Bayonnais, Haiti

How you can help the victims of the Haiti earthquake

There are a variety of groups working in Haiti, and they need monetary contributions to continue their efforts.

Partners in Health runs hospitals in Haiti and is currently providing medical care to earthquake victims.
OFCB (our Bayonnais partner NGO) - World of God (a North Carolina sponsor church of OFCB) is raising money to deliver a school bus filled with rice and beans to Bayonnais on Saturday, Jan 30. Bayonnais is currently providing food and shelter to around 300 refugees from Port au Prince, and gas is now $17 a gallon in Haiti, so they need all the help they can get. Mark the donation “Earthquake”.
Doctors without Borders is currently providing medical care in Haiti, as well as countless other places around the world.
Fonkoze is a micro-finance organization in Haiti and the DR that provides loans to Haitians (in the North) to help them improve their lives and rebuild after the quake.

Earthquake Update (1/14/2010)

Bayonnais is intact, and Gonaives is OK. They felt the tremors but there was little or no damage there. The students from Bayonnais who were in Port-Au-Prince for school have been accounted for and are alive except for two journalism students. The school building where they attended classes was one of the buildings that collapsed. They’ve not given up hope for them but had not located them as of last night. The students are all trying to find their way back to Bayonnais, since the schools in Port-Au-Prince will be closed for a while.

The EWB and NC team that was in Bayonnais during the earthquake is fine. They are returning to the country now via the Dominican Republic, since Port-Au-Prince is no longer a viable return route. They should leave the DR on Friday, 1/15.

Port-Au-Prince is in terrible, terrible shape. There is massive destruction. Here’s some description from Actionnel:

“…from a message to Vital from Dentist Simon, there many dead bodies on his street and I imagine that by the 22nd of January,there might be a lot of contamination around PAP. Fuel might be a major problem. Getting food will be another issue. From what I have heard from the local radios, the Capital will dead in the next six months and every student from the 9 other departments are being asked to return home, for no school can be possible in PAP soon. All the radio stations in Port-Au-Prince are out of use. Only Haitel cell phones are good, but there are no phone cards for them.

Simon told Vital through Haitel,which is the only one working in Haiti now, that even on their street there many dead bodies and there is no means to walk anywhere.Yet, if it is possible, they [the college students] are coming back home tomorrow. They are just strapped.

Madecene Alcius and Jodes Miliacin [the two journalism college students] are still not seen and the school they were at /in has been collapsed and also the Palace of Justice where they used to go to practice.”

“The whole country is a chaos right now” [ this would be because people all over Haiti could have family or friends in PAP].

Once again, Haiti has been dealt a cruel blow by nature, having gotten through the hurricane season with little problem. It sounds like conditions in PAP will persist for quite a while. The US talking heads, desperate for communication from Haiti, repeatedly asked Haitians if they had heard the government bringing heavy equipment to their area. Fat chance, unfortunately. Being the poorest country in our hemisphere really is awful in a time like this. Our government is mobilizing help, as are many other organizations. Many prayers are needed, for the country, for the people of PAP, for the millions of Haitians and Haitian-Americans who have relatives in Haiti and can’t find out if they are dead or alive. Please also pray that the two missing college students, that somehow they have survived this.

Bayonnais

DONATE : Help us improve the lives of the beautiful people in the Bayonnais Valley by donating to EWB - Haiti to help provide power for a school and design the first medical clinic in the area.

The Bayonnais Valley in Haiti is a remote mountain valley in the North of Haiti with little to no infrastructure or access to services of any kind. OFCB, a local NGO, built and runs a school there that provides education and food to 1700 students. They have been training medical staff and are planning on building the first clinic in the valley.

Since 2004, the EWB-SFP Haiti Project Team has been in partnership with the local NGO in Bayonnais to help the community. Throughout the years, the team has helped to provide a hybrid-electrical system power to the school, construct a bridge, and reinforce existing structures. The team’s current project is to build a medical clinic.

Medical Clinic

Haiti has the highest childbirth and infant mortality in the Western Hemisphere. It is estimated that 62 of each 1,000 children don’t survive to their first birthday and the average lifespan only reaches the mid-50’s. In a valley of around 80,000 people with no local medical care, hospitals or doctors, building a medical clinic has been a priority of the village since 1999 when the local NGO sent its first doctor to be trained in Port-au-Prince and purchased the land where the clinic is to be built.

The goal is to have the clinic built by the time the first doctor graduates in 2012. The Haiti Project Team, in collaboration with the local NGO, is working on all aspects of the build including the clinic design, and power, water, and sanitation systems.

School

OFCB, a local NGO, has been running a school in Bayonnais since 1993. This school provides a quality education to students who would not otherwise be able to attend school. In addition, the school provides one meal per day to the students. For many of them, this is the only real meal they will eat. There is no electrical service in the area, so the school has to provide it’s own power. EWB installed a hybrid solar power system for the school in 2005 to reduce diesel costs. The school had been running 100% on their diesel generator, but this system has allowed the school to run the generator only 3-4 hours per day.

The power is used to light the school and run a computer lab for the students and the administrative computers, among other things. Having power also allows OFCB to run an international Sponsor-a-Student program that provides help for many of the kids at the school.

EWB is currently planning an expansion of the solar system from a 3 kW solar PV array to a 4 kW one. This will allow the school to use less diesel fuel running the generator, thereby both helping the environment, and their budget in these difficult economic times.

Bridge

The Bayonnais Valley is connected to the rest of Haiti through a single dirt road, which is often flooded and cuts off half of the valley from the outside world. The road crosses through the Bayonnais River, which becomes completely impassable during the rainy season, splitting the community into two parts. EWB-CU at Boulder designed and built a bridge between 2004 and 2006 to solve this problem. During the recent flooding in 2008, the approach to the bridge was damaged slightly, but the bridge survived and minimized the impact of the enormous flood.

For more information on the Haiti project, send an email to