Massage from Harvard For Haiti. ABA LOKIPASYON! Solidarity in Action: what can we do?· A former US president is leading a sovereign country’s reconstruction process· No effective mechanism for the UN system to hear the voices of 1.7 million internally displaced people· 8 months later and with billions of dollars pledged, the majority of a city still lives under plastic STAND UP AND SUPPORT SELF-DETERMINATION FOR THE HAITIAN PEOPLEGuest visitors: Brian Concannon (Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti), Mark Snyder (International Action Ties)Thursday, September 9 at 6 pm, FXB Center G-13 (basement), Harvard School of Public Health: Come hear insights and experiences from activists on the ground and in Boston. Discuss with others how we can play a role in promoting sovereignty and human rights for the Haitian people. Join an international solidarity movement to support Haitians in fighting exploitation and directing their own reconstruction process.Harvard School of Public Health FXB Center: 651 Huntington Drive, Boston, MA 02115Contact dpanchang@gmail.com for more informationAba Lokipasyon: Haitian Kreyol for “down with the occupation” |
Beat Disability-By Embracing It
Equity and Inclusivity
Sabeena Jalal
"To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beautyto its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget."- Arundhati Roy
We are also on the face book : "Beat Disability"
Search My Posterous
Subscribe
Harvard For Haiti - 8 months post disaster
"Clinic of Hope", opens in Haiti
Source: HHI Klinik Lespwa, "Clinic of Hope," opens in Haiti  Since February 2010, HHI has coordinated the medical care of residents of Camp Hope, an HHI-Love a Child-American Refugee Committee partnership camp that is home to 1,700 Haitians displaced in the aftermath of January's earthquake. Klinik Lespwa serves more than 50 amputees, 700 children, and 170 individuals requiring medical assistance for independent mobility. In addition to providing medical leadership for the clinic, HHI's physicians are working closely with Haitian nurses to provide basic medical services for Camp Hope. The team is also implementing public health programming, medical education and training for local staff in order to strengthen the local medical network and build capacity in existing clinics. |
Haiti Field Hospital at Risk of Closing!
Received from Dr M . VanRooyen
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
Source: Harvard Humanitarian Initiative | Harvard University | 14 Story Street | 2nd Floor | Cambridge | MA | 02138
|
Haitian Singer and His Guitar Fight Urge to Weep. Thought with a passion: "how can one help but not fall in love with a people?"
|
Source: 
Todd Heisler/The New York Times
Beken, born Jean-Prosper Deauphin, sings songs about despair and redemption that resonate deeply with Haitians, especially in times of tragedy. By SIMON ROMEROPublished: March 4, 2010PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — His pack of Comme Il Faut cigarettes was almost depleted. The smell of rotting garbage on the street and fried pork from a stall next to his tent filled the air in Place St. Pierre. Some children looked at his crutch and grew silent. Beken, one of Haiti’s most gifted musicians, exhaled a veil of smoke.
Multimedia Todd Heisler/The New York TimesBeken performed at a small open-air cafe in Pétionville called Break-Time. Todd Heisler/The New York TimesBeken, 54, lost his right leg at age 12 in a car accident. The quake destroyed his home, pushing him and his wife and three children into a squalid tent camp in Pétionville. “I should be in Miami living off the proceeds of my records,” said Beken, born here 54 years ago as Jean-Prosper Deauphin before adopting his stage name (pronounced Beck-ENN). “Instead I’m living in the filth of this place,” he said, summing up a predicament unbeknown to many who revere his songs.
Haiti is astonishingly rich in music, with musicians who are more successful and famous than Beken, including the Port-au-Prince hip-hop group Barikad Crew and the protest singer Manno Charlemagne, who now lives in the United States. But few composers occupy a space quite like Beken’s, whose songs of despair and redemption strongly resonate with Haitians during times of tragedy.
Peddlers sell pirated CD collections of his songs, including “Tribilasyon” (“Tribulation”) and “Mizè” (“Misery”), on the streets of Port-au-Prince for about $1.30 apiece. Gritty photos of Beken, who lost his right leg at age 12 in a car accident, accompany the CDs. He sings in Haiti’s troubadour tradition, playing a guitar and emphasizing contact with the audience in songs of lament, humor and sometimes politics.
“Beken usually sold best after a hurricane,” said Jonas Gaspard, 25, a merchant selling bootleg music on a street near the wrecked presidential palace. “But since the earthquake, demand for his music is the strongest in years,” he said. “The customers love the way he sings about suffering.”
Beken knows a thing or two about life’s trials. Disabled as a child, he excelled in composing music. He enjoyed some success, particularly in the 1980s, when he traveled to play for Haitians abroad in New York, Montreal and Miami, before some bad decisions with his money pushed him into penury. He described himself as a “sentimental musician,” and said he had fallen in and out of love too many times to remember.
