiti so many times in the 20th century or the continued role of the United States in defending the interest of banks. There is even less understanding of the long term structural issues created by these policies.

AMA Women Act & Inspire Solidarity with those in Haiti

Great news for everyone! The Mayan women of AMA have made their donation to their peers in Haiti, through the grassroots organization Rights Action. And better still, HSP has heard back from lots of people about how AMA's story of sacrifice and solidarity inspired to them to give to the relief efforts even though they themselves are struggling with economic hard times right here in the U.S. Here's just one of the many responses we received:

"Ben, thanks for that thoughtful and inspired breakdown. I will figure out a way to make some kind of a donation, especially considering the example of AMA. It becomes too easy with the amount of bills to be paid in the US to lose track of how lucky we are to be able to pay those bills." - Susan Posey

Folks have also really appreciated the recommendations and analysis. More is on the way, and we're really glad to see people carefully considering how to best support those in need, both through urgent short-term and necessary long-term efforts.

Haiti Relief - How to Really Help

We all want to help the people of Haiti as they deal with the horrific consequences of yesterday’s earthquake. While HSP isn’t capable of doing emergency relief work outside of Guatemala, we can recommend good folks who do, that you can donate to. Personally, I’ll be donating through Oxfam to help provide immediate emergency assistance.

HSP’s sister nonprofit in Guatemala, AMA(Asociacion de Mujeres del Altiplano), is also planning to donate funds as an organization. The impoverished Mayan women in AMA’s women’s circles plan to raise $250 for women and families in Haiti by the end of this week. These AMA women and their families live on an average of $300 a year, less than $1 a day, making their donation all the more meaningful.

AMA's intentions remind us of the parable of the Widow’s Gift (Mark 12:41-43), in which a poor widow gives her last two copper coins, and thus the greatest gift of all – all she has. AMA will be making their donation through Rights Action, an organization that supports grassroots humanitarian organizing internationally.


Give Now to these HSP recommended organizations

Oxfam has long experience in Haiti and is rushing in teams from around the region to respond to the situation where our assistance is most needed.

Rights Action funds and works with community development, environmental justice, human rights and disaster relief organizations in Guatemala and Honduras, and also in El Salvador, Haiti, Oaxaca and Chiapas.

Direct Relief has an ongoing "Emergency Pre-Positioning Program" and a program in Haiti that stages essential medical materials on site with key partners for immediate use in emergency situations.

Learn More about how to best support emergency relief and long-term aid

This post from the Blood And Milk blog is a good summary of relief vs. aid funding:

"Humanitarian relief programs are focused on rapid start-up, and rapid impact. Implementers of humanitarian programs need to gear up as fast as possible, and start providing necessary assistance as fast as possible. Their primary focus is not building local capacity, sustainability, or monitoring and evaluation. Their primary focus is getting help to people in need. They end when the emergency ends. Relief can come from the outside, and it is a response to some kind of breakdown or disaster.... Development programs are focused on achieving long-term change of some kind, with the intent of improving people’s lives and the lives of their descendants. They involve rigorous planning and ongoing operational research. They are rooted in local capacity building, because they are aimed at change which continues after the project ends. Even if it has outside support, development in the end has to come from inside.”

The blog, Good Intentions Are Not Enough has a great post entitled “Choosing organizations to donate to after the Haiti earthquake.”

AidWatch has posted “Haiti Earthquake: Help Navigating Complex Terrain of Disaster Relief.”

Tales from the Hood, written by an experienced aid worker, has a post—“Haiti”—just out providing information for donors as well.

Philanthropy Action has also posted “Advice for Donors to Haiti - providing advice based on research from the World Bank and the Fritz Institute”

An article “Haiti's Coming Public Health Challenges”, written by Alanna Shaikh at UN Dispatch.

An article from Michael Maren, the author of The Road to Hell – “From an expert: Haiti Donation Advice”

Colonialism and development

I read a great article by Duane Champagne. I have lifted a few passages from his article to highlight a systematic approach to understanding the relationship of colonialism on contemporary development practice.

