Special Report - Haiti

Look at these two pictures.  Which would you rather give to a child for dinner? If you donate £50 now then you will be ensuring that 100 children will eat the plate on the right at Christmas.

WER UK and our Dutch office Wereld Nood Hulp (WNH) have sent medicines, food and educational supplies to the value of £7.5 million to Haiti in the last year.

WER wants to expand its intervention in Haiti beyond just shipping goods, so WER UK Chair, Harry Covert Jnr. and I visited Haiti in October.  We wanted to identify projects that WER can be confident will have a lasting impact, and partners that WER can work with in the long term.

The visit concentrated on the slums around Port au Prince, an area called Cite Soleil where around 1 million people live in shocking conditions.

I was staggered by the awful scenes I encountered, and so I want to ask you to read on and then to donate immediately so that we can start changing conditions for the children living there. 

One of the most immediately noticeable features of Cite Soleil is the smell.  All slums smell bad, but I have never before experienced such a vile and toxic smell as I did in Soleil.  There is absolutely no sanitation whatsoever. Waste water, sewage and rubbish all rot together into a black ooze that is everywhere.  In places the sewage is deep enough to form streams of filth.  There are no crossings and locals, often barefoot, simply wade through it.  Children play in it. 

Homes are shacks of the lowest order.  Ill-fitted metal sheeting, plastic and rotting planks form walls and roofs of a kind.  When it rains the ooze and rubbish flow freely through all the buildings.  Families sleep surrounded by it. When they fall sick as a result, there is no free health care.  Many die. 

Some 25% of children in Haiti die before they reach 5.  In parts of the slum this is closer to 50%.

Where slum dwellers are able to earn money at all it is typically just $1 a day.  While prices have fallen back since the peaks of last year when a handful of rice would cost as much as 60 cents, it is still impossible for a family to properly feed itself on this kind of income.  Instead of rice and bread, the poorest families have to survive on food sources that have become infamous. 

I am talking about the mud cookies that have become the staple diet for the very poorest.

These cookies are made of clay, salt and a little vegetable oil.  These meager ingredients are mixed together and then baked in the sun.  They sell for around 5 cents each putting them within reach of the poorest slum dwellers, but they have almost no nutritional value whatsoever. 

I visited one of the cookie sellers, her customers were emaciated and pitiable.  They told me that they eat the cookies knowing full well that they will not provide any of the nutrients they need to survive.  Instead they eat them just to alleviate the pain of chronic hunger pangs.  Mothers give the mud cookies to their children to stop them crying, but the silence as they slowly starve, their bellies filled with dirt, is perhaps even worse.

I bought one of these cookies and brought it back with me.  I have shown it to my colleagues here who are all shocked that this could be considered food.

The mud cake, pictured above, is dry, tastes foul and offers no sustenance at all, whereas the plate on the right is a nutritious meal that I had the privilege of serving to children at the Good Samaritan School, run by Pastor Vincent.  WER wants to fund schemes that will ensure more children receive the meal, and not the mud cake.

Right now the choice really is this stark and if you donate any amount now you will be helping to make sure that children eat real food.

Working with WER has taken me to some of the world's harshest and most deprived areas, but I can honestly say that I have never seen worse living conditions than those I saw in Cite Soliel.  I have been almost speechless with sadness, and even anger, that people live in such utter squalor and destitution.  This is why I have taken the unusual step of putting this special report into our news, which ordinarily focuses on the positive aspects of WER’s work that you have been helping to support. 

In the longer term, WER is aiming to set up chicken projects through our Be a Good Egg campaign and with WNH, we will be providing access to safe water, meals and education for more students at the Good Samaritan School.  Our involvement in Haiti is really just beginning, and I promise I will keep you updated on our progress over the months and years ahead. 

Thank you for taking the time to read this special report. 

Best wishes,
 

Alex Haxton

Chief Executive