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AFSC - Haiti

New strategic Directions - Building Social Capital and Improving Human Security in Port-au-Prince

Haiti has been plagued by political crisis along with poverty and institutional dysfunction, particularly in policing and judicial areas. The worst of the urban violence has begun to ebb, creating minimum conditions for greater involvement by the local population in programs to address their short- and long-term human security needs. AFSC is exploring in 2008 opportunities to work with urban partners in multi-stakeholder approaches to conflict transformation in the context of humanitarian assistance initiatives designed to meet short-term needs.

2007 – 2008 – Year of Transition for Haiti Programs

AFSC has been working in the Grand ‘Anse since 1989, and started the health program in 1993 in a remote area where there were no health services for some 60,000 people. Persistent poverty had led to high mortality and morbidity, especially for infants, children and expectant mothers. AFSC trained and deployed agents santé – health agents—to reach the isolated hamlets with education, preventive measures, simple treatments, and referral of those ill to the local AFSC health clinic or the regional hospital in Jeremie. In 1998 the training center and clinic L’Espwa was opened in Irois. At the end of 2007 the program devolved to a Haitian group, ASADEK (Association for Health and Community Development.) AFSC will continue support of ASADEK through 2010.

AFSC-Haiti worked in a variety of economic development projects, empowering local community groups since the early 1990s. In 2002-3 the program sharpened its focus to work with fewer base groups and more specific strategies of intervention and training, with some greater success particularly in the reforestation and goat projects. Many of the groups were well along in the process of capital formation by early 2007--but with insufficient capacity and a structure in place to guarantee continuity. Beginning in January 2008 a nine-month plan was started to train groups and leaders to set up and manage a federation to sustain their successes in local development programs.

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