Lines form to be seen at PID's Haiti clinic starting at 4:30am.

Much has happened to PID since the earthquake. We have learned that it isn’t possible to simply move past the earthquake; it is at best a psychological move that helps you to focus on how the programs have been affected and how PID will move forward as Haiti begins the long process of rebuilding and recovering.

• Child Sponsorship Program
  Our child sponsorship program has stayed the same except for the fact that many children have moved to the countryside and have to be replaced. As time passes, many families are relocating because they know aid is stopping, tents are ripping, houses can not be built fast enough, and it will take years for Port-au-Prince to return to normal if it ever can. Many of you will receive new children to replace the children who are moving, and who we can no longer monitor. One of our requirements is that we must be able to physically visit the child monthly. Many new children have been added to our waiting list for sponsors, and we are currently in great need of new sponsors. Click here if you’re interested in sponsoring a child from Haiti.
• Microcredit Program
  The small businesses continue to thrive because there are so many new buyers from all over the world in Haiti right now. For people whose business is intact, they are doing well. We just started our next round of classes for new loans.
  

  Rebuilding in Haiti

• Housing Program
  Our housing program is in flux. We have finished 4 houses since the earthquake, but are looking into new, more earthquake resistant materials. We’re looking for new answers to the housing problem in Haiti for PID. If you have any building skills and are interested in this new venture, we need volunteers to help kick this off.
• Medical Program
  Our biggest change is the clinic. The clinic has expanded from seeing about 5,000 patients a year to projected total of 50,000-60,000 a year. We have gone from providing primary care for the people in our program, to acting as an emergency room. People are unable to access the now-limited number of hospitals that now exist in Haiti. Even in a critical emergency, they come to us to be triaged and stabilized. We transport them to hospitals who will take our referrals. We are looking for medical people to commit to traveling with us throughout the year.
  

  Patients in the Clinic

  WE NEED MEDICINE. We use $5,000 to $17,000 worth of medicine a week. While we have access to some in the country, we are on waiting list for others. We rely on donations of medicine, glucometers, and lab supplies from US donors. We are committed to continuing to give free medical care to the poorest of the poor. Click here for the full list of all the supplies we’re in need of.
  We are also in great need of medical professionals willing to travel with us to Haiti. To learn more about volunteering with PID and/or traveling with us to Haiti, please see here. Please do not hesitate to contact us if interested or looking for further information.

From Guatemala:
We’re now working in three villages in Guatemala: Concepcion, Deseirto, and Zunilito. All of our programs continue to run very well.

• There are new opportunities within our Child Sponsorship Program for job creation and training for the older kids in the program and in Village Concepcion.
• The Microcredit Loan Program has expanded into Deseirto and Zunilito.
• New houses and bathrooms are being built, and the first house is almost finished in Zunilito.
• Water filters continue to be built and maintained in the area.
• Our Medical Program needs help! The free lease on our clinic in Village Concepcion is up in November of this year. We have been looking for land to build on. If you are interested in helping with this project, please contact us.
• Various mission teams continue their travels to Guatemala with PID. Please see here if interested in joining a team, or contact us if you’d like to organize your own team.

This year has been a huge year for growth for PID. The staff in all three countries has struggled under the burden of the increased focus on Haiti. It will take a while for all of us to recover. But the struggle has been worth it. We have made healthier and bettered thousands of lives this year. The dedication of the staff, donors and volunteers in the US and those who traveled, made this possible. We hope that as we move beyond the earthquake, you will continue to join us in serving the poorest of the poor.

For more information about how you can get involved and help out, please click an item below:

• Benefit Events
• Donate to PID’s Relief Fund
• Supplies Needed
• Group Trips to Haiti
  
• Volunteer Locally
• Expansion of Medical Program
• Sponsor a Child in Haiti
  

Click to view lists of: Contributors and Benefit Events/Special Donations to PID’s Relief Effort

York ER Nurse: Conditions in Haiti are Worse

Eyana Adah McMillan – The York Dispatch

Susan McDonald gave the girl a lollipop, expecting the child to savor the treat while waiting for a relative to be treated at the Haitian medical facility.

“She ate the wrapper. She ate the lollipop,” said McDonald of New Freedom. “Then she ate the stick. This isn’t hunger. It’s starvation. It’s horrendous.”

McDonald, an emergency room nurse at York Hospital, saw the 13-year-old girl every day while serving from June 15 to 22 at the medical facility in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where she helped provide medical treatment to the January earthquake victims.

