Close quarters

After losing their homes in last month's earthquake, thousands of displaced Haitians have relocated to camps in the capital of Port-au-Prince. These high concentrations of people in small areas has raised sanitary and security concerns: Half of Haiti's homeless, according to a survey conducted by World Vision, fear robbery, rape, "evil forces," and general insecurity.

One of the groups trying to tackle these problems is South Africa-based ActionAid. By partnering with community members it hopes to create a safer environment for the vulnerable: women, children, and the elderly.

ActionAid, which began in the U.K. and has since spread to 42 countries, has worked in Haiti since 1996, improving water supplies and healthcare, and providing loans for small businesses. When the earthquake hit in January, none of the 24 staff workers were injured, but many lost friends, family members, and homes in the disaster.

Four days after the quake, the organization was able to collect itself and start working at six of the camps in the Mariani area of Port-au-Prince, where it has been distributing food and other basic items to 27,000 people. ActionAid also has been training volunteers to provide trauma support to their community so that they can find ways to deal with their grief.

When Jean Claude Fignole, ActionAid's country director for Haiti, first arrived at the camps, he was surprised to find that the people there had already organized themselves into committees to deal with security and protecting vulnerable groups. For instance, at one camp, a committee identified a space for women to sleep at night with the men sleeping around the area to prevent outside men from coming in.

"Our approach is to build on what's already there, not to come in with a new system and try to eliminate what's there," Fignole said. "We want to do as much as possible to build on what they're already doing."

ActionAid provides men with flashlights so they can patrol the camps at night, lighting walkways to provide safety and creating safe spaces for children.

For Fignole, who has personal ties to Haiti, the earthquake was just another blow to an already impoverished nation.

"As a Haitian, it's quite dramatic to see what happened to your country-to your city-that was already in such extreme poverty," he said. "You can see how difficult it is for us to rebuild and to get on with our lives."

Fignole does, however, find it encouraging to see what organizations are doing in the country and how other countries have shown solidarity in the past month. He believes that the best way Americans can help is to become more informed of who Haitians are.

"Start reading up about the country and it might give you a different image [of Haiti] than what the popular media shows," Fignole said. "What Haiti really needs right now is confidence, and if they think that people have a different view of them than what [Americans] think now, it will help them get back on its feet."

Related coverage:

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