MIT-MacArthur-Haiti

Engineering changes for the better in Haiti Local activist joins up with MIT instructor by Ron Fletcher/Globe Correspondent/June 5, 2005:  Human misery makes strange bedfellows. The sweat-shirted MIT engineering instructor raised in Lexington and the Port-au-Prince-born Boston activist dressed in traditional African garb plan to make their fourth trip to Haiti Wednesday despite the escalation in violence that prompted a US travel warning May 26.

How Amy Smith, recent recipient of a MacArthur fellowship, crossed paths with Gerthy Lahens, a leading activist in the city's Haitian community, involves a shared belief that if you give a man a fish he will eat for a day, but if you teach him to fish, he will eat for a lifetime. A few years ago, Lahens's daughter, Johanne Blain-Ruffin, signed up for ''D-Lab," a popular design class in which MIT students create inexpensive, portable technology to improve conditions in the impoverished nations many of them visit during semester breaks. Blain-Ruffin, who wanted to take her lab work to the homeland she left as a child of 6, suspected from day one that Smith and her mother were kindred spirits. They met, and Smith's genius for design and Lahens's commitment to Haiti dovetailed. This week, they will bring relief in the form of opportunities and tools to the country that sits 600 miles off the coast of Florida.

To the poorest nation in the western hemisphere, they will offer the latest version of a synthetic charcoal created in an MIT laboratory as well as devices for water purification, drip irrigation, and solar cell technology. Other volunteers will assist fishing communities and provide laptop computers and instruction. The group of five will hit the dirt roads of Haiti with solutions crafted in a Mass. Ave. lab and supplies funded out of pocket or donated. They will bypass the fractured interim government and go directly to the people. ''This is not a handout," said Lahens, from the lab that has doubled as a classroom for the weekly Creole lessons she has given her fellow travelers. ''I'm fed up with charity and how it keeps people where they are. No. This is about giving the people of Haiti a chance to help themselves. We're not giving them charcoal. We plan to teach them how to make it in a way that doesn't destroy their environment. This is about self-sufficiency. This is about hope."

Lahens, who last spring organized clothing and food drives for the tens of thousands victimized by flooding, sees great promise in the charcoal that Smith and her students have been working on since 2003. Although 98 percent of Haiti is deforested, she said, the vast majority of homes still use wood to cook, which diminishes the chances for reforestation. The absence of trees and topsoil, she noted, turns heavy rains into catastrophic floods. An initial attempt to press trash into briquettes fit for burning evolved into the manufacturing of charcoal from fibrous sugarcane remains. Besides preserving trees, the new clean-burning briquette provides a smokeless fuel that could dramatically reduce the number of respiratory illnesses afflicting many Haitians. Smith, 42, can't wait to continue field-testing the sugarcane charcoal. Buzzing around a lab strewn with works-in-progress, she spoke of balancing the need for immediate relief with taking the time to get it right. '

'When you attempt a change on this scale, you need to take a look at every detail," said Smith on a recent weeknight at MIT, as she moved past a wheelchair one of her colleagues had modified for use in rural Africa. ''We see the potential for large-scale implementation here as well as the urgent need for change. We're trying not to overlook either. ''This is just the beginning," said Smith, before mentioning Shawn Frayne, a former student turned colleague who will fly in from San Francisco to make the trip to Haiti. ''Shawn is the charcoal man," said Smith. ''He's all over this project. In addition to bagasse [sugarcane byproduct], he's working on making fuel from peanut shells, coconut husks, even sawdust." Blain-Ruffin will not be going on the trip this week, but she was there with her mother and Smith last summer in the small rural village Petit-Anse, where they taught locals how to make sugarcane charcoal and other survival skills, such as water purification. '

'Eighteen years after leaving Haiti as a child, I returned to it as a part of Amy's class. It was then that I realized how important my mother's work is to our homeland," Blain-Ruffin said. Smith's ''genius" for designing simple and affordable solutions to the fundamental, seemingly intractable problems that plague impoverished regions earned her a place among the 2004 MacArthur fellows. Smith, who lives in Beverly, cites her Peace Corps years in Botswana as catalyzing her interest in engineering on behalf of those in need, and she welcomes the publicity that came with her award as long as it brings attention to the people and places she's assisting. Smith acknowledged that ''social conscience" is not the first phrase people associate with MIT, but she has seen, if not shepherded, the marriage of engineering and humanitarian outreach at her alma mater.

''Usually a degree in engineering means you'll eventually be working on cars or bombs," said Smith. ''I don't drive a car, and I don't kill people. The MIT mission statement talks about serving humanity. My students care about that. Gerthy cares about that. I care about that." Lahens smiled as she listened to the impassioned Smith. That the activist was recently chosen as an MIT fellow in the school's Boston Community Learning Project only shortens the distance between Cambridge and Port-au-Prince. ''We can hear the voices of my brothers and sisters in Haiti," said Lahens. ''We can help them help themselves. We must." She turned quiet before quoting a favorite proverb. ''Silence," she said, ''is the voice of complicity." 

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