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Where does haiti stand after the deadly 2010 quake? While about $15 billion of aid money is still missing in Haiti, progress is still being made. “Recovery is here. It is painfully slow, it is agonizing to watch, but it is recovery,” said Harvard professor Paul Farmer. He has spent three decades in Haiti and is opening a new hospital. Big factories could also stimulate the country’s economy, creating 20,000 jobs at just one plant. Progress can also be measured somewhat superficially; HuffPo “Good News” writer Cameron Sinclair finds the silver lining in other ways. He noted the lesser-but-still-positive positives of Haiti, such as its fast WiFi and rich history. (Perhaps that’s looking too hard in the forest to see trees, but y’know.) So, while recovery is still being sought after, it is still coming. And in some ways, it is already here. (Photo by Ken Cedeno / The Washington Post) source
All I want is work, and Brazil, thank God, has jobs for us.Haitian-born Wesley Saint-Fleur • Discussing how, in the wake of 2010’s Haitian earthquake, he and his family moved to Brazil, a quickly-growing part of the world where he’s found it easy to get a job. Not everyone has been so lucky, however: Nearly 4,000 people have moved from Haiti to Brazil since the devastating earthquake in 2010, and many of them have found things just as bad in Brazil. While Brazil’s economic growth has slowed recently, unemployment is still extremely low and the biggest beneficiaries have been those working low-income jobs, where salaries have grown sevenfold in recent years. Even Americans are heading down there for jobs. source (via • follow)
Wyclef Jean squandered Haitian relief funds: report
“Less than a third of the $16 million gathered in 2010 by hip-hop star Wyclef Jean for earthquake relief in Haiti actually made it to emergency efforts in the country, the New York Post reported on Sunday.
According to the exclusive report, Jean’s charity, Yele Haiti, doled out millions in questionable contracts — in fact, $1 million was paid to a Florida firm that doesn’t seem to exist.”
This, uhh, isn’t good. ”Gone ‘Till November” still is, though, so let’s not forget that.
“It sounded like a wild rumor …” Mother Jones was on the scene as Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier returned to Haiti after a quarter-century of exile. And despite his unpopularity, he had his supporters today. ”Things have never been as good as when he was here,” one translator told reporter Mac McClelland. ”The only thing that was worse was we couldn’t talk about politics because he was a dictator, but everything else is much worse now.” (thanks idroolinmysleep for pointing it out to us immediately we found it) source
» With an iron fist: The regime of father and son – especially son – was noted for its disparities. The leaders, who had near-absolute rule (with the help of a secret police force called the Tonton Macoutes), lavished themselves while doing little to help Haiti’s population deal with the overwhelming poverty. It got so bad that Pope John Paul II publicly called out elites for their lack of interest in and care for the plight of the poor. To emphasize … this guy’s return is not good by any stretch of the imagination. He needs to go back to France.
Like a clichéd plot device, Jean-Claude Duvalier is back in Haiti: The guy on this sign was forced into exile from Haiti 25 years ago. Now, no longer a baby, “Baby Doc” is back, perhaps looking for forgiveness from the weakened country. source
Haiti’s elections are today; think good thoughts for them: Between the earthquake, the cholera, and basically the past 300 years, they need effective leaders to recover and improve. Let’s hope the vote helps them. source
Haiti has not had a good year. Many people are struggling to get by and need help to survive. For this reason, microloans have become very popular among small-scale entrepreneurs looking to get by, but even they are having trouble in the wake of absolute destruction of much of the country:
» However, they’re still fighting: These firms seen to understand how important their services are to Hatians, so they’ve used various methods to raise funds to offer the high-risk loans. While they’re a ways off from, say, India’s broad microlending program, they are expanding their work so that they can offer a wider variety of services to the people that need it most.
In this week’s Newsweek, a little...
Tumblr this morning. [h/t anne]
#@#$%!.tumblr.com
Here’s a hidden feature that shipped in...
Watch: PCB gets a visual shout out on GMA’s Yahoo/Tumblr...
Wrote a thing.
Hat tip to this headline writer.
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