Domes for Haiti is a grassroots humanitarian relief project based out of Brooklyn, NY. We are building portable pre-fabricated geodesic domes to send to Haiti as an immediate solution to provide transitional hurricane and earthquake resistant shelters. The geodesic dome has many advantages to conventional structures which make it ideal for disaster relief. Namely strength, speed of assembly, energy efficiency and an aerodynamically sound shape.

One of these victories was won in early June. A baby was brought into one of Project Medishare’s mobile clinics in a remote community in Haiti’s Central Plateau. She was four months old and weighed only five pounds. Her cleft lip and palate were so severe she could not form a seal on her mother’s breast and therefore could not nurse. She was malnourished and on death’s doorstep.

This seemed like a simple enough problem to fix; a feeding tube for the infant and a breast pump for the mom would suffice until the next cleft-surgical team arrived in Haiti. Formula feedings were not an option as there was no refrigeration in the child’s home. Unfortunately, even simple fixes cannot be taken for granted in rural Haiti. The mobile clinic sent the baby and mother to the regional hospital in Hinche with one of Project Medishare’s drivers and nurse practitioners. The regional hospital did not have any pediatric feeding tubes there so the staff called the hospital in Cange only to find that they did not have a pediatric feeding tube either.

Project Medishare’s doctors and logistics staff looked everywhere for a pediatric feeding tube and breast pump. The baby and her mother were brought down to Hospital Bernard Mevs Project Medishare in Port-au-Prince, where the feeding tube was inserted and the mother was instructed in its use. Both mom and the baby are home now, with the child gaining weight and awaiting the arrival of our surgical team in a few weeks to permanently repair her cleft palate.

What seems like the perpetually grim news for Haiti is not always the case. There is hope for Haiti. Countless lives, as precious as this child’s, are in the balance. Maintaining these avenues of hope will be difficult without your help. Project Medishare cannot thrive without the support of our generous donors that allow us to save lives like this precious baby. Please consider making a donation to Project Medishare today by clicking here.

Thank you,

Dr. Barth A. Green

click here to few some great pictures

Bound by Haiti is the story of Aaron Jackson and John Dieubon – two young international activists forced to deal with the tragedy of the Haiti earthquake first-hand. Raised on a resort in Florida, Aaron has dedicated his life to eradicating intestinal parasites in Haiti. Born and orphaned in Port-au-Prince, John’s mission is to inspire a new, self-sufficient generation of Haitian children.

But when the earthquake of January 12th strikes, Aaron and John must confront the biggest challenge of their lives. The filmmakers, staying outside Port-au-Prince, captured the tragedy immediately after this devastating event. Featuring rare video and photos from immediately following the earthquake, Bound by Haiti follows these unlikely friends on a journey for change before and after one of the most catastrophic international events of our time.

PORT-AU-PRINCE—Last January, hundreds of thousands of Haitians lost their lives and millions lost their homes in an earthquake that flattened much of the capital. A year later, Haitians appear to have lost something else: hope.

The impoverished Caribbean nation marks the anniversary of the Jan. 12, 2010, quake on Wednesday with little to cheer. Haiti’s government, which itself was hit hard by the quake, has been incapable of responding to the crisis. Foreign aid has trickled in, and a rush of well-meaning charities have led to chaos.

Piles of rubble still clog the streets; at the current rate, it will take 20 years simply to clean up the mess. Nearly a million people still live in about 1,300 makeshift refugee camps that occupy every available parking lot and open space in the capital. With each passing day, the camps take on a more permanent look.

“We are just completely discouraged now,” said Fai-na Bernadette, a 24-year-old nurse who has been living in a soccer field in Petionville, a suburb of the capital, alongside 3,000 other refugees.

A symbol of Haiti’s lack of progress is the half-collapsed presidential palace, a grand, tropical version of the White House with its own majestic front lawn. During the quake, the palace’s great white dome fell to one side, the portico collapsed and the walls cracked.

During a visit two months after the quake, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said France would rebuild the palace. One day in April, two cranes arrived and began clawing at the structure. That night, they left and never returned. Both Haiti and France decided the money was more urgently needed on other projects, according to France’s ambassador to Haiti, Didier Le Bret.

A guard standing outside the palace gates had a different suggestion: “They should just leave it as it is, a symbol of our failed politicians.”

If the past year has proved anything, economists say, it is that the kindness of strangers—either through aid from other governments or private charities—can’t on its own help Haiti create a brighter future. The only real hope, economists say, is taking steps to create jobs and build a stronger economy.

There are some faint glimmers of hope on that score. On Tuesday, Haiti, in conjunction with the Inter-American Development Bank, the U.S. and a big Korean textile firm, announced a new industrial park to be developed in the north of the country they hope will provide 20,000 textile jobs in the next seven years. The park could spur additional investment by other textile firms.

“This is how things should work and seldom do,” said Paul Collier, an Oxford University development economist. Mr. Collier said that through building up a robust textile industry, Haiti could provide as many as 200,000 jobs and eventually pull itself out of poverty.

Mobile Pediatric’s volunteer doctors, nurses and emergency medical staff responded to the disaster. While Haiti has faced a hurricane, flooding and cholera, Mobile Pediatric has continued to stand by the Haitian people in our mission to improve the children’s lives and the medical services in Haiti. But things are worse here in Haiti today than they were a day after the earthquake. I hope today that you will continue to show your support as you have in the past.

Raising awareness is a crucial first step, but alone, it is not enough. Ten years after the passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000, our field needs to get beyond the goals of simply raising people’s awareness – armed with information, we are now ready to take concrete action.

Polaris Project is committed to creating a world without slavery and to equipping all of our supporters with the knowledge and tools to take meaningful action. Click here to read our post on our North Star blog with ideas on three concrete things you can do today to take a stand against human trafficking.

Watch the video and hear from Polaris Project staff members about what shocked them when they first learned of human trafficking and some ideas of how you can help us end it!

Thank you for your commitment to helping us create a world without slavery.

Sincerely,
Johanna Olivas
Program Associate
Public Outreach and Communications

Sadly, the disease is also the focus of political debate because the people of Haiti believe it is the result of UN peacekeepers who are working in Haiti who may have brought the disease with them. According to the New York Times, local protests left two people dead as demonstrators directed their ire at the peacekeepers, a 12,000-strong, multinational force that arrived in Haiti in
2004 in response to political conflict. The UN believes the protests are an effort to push the troops out of the country prior to the upcoming presidential election on November 28 in order to encourage chaos and destabilize the country.

Sadly, the protesters have made it harder to treat the victims in Cap Haitien, where supplies are running low and the death rate is high.

While South Asia is home to many strains of Cholera, officials found that the bacteria, which lives in feces, had contaminated a river where Nepalese troops who arrived in Haiti in October shortly before the outbreak began. Prior to this outbreak, Haiti has not suffered from Cholera epidemics in this century.

For the medical staff attempting to treat and contain this disease, the issue of where this Cholera strain came from is not the focus. They are struggling to save lives, contain the infection and prevent spread.

From the New York Times, Studying the genetics of the strain “would give a better idea where it came from,” said Dr. David Sack, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who studies cholera outbreaks, “But I agree it is more important to prevent the disease and control it. It should not be killing people.”

As of this week, the death toll has reached 1,034, with 16,799 people treated for cholera or symptoms of the disease.