The nurse said medical and living conditions have worsened for many Haitians since her first week-long volunteer time there in March.

“People who were mildly sick in March are sicker Haiti now,” McDonald said. “Those who were hungry in March, they’re starving to death now, literally. They seem to have been forgotten. People need to know the Haitians still need help.”

The nurse traveled with volunteers and officials from Ipswich, Mass-based Partners in Development, a nonprofit, nondenominational Christian organization that has been providing medical care as well as educational and economic development programs in Haiti since 1990.

This visit: While in Haiti in June, McDonald said she saw more cases of malaria, tuberculosis and typhoid fever than on her March trip. She said she also saw the heart-wrenching effects of children desperately fighting starvation.

“We saw dozens of children with cracked and broken teeth because they’re eating pebbles and rubble off the ground,” the nurse said. “And they’re putting mud between leaves and eating them like sandwiches.”

Children’s hair is changing colors — going from black to orange to yellow — and then completely falling out because of starvation.

McDonald said she helped treat two 2-year-old children who weighed just 18 pounds. One of the 18-pound children is the nephew of the 13-year-old girl, McDonald said.

The nurse said the girl, whom she met during the March trip, spends the day at the hospital to look after her nephew, whose parents died in the quake.

McDonald said she is now sponsoring the 2-year-old child through the program to make sure he gets the food, water, medical care and clothing he needs.

Living conditions: About 7,000 Haitians who have lost their jobs, homes and families because of the earthquake are now living in tarp tents on a pig farm near the medical facility, McDonald said.

“These tents are held up by sticks, and there’s no floor, just pig farm dirt and mud, so you can imagine how disease would spread,” she said.

Many of the Haitians who work at the medical facility also live at the pig farm, she said.

McDonald, who plans to return to Haiti next year, said when she was in Haiti in March, she could hear people singing hymns day and night. She heard no such singing in June.

“People are weary and they’re tired,” she said. “They’re just so hungry and sick. But they’re still very gentle, very courageous and kind people.”

www.alfalfafarmwinery.com

From The Alfalfa Farm Winery:

The Alfalfa Farm Winery will be hosting a Pampered Chef Party on Saturday, July 24th from 7pm-9pm to raise money for PID. Please stop by for some Sangria, taste some yummy no-bake appetizers (who wants to cook in this heat, right?) and shop for a purpose. If you need a more reasons to attend, call me! To RSVP: please email us at: alfalfafarmwinery@gmail.com or call 617-875-1215
Sincerely,
Hannah Adelman
Alfalfa Farm Winery
267 Rowley Bridge Rd, Topsfield , MA 01983

Now six months later, while some of the roads are now clear, the National Palace continues to collapse slowly, while the Haitian government tries to decide if they are going to build a new capital and stay in Port-au-Prince.

The tent cities continue to move and grow. People are still afraid to live in their houses, and others remain homeless. Broad reconstruction has not really begun.

One tent city, leveled with bathrooms and new tents, remains unoccupied since February.

The government’s stance is ‘business as usual’ and so NGOs do not want to work too closely causing a lot of tension. While people live in squalor, the government’s concern is solely their own pocket.

As for PID, we have finally found stability since the earthquake. Our child sponsorship program has grown. Our small business program has identified all its past business people. People did extremely well in pausing the loans, and most loan groups have now renewed their loans since the earthquake.

Our housing program has finished its first post earthquake house, with three more almost complete. We are also looking into alternative material for our houses (more earthquake proof and less expensive).

But it’s our medical program that has changed the most. Usually only serving those in our programs with about 5,000 visits a year, we’ve now expanded greatly and expect it to reach about 60,000 visits this year. This has been a miracle in every sense of the word. We have become a bridge, filling the gap for those in need, landing somewhere between a clinic and a hospital, of which many seriously ill people who can’t get into a hospital, but need more care than a typical clinic can provide.

Our teams have been amazing; filled with skilled people with a desire to help.

For me, it has been a challenge I am not sure I was ready for. I didn’t know how much time from my life it would take, how exhausted I would become, or how many sick people there would be. But through this, I have learned how amazing PID truly is. We are small, but we are strong. We have taken care of so many people since the earthquake, and continue to do so with each coming day.

We look forward to continuing this work in the coming year. We hope you will support us with your hands (in both Haiti and the US) and with your donations, so we can continue in this work we have been given.

