Volunteer Returns from Haiti

Heather Carroll of Monkstown Meeting has recently returned from a summer spent working with aid agencies in Haiti, and talked briefly about voluntary work there.

Heather, who is in the middle of a Social Science degree spent a total of 7 weeks in areas affected by the 7.00M magnitude earthquake which struck on 12 January this year causing widespread damage to Port-au-Prince and the surrounding area. More than 90,000 people lost their lives, and as many as 1 million people were left homeless.

(Picture credit: Logan Abassi / The United Nations United Nations Development Programme)

Heather told us that seven months on, there is still a lot of work to be done to mend the basic infrastructure, with rubble still standing in piles everywhere.
Trying to organize the aid effort within the devastated country is also a huge task: the UN has formed 'clusters' of aid agencies to tackle specific problem areas such as shelter, education, agriculture etc. which aim to increase the effectiveness of individual aid initiatives by coordinating them within a united plan. As a French speaker Heather was able to work in the education cluster which is headed jointly by Unicef and Save the Children. The scale of their problem can be gauged from the fact that in the aftermath of the earthquake 87 percent of schools in Port-au-Prince were damaged or destroyed; 96 per cent of schools in Leogane were damaged or destroyed; and 88 per cent of schools in Jacmel were damaged or destroyed.
The volunteers - lots of them from Ireland - are doing amazing work in Haiti, however more voluteers are needed particularly at the moment because many students who have spent the summer working in Haiti will be returning to their studies. The number of volunteers in Heather's group will have dropped from around 25 down to 4 by the start of term time in September.
If you have an interest in volunteering then Heather recommends visiting http://www.idealist.org/ which acts as a search engine, or one-stop-shop designed to put volunteers in touch with agencies worldwide, providing information on things like the skills needed and length of time for an assignment. For those unable to offer support as a volunteer Heather has commended the work of the main agencies such as Unicef, Red Cross, Concern and Goal.