The Haiti Micah Project (HMP) is a non profit organization which is providing one meal per day for 150 vulnerable children in the town of Mirebalais, plus uniforms and tuition for their education and medical care.  Recently, HMP rented a two-building compound to house up to 25 of the most vulnerable, most of whom are street children.  The opening of this facility is scheduled for mid to late April 2009.  In order to expand the program, HMP recently announced the creation of a Child Sponsorship Initiative.

Nicholas Kristof wrote an article on the importance of family planning to poverty reduction. The article revolves around the lives of a woman named Nahomie, her ten children, and the grinding poverty they are facing.  I've copied the article below but you can also read it on his excellent blog ""On the Ground."  After, take a look at the +250 comments posted and consider adding your own.  It is my hope that Nahomie's children will fare better.  With the United States supporting the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) again, perhaps we can yet make that a reality.  

According to Jonathan Katz, public health workers plan to vaccinate some 1 million women and children this week around Haiti's capital after delays exacerbated by food riots and hurricanes.  The effort marks the second phase of an international goal to immunize 5.6 million Haitian children - more than half the country's population - against diseases like polio, measles and rubella.

The French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) in partnership with S.O.B.’S, PEN World Voices and The Maysles Institute will be holding a number of Haitian cultural events in New York City this May.  There will be musical performances by well known bands such as RAM, screenings of Haitian films, and discussions on different aspects of Haitian culture.  More information is below. 

Something too often missing from coverage of Haitian development challenges are Haitian perspectives.  One of the most pressing concerns remains how to halt and reverse the ongoing environmental degradation.  We kick off the "Ask a Haitian" series by interviewing Abdel Abellard, a Ouanminthe based expert in Sustainable Development and Conservation Biology, in order to find out what has and has not been working in Haiti.  

President Obama is in the United Kingdom this week as part of the  G20 Summit.  As Nicholas Kristof wrote an op-ed, more is at stake than banks.  According to World Bank estimates, the global economic crisis will cause an additional 22 children to die per hour, throughout all of 2009.  Robert Zoellick, President of the World Bank, stated, “In London, Washington and Paris, people talk of bonuses or no bonuses...In parts of Africa, South Asia and Latin America, the struggle is for food or no food.”

World TB Day was on March 24.  If this were a blog about HIV/AIDS, I could write about the progress that Haiti and the rest of the world is making.  However, this is a blog on tuberculosis and a fight we are losing.  More than two billion people, one third of the world’s total population, are infected with TB bacilli, the microbes that cause TB.  People living with HIV are at greater risk.  For Haiti, much more remains to be done.

The rainy season will soon begin in Haiti.  As a result of deforestation, flooding will be inevitable.  What is not inevitable is how well the Haitian government and civil society respond in Gonaives and elsewhere.  Unfortunately, Gonaives remains vulnerable and those who live there know it. Below is a piece by the New York Times about the uncertainty felt by the residents of Haiti's historic yet battered city. 

World Water Day has come and gone.  About 1.1 billion people still do not have access to safe drinking water, and two in every five people on the planet still have no access to a proper toilet.   The international community has become increasingly aware of the disastrous consequences of the status quo for public health and economic growth.  It will take more than awareness to change the current situation - it will also take political will, long term committment, and a new approach.

Usually when you read an article about peacekeepers in Haiti, it concerns how many are on the ground.  In a bit of a role reversal, the Miami Herald reported that the United Nations will deploy a group of Haitian police as peacekeepers to Chad.  The yearlong assignment involves monitoring Chadian police responsible for refugees from the war in neighboring Darfur.