Silas Crews In the rural Haitian town of Desarmes, 28-year-old Dieunold Sterling’s yard is filled with motorbikes he now has the knowledge to repair, each job a step toward his dream of establishing a full-service garage. Five years after a devastating earthquake, MCC’s Haitian partners have helped thousands of people find new opportunities in rural areas and get back on their feet in the capital city. (Learn more about Sterling and other vocational school graduates in photos 9-12).
Silas Crews “I don’t have any plan to go anywhere else. I feel like God has put me here, and this is where I’ll stay,” says Andrea Vilme, who moved into this home after three years in a tent of tarps and wood. MCC and local partner Christian Center for Integrated Development, with support from Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development, built a village of 100 homes, a market, playground and community centre in Cabaret, 24 miles from Port-au-Prince.
Silas Crews “Now we have land. We can plant a garden.” Gladys Joseph, her rented home in Port-au-Prince destroyed by the quake, moved into one of the new homes in Cabaret after living with friends. “There’s a place for the kids to play. You’re just more comfortable,” she says. For the first time, since she was sent to the capital as a child, she has a garden – corn, beans and okra. Her sugarcane is taller than she is, and the cactus for fence has begun to grow.
Silas Crews “When I came here, it was an enormous relief.” Verly Boulevard and his family had spent months in a tent camp, the children often sick and his fear for them growing as cholera spread. This home was built in 2011 through an MCC-supported project to repair or construct housing for people with disabilities. Now, Verly has built an extra room onto the house to rent out. “I said, ‘If somebody can come and help me, I need to do what I can to take the next step."
Silas Crews Marie Antoinette Créa Exumé and daughter Nancy Marc not only had their roof replaced and new plaster put on through this project of MCC, Church World Service and Haitian partners Christian Center for Integrated Development and Service Chretien d'Haiti. They also got a wheelchair ramp. Today Marc can move her mother in or out of the house on her own. “It changes everything,” Exumé says. “Now I’m able to go out. When it’s really hot inside, I can go outside."
Silas Crews Masons, such as Arnel Telimont, use what they’ve learned through MCC training on safer, earthquake-resistant building techniques. For Telimont, that means changing everything from how he digs a foundation to placing rebar through holes in concrete blocks and putting in horizontal beams after every few rows of cement blocks to help hold a wall despite shaking and pressure. (Read about how MCC hired a comedy troupe for its latest effort to educate the public about safer building practices.)
Silas Crews “What we need is houses. It’s a right that we have. It’s a responsibility of the state,” says Victor Louinel, right, who has lived in the tent camp of Caradeux since 2010. By working with MCC partner FRAKKA and community organizer Jackson Doliscar, left, he says he’s more able to speak up for his rights. “Before, there were a lot of things people could just do to me that I wouldn’t be able to respond in any way,” he says. (More on housing issues )
Silas Crews Germain Isaac fills a jug with clean water in Desarmes, a rural town in the Artibonite Valley, the centre of Haiti’s cholera outbreak. In response to the threat of cholera, MCC built 32 kiosks and 11 fountains, drawing water from springs in the mountains to town. A local water committee manages each kiosk or fountain. Families using the water pay a small monthly fee, which the committee can use for repairs.
Silas Crews The business skills that Mylande Bozil learned at an MCC-supported vocational school, Ecole Professionnel de Desarmes (Professional School of Desarmes), helped her better plan the inventory for her market stand and improve sales. The project to re-energize the vocational school, supported by MCC with a grant from Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development, is among MCC’s largest efforts to provide opportunity in rural areas.
Silas Crews “The school has had a good impact on the way I work,” says mason Nelson Alexil. “When you’re working like this, what you’re able to charge for work changes along with your own learning. Now, we can command a higher price.” That success opens doors for others, says school director Ramel Altidort. “When you create your own job, you will create a job for someone else, someone who didn’t have the opportunity to go to school.”
Silas Crews Dickson Dosthenes is transforming a typical harvest of chili peppers, common in Haitian cuisine, into a money-making opportunity. “Farmers don’t usually keep track of what’s going on the in the marketplace.” In school, though, he learned to plan around what would be most profitable. Realizing farmers traditionally harvested peppers in October, he planted early and harvested in August, when it’s rare to have peppers. At market, he was surrounded by eager buyers.
Silas Crews Thanks to the school’s classroom studies and practical training, mechanic Dieunold Sterling can complete complex repair jobs he once would have turned down. Better earnings mean his family eats better. He can get credit to pay school fees. And his dreams have grown beyond fixing bikes in this yard. He’d like to own a full-service garage, employ other graduates and start a parts store. “I’ve got a shop here,” he says, “but I want to have an enterprise.”
