Haiti Safe Water and Sanitation Project

Report to Madison West Rotary

Visitation by Mike Wenkman and Gayle Worf

February 7 – 17, 2006

We offer this report as a summary and evaluation of our Rotary District 6250 and Madison West Rotary Club’s several year commitment to this World Service project, based upon the experiences and experiences of our recent trip.

Some background comments: Our club and district(s), through Rotary International, has made this arrangement through World Vision, an international Christian relief organization which has been working in Haiti since 1959 and is dedicated to service and development of third world countries. In turn, World Vision signed a contract with Haiti Outreach (HO) to do the actual work of well drilling and sanitation. Local Rotary Clubs partnership participation was listed as Pignon and Hinche. The matching of club, district, Rotary International and World Vision funds have been previously described.

Haiti Outreach Involvement: HO is a comparatively small non-profit, private voluntary organization that has been in existence for perhaps 20 years, and is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. HO derives its financial support through various fund-raising efforts that includes fundraisers, private donations and large contracts such as this one with World Vision. Their mission is “to empower the people of Haiti so they’re able to improve their quality of life, strengthen their families, and become self-sufficient”. All of their projects stress community participation and volunteerism, that is, they endeavor to create a sense of ownership and long-lasting responsibility so that a permanent benefit can reasonably be expected. It is a philosophy that we can readily support, and we saw evidence of their achievement in this regard.

Their leadership is unique, which probably explains much of their success. Our trip leader was Dale Snyder, its executive director, and their Country Director is Neil Van Dine. Neil has lived in Haiti for 20 years, is married to a native Haitian, and knows the customs and culture very well. Both are extremely talented and dedicated to the Haitian people.

It is probably no accident that their Minnesota headquarters’ location coincides with that of Minnesota Rotary District 5950, which has given them strong support. Dale is a member of a Rotary Club in that District. Their enthusiasm, financial and personnel support is commendable.

Haitian Rotary Involvement: Two Rotary clubs are located in the central plateau area where this project is located. The (town of) Hinche Rotary Club is only about two years old, with about 18 members. They face problems, which is not surprising. And they are developing their own agenda, which they should. When we met with their leadership, they identified three huge project possibilities: shoring up and protecting the Hinche bridge supports from serious erosion problems; constructing an auditorium for their public secondary school; and re-designing and re-constructing the city’s soccer field. On a more modest level, their projects for this year include feeding some 200 “street people” and providing medical assistance for them. Some members of two Minnesota clubs invited them to submit a written proposal for assistance in the latter project. Incidentally, they seemed appreciative of the Rotary pins our club provided. The Pignon club is not involved.

An Overview of Our Week: We initially expected our itinerary to focus upon the clean water and sanitation project. It was in fact much broader than that. Our Haiti Outreach hosts labeled it as a “work/learn” opportunity – a very good description.

The safe water component included visiting several wells and water projects that Haiti Outreach has drilled, only some of which included RI support. We learned how they involved a Haitian “implementer”, community well committees (which must include at least one woman), a local “treasurer” to collect monthly (very modest) water use fees (to provide for future maintenance needs and for community ownership), and a local person trained to repair the well as needed. We also attended three separate dedication ceremonies (“inaugurations”) in communities where new wells had recently been drilled. These ceremonies were directed by World Vision, but conducted primarily by local citizens. They were religious in nature, included much singing, praying, giving thanks to Rotary, admonitions about care and management of the wells, and skits. Local Rotarians participated in two of them

Our work component involved primarily the maintenance and improvement of Haiti Outreach facilities. Their upstairs is rented to a one-year-old micro lending bank, probably similar to the one our club supported previously. We completed trim work for their facilities. HO was also nearing completion of a World Food Project in which local Haitians were employed to work on the highway from the cities of Pignon to Hinche in exchange for rice and beans. Our job was to organize remaining bags of grain and clean the HO warehouse. (And for the rest of the week, most of our people also doctored and scratched from the results of their encounters with the “grain itch mite”!) Some electrical and air pressure lines were repaired and expanded. And after our return trip was delayed for two days, we worked on a new home that Neil, our host, was constructing and funding for his widowed neighbor and four children. We also had opportunity to visit schools that HO built, saw the Pignon public market, attended Sunday Church with the natives, and purchased crafts at a fair put on for our benefit.

Our Impression in Summary: Our World Service Committee should feel very good about their selection of this project, and the club and District should have no qualms about continuing to support The Safe Water efforts enthusiastically!