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Help Matènwa, Lagonâve, Haiti |
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last updated 2/13/2010
check back for new updates |
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World attention is focusing on Haiti since the earthquake, but help that is slow to get to mainland Haiti will arrive even more slowly on the Haitian island of Lagonav (Île de la Gonâve), where poverty is even deeper than on the mainland, the resources are even thinner (about half the people with houses damaged or destroyed back in the 2008 hurricanes still have not received rebuilding aid), and government support or aid is virtually nonexistent.
One place the people on Lagonav can find support or rally together is at the amazing Matènwa Community Learning Center. The schoolyard, usually a place full of children playing and learning, has been a gathering spot for people afraid to go into their homes, hungry, looking for loved ones, seeking word of their high school age children who go to school on the mainland.
MCLC has people who know how to help already there, on the ground. They are already providing aid and comfort, using what communications network they can to help people reach loved ones on the mainland, providing a community gathering and support spot, and trying to expand their meal program for the children to cover the adults, too, but they cannot do this for long without help.
You can help the people of the Matènwa community on the Island of Lagonav right now by making a donation, either through Beyond Borders (use the drop-down menu to indicate you want your donation to go to the Matènwa earthquake relief fund) or through a VP Foundation donation to Courageous Women (Famn Kouraj). This local women's group has worked very hard to obtain status and rights for Haitian women and children. Now the group is turning its focus to recovery from this crisis.
If you wish to pay by check or credit card, donate through Beyond Borders.
If you want to use PayPal, donate through the VP Foundation link—it is easy to donate just one dollar through a PayPal account, if that is all you can afford. It all adds up. In a place where one dollar is more than half a day's wage for most people, it adds up fast.
Either donation route will quickly bring your help to the people who are doing things such as chartering a boat—the normal transportation infrastructure, such as it is, has been devastated—and using it to get food to the island before what little is left has gone. They will put your donation to the most efficient use possible. I challenge cowgirls and friends who can to match my ten-dollar donation to Famn Kouraj (that is a big donation for me in my present circumstances), but really, even one dollar is worth giving.
The local community and volunteers and staff involved in the MCLC live in one of the poorest, most environmentally devastated places on the earth, yet they have built the school, helped to foster gardening clubs and community projects, started Famn Kouraj (Courageous Women), and even begun reforesting in their neighborhood. Please help them to meet the special needs of their community in this time of crisis. No donation is too small to help, and help sent this way will go to work very quickly. This is a situation where a modest amount of timely help can add up to a big difference.
Refusing to Give Up Belief
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Staff from the Matènwa Community Learning Center (and friends) visit the tribal Head Start facility in Lapwai, Idaho on the Nez Perce Reservation. Indigenous peoples share many experiences, problems, concerns, hopes, and strengths. |
About my connection to Matènwa:
My dear friend Nancy Casey travels to Matènwa periodically to visit and help out and has begun an on-going educational/cultural exchange between the MCLC community and Moscow, Idaho. In late summer of 2006, Abner Sauveur, a director, founder, and teacher from the MCLC and Afélène Rosemond, one of the teachers, visited Moscow. Josh and I were honored to meet and visit and sing with Afelene and Abner. We arranged an excursion down to Nez Perce country, where they were able to meet with tribal officials and elders and visit the tribal Head Start facility, visit the headquarters of the tribal horse herd, enjoy a home-cooked meal that included traditional foods such as salmon, and more.
Josh and I were so impressed with Abner and Afélène. What they and other helpers have accomplished so far at Matènwa is astounding. They do so much, with so little, under conditions many would consider "impossible." I remember Abner talking about how some people say that in another twenty years their deforested island is going to be an uninhabitable rock, that it is not worth trying to help people hold on to a worthless piece of rock. He said that he did not agree with this, that it was his home and worth saving, that through hard work and education he and others would try to save it. He refuses to give up the belief that it is possible.
Today, if you see a close aerial view of the MCLC, it is beginning to look like a small green oasis. The school garden provides an increasing amount of food for the lunch program. Children are now treated with respect and taught in their own language, with lessons that include the things they need to know to improve life on the island where they live. They are beginning to face a future with more hope. Small trees born of Abner's dreams of reforestation and the work of many hands reach their roots into the sparse soil and rock of Lagonav, taking hold in what soil is left, breaking the rock into new soil.
The earthquake has thrown a new challenge to the Matènwa Community Learning Center, but they are used to challenges. With just a little more help, they can incorporate the challenges of this new disaster and still reopen classes, as planned, on Monday morning, continuing the important job of education while also aiding a stricken community. If you like helping those who help themselves and knowing exactly where your donation is going and whom it will help, this is a good place to lay your money down. I hold the MCLC and those who help channel donations to them in the highest respect and regard.
Learn more about the Matènwa Community Learning Center.
Learn more about the work of Courageous Women (Famn Kouraj).