Sincerely,
Gale Hull

Thank you for all your help assisting those in need in Haiti! Especially since the earthquake, the need for help has only increased, and it is especially useful to have volunteers who are trained in medical fields. Unfortunately, although the affects of this disaster have been curbed by the generous support and assistance of those who’ve traveled with and supported PID, the battle isn’t over. Many people still haven’t been treated for injuries sustained during the earthquake, and even before the disaster, many Haitians didn’t have access to proper medical attention.

With such a massive need for quality health care in Haiti, PID’s goal is to now staff our medical clinic there year round. We currently have a full-time Haitian doctor, nurse, and program coordinator on staff. PID will be complimenting their services by sending medical professionals from the United States each month.

We would like to invite you to continue your involvement with our medical program in Haiti, and would ask that you contact us if you’d be interested in helping within the next year. We’re trying to figure out when to schedule trips throughout the coming fall and winter, and would like to keep your schedules in mind. Please let us know your availability and when you might be interested in traveling to Haiti.

Additionally, PID’s work in Haiti was also recently featured in a short documentary, and we invite you to watch it by clicking here.

Thanks again, and please be in touch!

- Tom & The Partners In Development Staff

My View: In Haiti, Hope is Measured by Scoops and Blocks

My View, Ben Adelman

The looting has ended. The air no longer smells of death. The bodies are buried in a mass grave marked with a huge white cross in the dirt.

But signs of the earthquake are everywhere: In the rubble that towers over the streets of Port-au-Prince. In the tent cities that confront you at every turn. In the minds of the people who lived through those 36 seconds of terror on Jan. 12.

I recently traveled to Haiti with a small group from Sovereign Grace Community Church to help Partners in Development, an Ipswich nonprofit that has worked there for the past two decades. PID operates a medical clinic in a suburban area called Terre Noire, just outside Port-au-Prince. Its mission is to help the country’s poorest residents on several fronts — child sponsorship, small business loans, housing construction and medical care. (PID runs similar programs in Guatemala.)

The prospect of bringing hope to the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere had been daunting enough, but now PID is dealing with the aftermath of the earthquake. Not surprisingly, everyone has an earthquake story.

A 17-year-old boy described the split-second decision that likely saved his life. He was sitting in school, by a wall, reading a book he called “Rachel Rich.”

He asked me to imagine the wall, slapping the invisible concrete at his side. The shaking started, he said, and he ran. That decision proved wise, because the wall collapsed right where he’d been sitting.

Concrete is heavy and brittle. I didn’t understand how heavy until I helped demolish a house near the clinic. The family — a mom, dad and eight kids, including a 4-month-old baby — has been camping in the front yard. The roof was partially collapsed, and the concrete-block walls wobbled at the touch.

Knocking them down was easy — a few taps with a hammer to free them of their supports, then a shove or two to get them rocking. They tumbled with terrifying force, violent and resolute. Choking in the vanishing dust, I tried to imagine what it must have been like for those stuck inside toppling city buildings.

I also wondered what Maxim, the 21-year-old Haitian man leading our demo crew, felt watching concrete tumble again.

It would be easy to view Haiti as a godforsaken hell on earth. You see tin houses stripped together on garbage heaps and find men at the airport clamoring for the chance to carry your suitcase for a fee. You smell the stench of raw sewage and decay. And then there are the hundreds of ill and injured who line up outside the steel gate at PID’s clinic by 7 each weekday morning.

If you look at it this way, though, you’ll be overwhelmed. So PID doesn’t. Instead, the staff focuses on the things they can fix.

CEO Gale Hull, who oversees every operational detail, often gets to help on a personal level, too. Such was the case with a young woman named Daphne.

Once a brilliant student, Daphne lost her eyesight to diabetes and was stashed in her tin home in City Soleil, the worst part of Port-au-Prince, starving, depressed, without treatment. Gale gave her a job bagging vitamins at the clinic. Several days a week, she’s picked up and brought there, where she sits in the kitchen counting pills. She’s fed and cared for, and she goes home with groceries.

We met a volunteer named Charlie, a Vietnam veteran and retired nurse. Diagnosed with terminal cancer shortly before his trip, Charlie stayed the course, treating hundreds of patients before becoming too sick to work. I found him sitting on the steps one morning smoking a cigarette after helping a baby girl who’d been scalded by hot water.

I’d heard the child’s screams as the medical team provided painful first-aid treatment and, shaken, I asked Charlie if she’d be OK. Yes, he said. The baby would fly to Miami for first-class treatment. His thoughts were now with the mother, who was no doubt racked with guilt.