Political competition, economic incorporation, cultural exchange, and biological resistance are major features of the colonial context

Each of the three dimensions of colonialism, geopolitics, market incorporation, and cultural exchange, presents critical threats to indigenous or colonized communities
Similarly, the increasing economic globalization of the world and the penetration of markets and trade confront each nation. If indigenous peoples are going to engage in trade, and if they are to achieve any comparative advantage in that trade, the price they must pay is increased economic dependency and loss of self-sufficiency. The movement from relative self-sufficiency to market dependency implies that Natives will need to compete or at least participate in the marketplace. Global market incorporation is a new form of economic relations for indigenous nations, and, once involved, each nation is confronted with the issues of producing for exchange, which often involves economic specialization of labor, production, and entrepreneurship. Native nations that cannot reorganize social and economic relations according to the demands of the marketplace will be forced into impoverishment. The observed result over the past several centuries has been the economic marginalization of many indigenous nations. Thus, once captured in the trade and market networks, and dependent on market relations for basic goods, each indigenous nation is confronted with the requirement to maintain production for the market and to change economic output according to its demands. The possibility that any indigenous nation is able economically to survive within the world market system is not only partly dependent upon available local markets, but also upon the organization of labor, skills, resources, and the economic culture of the indigenous group. The possibilities of change or marginalization are not wholly contained within the colonial situation of market relations and resulting dependency.
A third requirement faced by indigenous nations within a colonial context is cultural pluralism. Through cultural exchange, new values, norms, political models, economic ethics, religious worldviews, language and other cultural aspects will be transferred and internalized by some members of the indigenous nation. These new forms of cultural understanding may be compatible with indigenous culture, may be tolerated, or may lead to division as well as to cultural and political factionalism

Every colonized nation confronts the dilemma of how to manage multiculturalism. The response of community members of colonized nations may depend on the organization and exclusiveness of the indigenous worldview, the compatibility of indigenous cultural elements with the culture of the colonizers, the degree of indigenous control over the socialization of children and other elements.

In the colonial situation, each indigenous nation is confronted with protecting self-government, economic viability, and cultural continuity. If the biological dimension is added, then protection of physical health is yet another responsibility for colonized communities. Given the situation of colonial expansion, each indigenous nation must develop, from within its own institutional order, a strategy that will ensure meaningful survival, despite drastic change and unfavorable situations. Since each nation confronts similar issues of maintaining self-government, economic viability, and preserving cultural communities, it is possible to make systematic comparative empirical descriptions and historical analyses of the ways in which indigenous nations have tried to solve the demands of colonization (Skocpol 33-40).

To read the entire paper:
http://www.bilkent.edu.tr/~jast/Number3/Champagne.html

From Dependency to Agency

The mission of the Highland Support Project is to promote transformational development. A term that often needs to be defined. In the simplest terms, we define transformational development as fostering agency to end cycles of dependency.

We view poverty as a complex process rather than a singular condition. Focusing on indigenous communities, it is arguable that the greatest obstacle to sustainable development is the colonial legacies that forced entire nations into states of dependency that continue to be sustained today.

Therefore, it is imperative to analyze the effects of development and charitable programming to assess the degree that these policies encourage dependency.

Do not be afraid to fail

One issue we find over and over again in our work is the fear of people to fail. As an NGO, we are judged by the success and failure of our programs. We also find that many of the folks we partner with are afraid to fail. I know for myself, posting on this blog that I am supposed to handle has been poor because I want it to be perfect. I am going to follow the advice provided here by Perter Bregman and just do. It will not be perfect, but it will be.

Peter Bregman How We Work

How to Escape Perfectionism

3:10 PM Tuesday September 1, 2009

According to the World Database of Happiness (yes, there is one), Iceland is the happiest place on earth. That's right, Iceland. Yes, I know it's cold and dark six months out of the year there. I'm just giving you the data.

