ARTICLE - "OUR DAILY CRUST"

WHEN THE DAILY CRUST DISAPPEARS: SEEDS OF CHANGE IN HAITI
(Red Cross) - By Sarah Oughton

This month, the global population is projected to top 7 billion. With the earth’s resources under increasing pressure, environmental cost and humanitarian consequences are inevitable.

For Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital city, built practically on top of a fault line and with an estimated population of two million when an earthquake hit on 12 January 2010, the impact, as we all know, was an unprecedented disaster.

As increasing numbers of people are being affected by natural disasters in both urban and rural contexts, protecting people’s means of living so that they can feed themselves and their families is one of the biggest humanitarian challenges ahead.

Joy Singhal, British Red Cross recovery programme manager, says: “In recent years we’ve developed our disaster recovery programmes with a focus on helping people re-establish their livelihoods and protect them from future disasters. Nobody feels dignified relying on handouts for a long time. The quicker people can regain an income, giving them the means to rebuild their lives themselves, the better.”

Recovery in Haiti

In Haiti, the British Red Cross livelihoods programme is helping earthquake survivors like Luciana Pierre Jean. When Luciana fell pregnant, she was abandoned by her boyfriend and disowned by her family. Her baby boy was born on the day the earthquake struck and Luciana lost everything.

Since then the Red Cross has provided her with business training and a cash grant. Luciana plans to use the money to start a small shop.

“Since the Red Cross training, I investigated to see what items are in demand,” she says. “I’m excited to start. I will invest a bit of money at first, to see if customers like the products, before expanding. I hope to save money so I can send my son to school.”

Luciana also took part in a community project, building stone walls to fortify ravines around her village and prevent flooding. This aspect of the programme was developed after local people explained how flooding, from the hundreds of ravines in the surrounding mountains, regularly destroys their crops.

Working on this project allowed Luciana and other vulnerable people to earn vital income (in addition to the cash grant), while also protecting their communities.

Building a safer future

We live in an increasingly complex world with both urban and rural disasters delivering more complicated challenges, which include healthcare, social, economic, environmental and cultural factors.

Building a safer future means looking at how vulnerable communities can build their ability to withstand disasters. Whether it be an earthquake, hurricane, flood or drought it is the underlying issue of poverty which is the biggest challenge for those who struggle to get back on their feet. Protecting people’s livelihoods and therefore means of securing food, water and shelter is core to mitigating the impact of disasters.

Throughout October, we’re running the Seeds of Change campaign to explain the issue of food insecurity and what can be done to help break the cycle of poverty and hunger.