Haiti – Relief Work vs. Development Work


”Give a man a fish and feed him for a day, but teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime.” If you’re a CICR coffee drinker, there is no doubt you’ve heard us carry that mantra in many other posts and pamphlets. The problem is, many still don’t truly understand what that means. We feel this post really explains it using the current situation in Haiti.
This post comes to us from Laurie Werner, the Director of Program for Agros International. You can find this post on Agros.org but we want to highlight it for our prosumers.
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FROM THE AGROS BLOG:
The tragedy of the earthquake in Haiti is beyond what many of us can even fully grasp. We see shots of the wreckage, people still being miraculously pulled out of the rubble, and the large scale effort to just get food and water to people, not to mention much needed medical care. The absolute suffering and horror that they have lived through over the past weeks has moved the world.
For those who survived–they now face the dual task of grieving all that has been lost while also rebuilding lives, homes, and livelihoods. We cannot underestimate how hard this will be.
The overwhelming generosity that has been pouring from all over the world to help with the relief efforts has been amazing to see, and uplifting in light of the disaster and incredible need in Haiti at this time. It is critical and necessary.
But in time the abundance of emergency and relief care will wane, and eventually exit the country. When it’s time to rebuild, will Haiti have the tools and support to provide sustainable, long-term solutions for its people? What will Haiti look like in a year, or three, or five to ten years from now?
In the trainings we provide all those who visit an Agros village, we outline the difference between “relief” work and “development” work. “Relief” work can be defined as the various interventions needed to meet immediate, critical needs (such as food, water, shelter, and medical care) in the aftermath of a disaster. This is what we are seeing in Haiti right now.
“Development” work is a longer-term effort to provide opportunities to people to shape and rebuild their communities. This includes stabilizing family/community economies; creating access to education and healthcare; building lasting food security for families; enabling people to build necessary infrastructure; and in the case of Agros, helping families own the necessary assets–such as farmable land–required to make the development effort truly sustainable.
This is what Agros does through our holistic community development model. We empower rural families living in abject, extreme poverty to reach a level where they become land and business owners, generating sustainable income and becoming an active part of the regional community and economy. Taking a long–term approach, we offer the training, credit, and partnership necessary for rural families to eventually build and own a sustainable community. Families acquire the assets and knowledge to ensure that their future generations will live beyond the subsistence level.
Of course even this can be no guarantee that tragedy won’t strike and that the impact won’t be devastating. Civil conflict, natural disaster, and disease will continue to harm and affect those who are the most vulnerable.
However, having more stabilized and strengthened communities and economies can help families weather disasters better, and can shorten the recovery time.
Haiti was already the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, and the majority of families already lived in devastating poverty. The scale of the destruction is due in many ways to the already failing infrastructure and overwhelming poverty present in the nation when the earthquake struck.
As Haiti begins to rebuild, the development process must be driven by values and processes that ensure true sustainability. As we’ve learned in Agros villages, the work of empowering impoverished and tragedy-stricken communities must start with the notion that the people themselves have the dignity and capacity to do it themselves. What they need is tangible investment, opportunity, and support.
There are many hurdles to overcome, just as the communities we work with have overcome the suffering and damage of civil wars, hurricanes, and earthquakes. But it can be done–Haiti can be rebuilt. And we hope and pray that the development efforts to rebuild and strengthen Haiti are truly successful, for the people of this small nation and for our world. 
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We hope you enjoyed this read. Check out Agros.org for more blog posts and information.