The secret to their happiness? Eric Weiner, Author of The Geography of Bliss, traveled to Iceland to find out. After interviewing a number of Icelanders, Weiner discovered that their culture doesn't stigmatize failure. Icelanders aren't afraid to fail — or to be imperfect — and so they're more willing to pursue what they enjoy. That's one reason Iceland has more artists per capita than any other nation. "There's no one on the island telling them they're not good enough, so they just go ahead and sing and paint and write," Weiner writes.

Which makes them incredibly productive. They don't just sit around thinking they'd like to do something. They do it. According to the psychologist Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi, who wrote the book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, "It is not the skills we actually have that determine how we feel but the ones we think we have."

So if you think you're good at something, whether or not you are, you'll do it. The converse is also true: if you think you aren't good enough at something, you won't do it.

A friend of mine, Jeff, has wanted for some time to start a business teaching guitar*. But he hasn't yet. Why? When you sift through his various explanations and excuses it comes down to one simple problem.

He's a perfectionist.

Which means he'll never think he's good enough at guitar to teach it. And he'll never feel like he knows enough about running a business to start one.

Perfectionists have a hard time starting things and an even harder time finishing them. At the beginning, it's they who aren't ready. At the end, it's their product that's not. So either they don't start the screenplay or it sits in their drawer for ten years because they don't want to show it to anyone.

But the world doesn't reward perfection. It rewards productivity. And productivity can only be achieved through imperfection. Make a decision. Follow through. Learn from the outcome. Repeat over and over and over again. It's the scientific method of trial and error. Only by wading through the imperfect can we begin to achieve glimpses of the perfect.

So how do we escape perfectionism? I have three ideas:

1. Don't try to get it right in one big step. Just get it going.

   Don't write a book, write a page. Don't create the entire presentation, just create a slide. Don't expect to be a great manager in your first six months, just try to set expectations well. Pick a small, manageable goal and follow through. Then pursue the next.

   This gives you the opportunity to succeed more often, which will build your confidence. If each of your goals can be achieved in a day or less, that's a lot of opportunity to succeed.

2. Do what feels right to you, not to others.

   My wife Eleanor is a fantastic mother to our three children. Sleep is extremely important to her and in her early days of parenting she read a tremendous number of parenting books, each one with different advice on how to predictably get children to sleep through the night. Each expert contradicted the next.
   The only thing those books succeeded in doing was convince her she didn't know what she was doing. It was only after throwing all the books away that she was able to find herself as a parent. It's not that she found the answer. In fact, what helped is that she stopped looking for the answer.

   What she found was her answer. And that allowed her to settle into her parenting. It made her calmer, more consistent, more confident. And that, of course, helped our children sleep better.

   By all means, read, listen, and learn from others. But then put all the advice away, and shoot for what I consider to be the new gold standard: good enough.

   Be the good-enough parent. The good-enough employee. The good-enough writer. That'll keep you going. Because ultimately, the key to perfection isn't getting it right. It's getting it often. If you do that, then, eventually, you'll get it right.

3. Choose your friends, coworkers, and bosses wisely.

   Critical feedback is helpful as long as it's offered with care and support. But the feedback that comes from jealousy or insecurity or arrogance or without any real knowledge of you? Ignore it.

   And if you're a manager, your first duty is to do no harm. A friend of mine, Kendall Wright, once told me that a manager's job is to remove the obstacles that prevent people from making their maximum contribution. That's as good a definition as I've ever heard.

   And yet sometimes, we are the obstacle. As managers, we're often the ones who stand in judgment of other people and their work. And when we're too hard on someone or watch too closely or correct too often or focus on the mistakes more than the successes, then we sap their confidence. And without confidence, no one can achieve much.

   Catch someone doing seven things right before you point out one thing they're doing wrong. Keep up that 7:1 ratio and you'll keep your employees moving in the right direction.

These three ideas are a good start. Don't worry about following them perfectly though. Just well enough.