ARTICLE - A NEW HOME NEEDS A NEW COUNTRY

HAITI: A NEW HOME NEEDS A NEW COUNTRY
(ReliefWeb) - By Heidi Reed - Source - Plan

A few weeks ago I travelled from Port-au-Prince to Croix-des-Bouquets to see the site where Plan financed the building of 100 homes for vulnerable women and their children in partnership with Haven, an Irish non-governmental organisation.

In the months after the earthquake, these families had been clustered in a small tent and tarp community that grew around a big mango tree and a patch of dirt where children played football.

Taking ownership
The small A-frame wooden homes with porches in the front are located on different parcels of land within about a mile radius of the camp - land that was either previously owned by the beneficiaries or signed over to them after a long, arduous process. The houses are recognisable by their bright red tin roofs.

In December the women signed papers and took ownership of their new homes. Many had participated in the clearing of their land and in the building process.

Moving out of the camp
I wanted to visit the house of the mother who I'd last seen carting her belongings in a green wheelbarrow from the camp over a grassy field to her new home.

Colourful laundry was now flapping in the wind on her clothesline. Her 3 young daughters were playing outside in the yard - the very youngest twirling around in her own imaginary world. It was a windy day. The young girl's nose was running. On her back was a clear see-through plastic and blue trimmed backpack with no books or papers inside. But she held on tight to a yellow pencil in her right hand.

A neighbour doing her washing on her steps shouted out that Plan was in the neighborhood, and so the mother of these girls emerged from the house, immediately lifting up her T-shirt to show off her big, pregnant belly. She said it had happened while under the tarps.

Safe shelter
Her name is Saint-Therese, she said. And then she twirled around too in the front of her house and sang a lyrical song - part happy, part sad. Plan and Haven had given her safe shelter with a door that locked and a new life outside of the camps, but not a new economy with plenty of job opportunities for single, pregnant mothers.

Donor funds fill one gap and another one opens. The needs of people like Saint-Therese in Haiti - an impoverished country without any real social services or safety nets - are so great, that a new home, as much as it helps a newborn baby avoid sleeping under a hot, humid tent, can't make it all better.

Pushing for change
Giving to Plan in Haiti helps us to expand our reach in the communities to help more vulnerable people to help themselves, but it also helps us to keep the pressure on the Haitian government -through our youth-led, child rights initiatives - to improve the structural systems that would truly make Haiti a more livable place for Saint-Therese and her girls.