And then there are Lakes..

And then there are Lakes...

Fishes from one of the lakes from rural Haiti

      Sustainable development is more than your alternative spring break. After reading The Possible Negative Impacts of Volunteer Tourism, I sincerely hope that our future project will not be part of destruction and the beginning of community reliance on foreign aid.

*For those who are not familiar with the article above, I would like to make a quick summary of the potential harms of short term volunteering *

• The lack of skills of volunteer hinder work progress or completion of unsatisfactory work
• The decrease in employment opportunity for the local
• The neglect of local desire and the lack of attentiveness to the local needs
• The increase in foreign dependency 

* For those who are interested in reading this article by Daniel Guttentag, I have found an online version. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jtr.727/pdf

      With that all being said, I am more conscious of my actions and our future project to do the least harm as possible we can to the community. What we want to do is to educate them to start a business, to sustain a business and to expand the business. This way, the knowledge retain in the community years after we left the country. And I believed that this is what we are heading towards with the initial encounter with Dr. Viessman.  

      We had our first meeting with Dr. Viessman on Friday. She is such a dynamic and passionate lady. Through her eyes and the way she talks about Haiti, she is so fulled of compassion to the Haitian people that she calls her family. 

The Development of Lakes Community

      We get straight to work. Professor Orrs send us a link about a grant called Grand Challenges. Our group is very interested in applying for it because we think that the money would be extremely (extremely, extremely)  helpful in getting the Haitian a head start in their business. We will be looking in the application more closely and will be working on that this week since the due date is closing. 

     Our initial idea on how to use this grant money is to build 10 communities around the lake. We will provide each community with one boat, eggs and chicken farming materials, and perhaps a community center where children could learn and family could obtain clean water. We are not too sure about the logistics yet since it is only a very rudimentary idea.

      We would like to have the Haitian be the beneficiary of as much of the money as possible so we intend to have them build the chicken farming cages and also buying raw material from Haiti. All of our actions are constantly being evaluated with the negative impact of short term volunteering. All the ideas that we are implementing are requested by the Haitian people, this is their needs. We will work hard on the application  and will keep you updated!