Two Alberta-based aid groups are meeting up in Haiti this week to get down to business.
Teams from A Better World, based in Lacombe, and Haiti Arise Ministries, based in Calgary, got together Tuesday and will be doing assessments on infrastructure in the town of Grand Goâve and Haiti Arise’s nearby vocational school until the end of the week.
Eric Rajah, co-founder of A Better World, arrived in Port-au-Prince last week with Gord Gilchrist, an instructor at Olds College. Also on Tuesday, Rajah greeted new arrivals from Red Deer: architect Pat Romerman and Pastor Ron Sydenham. On Thursday, the team will be filled out with two health-care workers from B.C. and Ontario who will work in a local medical clinic.
“This is a very different situation and much different from the three disasters I have been involved in,” Rajah said on Monday in an email interview. “Here the people have no place to go, so we really cannot build anything for them, like permanent structures. Even if we could, there are 200,000 people. We have sliced out a small pie that we can comfortably fund.”
A Better World’s “pie” includes two makeshift camps in Port-au-Prince totalling almost 5,000 people. Since arriving, Rajah and Gilchrist hooked up with a Dominican Republic NGO and started to arrange for local water, sanitation, shelter and education work.
“We have been pricing things out, arranging volunteer logistics and work plans for those that are coming,” Rajah said, adding that they’re also training and equipping the locals running the camps themselves.
As for the vocational school, it is “down completely.”
“We may decide on a temporary tent and help them start the school, but the new building could take some time to put up as we do not have a budget and will need many partners,” Rajah said.
On Tuesday, Rajah offered an update:
“We went on to (Grand Goâve) and looked at a dozen homes. Everyone wanted to know what their house is like: Can we go and live in our house? Pat said the hardest thing for him was to tell the people ‘no, you cannot go back to your home.’ ”
He also mentioned another aftershock that hit Tuesday.
“... Everyone was on the streets. I ended up sleeping in the car and Gord on the driveway. We were scared,” Rajah said.
Rajah and Gilchrist will return March 3, with the rest of the team to follow.
Besides those Central Albertans in Haiti or on their way with A Better World, there’s also one Red Deer man on the mission on behalf of Haiti Arise. Keith Blain, a local electrician, left on the weekend and is expected to return Sunday.
mgauk@www.reddeeradvocate.com