Learn more about Matenwa and the earthquake from this radio interview with Nancy Casey.
Updates
Be sure to check back for new updates.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
See video of Lagonave in this report from CNN, "
The Forgotten Island". Transportation to and from the mainland, even for essential needs, is nearly impossible since the earthquake. Charities and the U.S. military use small planes and hovercraft to bring much-needed food and medical supplies.
Monday, January 25, 2010 from Sharon Cousins
UPDATE! 1/25/10 Classes are back in session at the MCLC! Way to go staff, students, volunteers, and community! Classes are being held outdoors, because the round building has cracked pillars and cannot be considered safe at this time, but classes have resumed. MCLC is currently the only school up and running on the island of LaGonave. Meanwhile, school staff and volunteers continue to assist communication between local communities, aid groups, and other NGOs and projects, to get help to where it is needed in ways that will result in equitable distribution with minimal confusion and violence. For more information, visit the
Matenwa Community Learning Center website. These people are so amazing. Please give what you can to help them regroup and rebuild and get their community back on its feet, so they can continue the splendid work they are doing.
Ongoing Video Reports from John Engle
John is the co-director of Haiti Partners, a non-profit organization whose purpose is "Helping Haitians change Haiti" by partnering with Haitian churches and schools to provide education and training. John lived for 15 years in Haiti, including in the area devestated by the earthquake. His short videos from the Port-au-Prince area on the Haiti Partners video blog show destruction, but also the inspiring resilience of the Haitian people.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010 from Nancy Casey
Thank you, thank you for your tremendous outpouring of support for the
situation in Haiti. People in Moscow handed me more than $1,000 on
Friday when I was working at the Fish Folks and Saturday at the Human
Rights breakfast. And more has been sent by mail and online.
I have begun making audio updates of underreported information. Here is
the first one.
http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/38933
I am going to set up a podcast as soon as I figure out how.
Sharon Cousins has made an informational website:
http://write-em-cowgirls.com/Help-Matenwa-Lagonave-Haiti.php
The situation on LaGonave: everyone is traumatized,survivors are pouring
in from the countryside and food is running out.
People in every community are talking, meeting, walking, and assessing
the situation. The Matenwa Community Learning Center
(http://www.matenwaclc.org) is working with partner organizations in
Port-au-Prince, such as Beyond Borders (http://www.beyondborders.net) and KONPAY
(http://konpay.org) on the logistics of food shipments. KONPAY was told by the
UN that they will not have access to any of the food or medical aid now
pouring in from the big agencies such as Catholic Relief Services, World
Vision, etc. and they were encouraged to continue working with the
partners they have to get food and supplies from their own sources. So
they are.
Prior to the earthquake the Courageous Women had been working to build
networks of women's groups in communities remote from the progressive
center in Matenwa, places where people have little education and don't
necessarily even know what an earthquake is. One of the concerns at the
progressive school in Matenwa is that the further away from the school
the communities are, the less people even understand what an earthquake
is. Aid never reaches them, and water is more scarce. So the
Courageous Women will focus the earthquake relief that comes to them on
these outlying areas.
A fundraiser is set for Sunday, February 21. Breakfast at the 1912
Center. More details soon. Help is needed for all the committees:
Food, publicity, entertainment, cleanup, etc. Contact L—-M— D— XXX-XXXX (Contact Sharon if you are local and need the event phone number). We still need an online/email contact person.
You can send a tax-deductible donation via the VP Foundation of Moscow,
ID, US partner to Courageous Women. PO Box 9757 Moscow, ID 83843. Or
you can donate online. You can tag your donation: Food, Shelter, Farming,
or "as needed".
"Farming" is important because it is almost time to begin planting
crops. People will buy food rather than seed, and will eat beans, etc.
that they might have planted. Donations will be used to buy seed and
expand a network of home vegetable gardens.
Other Ways to Help Haiti
You can contribute to a fund for solar cookers to be included in a shipping container of donated food, so the Haitians who get that food will have a new means of cooking it as well as a way to pasteurize unsafe or questionable water. For forty dollars, you can send a CooKit solar cooker, black pot, and WAPI (water pasteurization indicator) to Haiti. I just began a three-year term as a board member for Solar Cookers International, and this is a good way to help. This project will be a boost to ongoing solar cooking projects in Haiti, as well as providing relief to victims of the earthquake. From SCI:
Sacramento, CA, January 21, 2010 — Solar Cookers International (SCI), a not-for-profit organization founded in 1987, today announced the launch of the Haiti Project, which aims to send one complete solar cooking kit to at least 200 Haitian families that were devastated by the recent earthquake. The initial fundraising goal for this project is $8,000…
Other hard-working small NGOs with projects in Haiti who are being left out of the distribution of big aid emergency supplies and could also use your help:
Help Still Needed! Cowgirl Call to Action!