Then came the earthquake. It destroyed his home, pushing him and his wife and three children into one of the city’s most squalid camps, in the Pétionville hills. They live in a tent across from the Kinam Hotel, a gingerbread-style mansion where foreign diplomats and aid workers sip rum sours on a porch overlooking a swimming pool.
Despite his reservoir of talent, Beken seemed to be on the edge of desperation in the tent camp. In a rare display of emotion among the often stoic inhabitants of this city’s camps, his eyes became watery and he appeared on the verge of weeping as he described how the earthquake had affected him.
“The only thing I can do is play music, and I haven’t touched my guitar since Jan. 12,” he said. “I’d like to make a song about my school,” he said, referring to the St. Eternité school for disabled children, where several students died in the earthquake. “But I don’t think I have the strength to write songs at the moment.”
At dusk in front of his small tent, Beken begged off an appeal from some admirers that he play a song or two. “Come back another day,” he told them. “Maybe I’ll find my guitar.”
Other Haitian musicians are also having trouble finding their voices again. Richard Morse, leader of the popular group RAM, said he skipped composing a song for this year’s Carnival because he thought Haiti was not ready for celebration. Mr. Morse, who also manages the bohemian Hotel Oloffson, was evacuated on a military plane for treatment in the United States after being getting a kidney stone after the earthquake. At least seven musicians in his 18-member band are living on the street, their homes destroyed.
“We’ll perform again, but I’m not sure when that will be,” Mr. Morse said.
Beken says he draws inspiration from other Haitian balladeers like Rodrigue Milien, part of a folk tradition that blends acoustic Cuban and Haitian influences.
“This is a beloved role in Haitian expressive culture, the honest but sometimes dissolute social commentator through music,” said Gage Averill, an ethnomusicologist at the University of Toronto.
By one evening last week, Beken had found his guitar, taking it to a small open-air cafe in Pétionville called Break-Time, where people were eating bouillon tet cabrit (goat-head soup) and nursing bottles of cold Prestige beer.
Break-Time’s owner welcomed Beken and got him a chair near the bar. Beken asked for a Marlboro cigarette, which he slowly smoked as he strummed his guitar. Then he began to sing, in Creole, old favorites like “Ambisyon,” “Patience” and a passage from “Imiliasyon”:
For you little peasant working in the fields;
The rain never falls;
Take courage;
This will change one day!
Suddenly, people in the cafe began singing with him. The lyrics seemed familiar to everyone, as if embedded in a place reserved for memories of what life was like before the earthquake wrecked the city. The crowd was singing about suffering, and perhaps forgetting about suffering at the same time.
“Beken should be a rich man but he is not,” said Joseph Guyler Delva, a Haitian journalist in the audience who was one of several people to embrace Beken between songs.
Beken himself had a look of surprise, and something approaching delight, as he performed that night. He returned to his tent amid the stench of Place St. Pierre clutching his guitar. “I can sing again,” he said. “Maybe that means I can write a new song.”
|
Event in Boston, MA. USA. "Haiti: Strong in Struggle & Survival ". Feb 20th , 2010
| this Saturday: Haiti: Strong in Struggle & Survival [at encuentro 5 - http://www.encuentro5.org ]A Fundraiser with Live Music, Food, and Discussion Saturday, February 20, 2010, 7:00 p.m. encuentro 5, 33 Harrison Ave, 5th floor, Boston, MA 02111Join the encuentro 5 community in commemorating Haiti's long & powerful history of struggle and supporting her recovery from the recent earthquake.The evening will present live music from local artists, Haitian food, & discussion.Sliding scale suggested donation: $5 - $15. (The money raised will support grassroots efforts in Haiti and local Haitian communities.)Contact Alisa at 617-671-6714 for more info or if you would like to perform, present, or make an absentee donation. Thank you!massglobalaction.org |
Haiti's Road to Recovery - a month later...
|
According to the latest estimates, 212,000 people died in the massive earthquake in Haiti. But there were also miracles,with 211 people were pulled alive from the rubble.
Bill Whitaker reports on Haiti's recovery.
|
Harvard Response to Haiti - Part 1
|
Received From Vincenzo Bolletino
Harvard University, Boston, USA
Source : Harvard Humanitarian Initiative Newsletter
|
||||
Global Empathic Response to Haiti- Lessons learnt from Past Earth Quakes - an interconnected and inter dependant world.
|
World Bank disaster expert Christoph Pusch says Haiti may be able to replicate earthquake-recovery efforts used in Pakistan after a 2005 earthquake
|