Having neither the skills nor the stomach for medicine, I was glad to be working with cinder blocks and dirt. Though emotionally tame, the construction tasks were daunting.

Three dump-truck loads of rocky fill greeted us outside the rising guest house. The building, on the clinic property, will house future teams so, unlike our group, they won’t have to sleep in tents.

The dirt needed to go into the foundation hole to support a concrete floor. Moving it involved using wheelbarrows and shovels.

After several wheelbarrow trips seemed barely to make a dent, the job looked impossible. But we plugged away: One scoop at a time, one trip up the ramp, one dump and back. We worked side-by-side with the Haitian staff, joked, sweated, and learned words in each others’ languages. We established a rhythm. After a while the pile didn’t look so big anymore. Eventually, it was gone.

The experience serves as a metaphor for the way PID plods along to improve people’s lives. Success is measured in shovel scoops, concrete blocks, patient visits and child sponsorships. Blocks become walls, walls become houses, and one at a time, families move out of tin-shack slums and into solid, rural homes. So far, PID has built 40 housing units.

One at a time, Americans sign up to sponsor a child, and young dreams are realized in the form of food, clothing and education. Two-hundred-and-thirty Haitian kids now have sponsors.

One by one, PID vets requests for small-business loans, offering families a chance to earn a living. It has now made more than 500 such loans.

And one at a time, patients — diabetics, those with malaria, sick kids in the arms of worried moms — enter the clinic. They consult with medical professionals who treat them with dignity. PID has recorded more than 22,000 visits and counting.

These efforts won’t make the tent cities go away. Thousands will be left starving. Most won’t earn a living wage. But for 40 families, 230 children, over 500 businesses and thousands of patients, life has improved.

If you focus on that, you can keep making those numbers grow.

Young Boy Swings Bat to Support ‘Brother’ in Haiti

By Alex Marciello Staff writer

NEWBURYPORT — For Finn Sullivan, a 6-year-old from Newburyport, T-ball games are about so much more than runs and outs.

For the past few months, Finn has been raising money for Rodeline, a 15-year-old boy who lives in Haiti.

It started with the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti. After hearing about the disaster, Finn was fixated on the aftermath and, more importantly, what it meant for the children there, his mother, Jen Sullivan, said.

“He was obsessed,” Sullivan said. He was really concerned about the kids; he questioned everything that was happening.”

With her son intent on helping, Sullivan logged on to the Partners in Development website, an organization headquartered in Ipswich that she learned about after a friend took part in one of its relief effort trips to Haiti. PID sets a goal of $300 for a year’s worth of sponsorship that provides one meal a day, a school uniform, a pair of shoes and medical assistance. Sullivan introduced Finn to the idea, asking him if he would like to raise money for one of the children profiled for sponsorship on the site.

Finn, the only boy of four children, began looking for what he refers to as his adopted brother and came upon the profile of Rodeline, who lives in Port-au-Prince and loves soccer but doesn’t get the chance to play much anymore since the quake.

Finn and his mom then got creative with fundraising. “When I was talking to him about it … I said, ‘Your favorite thing is baseball. What if, for every hit you make, people donated? Like Hits for Haiti?’”

Now $39 away from his $300 goal, Finn’s pretzel jar, which contains all his donations, is a staple at his T-ball games. While it’s not technically “Hits for Haiti,” the donations come in every game, with more support coming in online from the website Finn’s father, Peter, set up, www.hitsforhaiti.org.

And while the sponsorship only requires $300 a year, Finn’s mother hopes it goes beyond that.

“This is something he’s going to want to continue, this relationship with this little boy,” she said.

To see a list of our donation drop-off locations and/or other supplies currently needed, click here.

If you have any further questions, please contact our office at 978-417-9250 or info@pidonline.org.

Use your talent to win a t-shirt contest and help those in need!

Kids from a Local Orphanage Near PID's Headquarters in Haiti

Partners In Development is happy to announce our new T-Shirt Design Contest! We challenge you to use your creative skills to design an innovative shirt that promotes and embodies the work and goals of our organization, as well as the success of those helped; if selected, your design will be produced and widely distributed!

For more information and to see the full webpage about the contest, click here.

A Sinkhole in Guatemala City

The Partners In Development staff would like to reassure all travelers and interested parties that the recent volcano and weather-related events in Guatemala have not affected PID’s in-country operations. Please check back soon for further updates, as we are still receiving information as well. And for  information regarding the current situation in Guatemala and Tropical Storm Agatha, please see here.