[Olpc-Haiti] HOW to REBUILD - an opinion. "Diaspore" No More: Haitian Diaspora kickstarting Haiti--with more than $$

[Diane Hendrix]

Another opinion from NPR:  please post ideas/links/resources on
www.krikkrak.media.mit.edu. - see resource page for more...and check back.

Marketplace Money/NPR Feb 3 2010.  HOW TO REBUILD Haiti’s economy. 
http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/02/03/pm-haiti-q/

TYLER COWEN: To me it's one of the places where there is some essential 
soul of
humanity, stronger than almost any other place I've been.

He's been there a number of times. He collects Haitian art and music. 
And thanks
to a background in development economics, Cowen has become a student of 
Haiti's
problems. (He teaches at George Mason University.) Cowen's suggestions..

1)	Let Haitians immigrate to rich countries to increase remittances. 
Money sent
home totals 25% of Haiti’s GNP!!
2)	Get TENTS to Haiti ASAP.  Send donations to shelter kits project --
http://www.shelterboxusa.org/InsideAShelterbox.aspx  [The Dailykos community
has contributed 86 shelterboxes to Haiti and is campaigning for 100.]  How
about a million?!
3)	Vaccinate children and deal with sanitation. (US and UN must help 
here, then
Haitians must take over in longterm.)
4)	Get planting season started at once, sending seed and fertilizer, 
farmers to
help. Some people ate mud cakes to keep from starving BEFORE the earthquake.

COWEN: I think Haiti will remain corrupt for the foreseeable future. But there
are two kinds of corruption. One kind of corruption is where you shut out the
outside world because it's a threat to you. Another kind of corruption is you
let the outside world in because you can take a piece of the pie. If Haiti
moves to that second mode of corruption, which is a lot like how China 
works or
how South Korea worked in the 70s, that's actually the scenario for 
hope. If our
vision is to drive all corruption from Haiti that's unrealistic. What 
we need is
a Haiti that is more commercial, more outward looking, and more open to 
the rest
of the world.

- Diane (dhendrix at mit.edu)

Quoting Adam Holt <holt at laptop.org>:

> "For years, educated émigrés have tried to play a more vital role 
> in Haiti’s development, with little success. The earthquake has 
> changed that."
>
> NYT Excerpts:
>
> FOR EMIGRES, HOSTILITIES BECOME RUBBLE
>
> “The diaspora must organize to help us,” Prime Minister
> Jean-Max Bellerive said last week at a conference in Montreal.
> “I have no alternative. They have to be involved in Haiti; they
> have to be engaged.” ...He need not have asked...
>
> Still, the Haitian government’s new attitude has not erased
> all skepticism. Some in the diaspora say they have been kept
> at bay by fears that they would usurp jobs or expose corruption,
> while others say the negative sentiment has been a political tool,
> fanned for cynical ends. Whatever the reason, it did not ease the
> hurt when Haiti welcomed the billions of dollars that émigrés sent
> home but rebuffed their expertise...
>
> The Haitian diaspora is estimated to be at least two million
> strong, with more than half a million Haitian-born people
> in the United States alone, heavily concentrated in South
> Florida and Brooklyn. In 2008, Haitians around the world
> sent at least $1.3 billion to Haiti, far more than the amount
> of foreign aid the country received, according to the World Bank.
>
> ...On an economic and political level, the diaspora could be
> threatening, said Harry Casimir, 30, a Haitian-born businessman
> who opened an information technology business there just
> before the earthquake.
>
> “Once the elites have money and power,” Mr. Casimir said,
> “they’re scared of people like me, the younger generation and
> so on. Because we travel around the world and see how other
> governments function, and obviously most countries are not
> corrupt like Haiti.”
>
> But several expatriates acknowledged that some of the fault
> might lie in a certain swagger on their own part.
>
> “People in the diaspora may be coming with that complex of
> superiority, where they think, We know better; we can do it
> better,” said the Rev. Reginald Jean-Mary, pastor of Notre
> Dame d’Haiti in the Little Haiti section of Miami.
>
> Yet Father Jean-Mary provoked murmurs of excitement
> Sunday at a packed high Mass here, when he proclaimed,
> “This is the moment to suspend politics, because we have
> had enough politics in Haiti.”
>
> He added, “It’s time to open Haiti to the diaspora.”
>
> IN FULL:
> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/us/04diaspora.html
>



Diane Hendrix
_______________________________________
Lecturer, Writing Across the Curriculum
Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, Room 12-116,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
email: dhendrix at mit.edu   cell: 617-699-8881