Newsletters & Press Releases
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Posted on Sunday, March 7 2010, 07:08 am
Child-Friendly Spaces Program
AMURT/EL News Release
MARCH 4th, 2010
AMURT is developing and maintaining ten Child-Friendly Spaces in
Port-au-Prince with our two partner organizations, Catholic Relief
Services (USA) and Kinder Not Hilfe (Germany). The
purpose of the CFSs is to help children affected by the earthquake
restore normalcy and improve overall well-being in their lives with
psychosocial and educational support.
The process of opening Child-Friendly Spaces requires the
collaboration and cooperation of many parties. With our partner
organizations, AMURT first visits each potential campsite and tries to
locate appropriate space. AMURT’s growing team of community organizers
works with local leaders or camp committees to reserve the space and
explain the intentions of its use. Our engineer evaluates the space
and plans the construction. In some camps, three to five large white
tents will be pitched, and in other camps, semi-permanent wooden
structures will be built and covered with tarps.
The next step is identifying childcare "monitors". In partnership
with community committees, we look for dynamic, responsible and loving
teachers. From the committees' recommendations, we interview potential
candidates and invite the selected ones to training.
Meanwhile, our team speaks to the camp about identifying children for
participation in these spaces. The most vulnerable children between
the ages of 4 and 12 are prioritized. On average we will have about
450 children at each site. One site, however, will be serving over
1400 children.
The CFS team also organizes two-day trainings here at our AMURT base
for all of the monitors. The training covers the overall concept of a
Child-Friendly Space and provides time for monitors to work
collaboratively to create activity plans for different age groups that
involve psychosocial, educational, and creative activities. The goal
is to infuse the curriculum with loving and healing child-centered and
experiential activities. The most recent training was attended by
over 125 monitors covering four sites.
This Week’s Highlights:
• The first CFS opened this week in the yard of the AMSAI school in Delmas 31
• Over 430 children started attending the first CFS
• Children practiced karate, breathing exercises and yoga
• Children sang Neo-Humanist songs, created little playfoam sculptures
and fingerpainted
• A team of specialists from the Trauma Center and Project Joy,
organizations based in Boston, MA, provided workshops to monitors at
two sites on psychosocial play activities and modeled activities with
children
• All children received healthy snacks of milk and nutritional
biscuits in addition to a hot meal of rice, beans and vegetables
Photos of the Child-Friendly Spaces and other children programs are here:
PHOTOS
Best Regards,
AMURT & AMURTEL ONLINE RESOURCES Staff
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Posted on Sunday, March 7 2010, 07:02 am
Press Release
AMURT & AMURTEL GIVE YOUR HEART TO HAITI
COMMUNITY-BASED DISASTER RELIEF
JANUARY 21, 2010
INITIAL RELIEF EFFORTS – FIRST RESPONSE
When the earthquake struck Haiti, AMURT-Haiti’s staff members were already on the ground, both in Port-Au-Prince and in the Northwest Arbonite. During the first seven days following the disaster, AMURT & AMURTEL assisted more than 15,000 residents, providing daily mobile medical clinics, hot soup kitchens and the distribution of dry food rations. The first steps involved facilitating the transfer of food, medical services, water, and non-food items from the large aid agencies into the hands of smaller community-based groups who are best positioned to effectively facilitate distribution. Supplies arrived last Saturday on a truck overland from the Dominican Republic. The initial intervention targeted those most heavily impacted by the earthquake, providing transport of the wounded as well as supplies to hospitals, and assisting residents in the slum areas of Boudon, Cite O’Kay and Cite Jereme.
CONTINUED & ONGOING RESPONSE
Community Facilitation
AMURT-Haiti’s greatest strength has always been its development of and relationship with grassroots organizing and local leadership. AMURT & AMURTEL have continued facilitating this work through daily assessments of needs and capacities, holding community forums, and implementing strategies to a decision-making process that is all inclusive, systematic, and efficient. Our community facilitators have been covering the affected areas immediately surrounding our two bases, in Boudon and Delmas 31, identifying leadership structures, attempting to provide seamless coordination in ongoing food distribution programs. Once stability has been established, the next phase— at present planned to begin in 2 weeks — will be the initiation of regional coordination councils that will maintain overall communication and coordination of our community-based disaster response. The goal of this process is the reduction of inevitable coordination and communication gaps inherent in large-scale disaster response, and the preparation and implementation of a sustainable community-based recovery phase.
Food
AMURT & AMURTEL have already begun the first food distributions, initially prioritizing orphanages, refugee camps, slums, local charity groups and community organizations. The NGO has distributed 15 metric tons of rice, beans, canned food and oil for approximately 15,000 residents of Boudon, Cite O’Kay and Cite Jereme, for the last 10 days of January.
Medical
AMURT-Haiti has been providing daily mobile clinics in the valley communities of Boudon, reaching out to the most isolated slum areas. In Delmas, AMURT & AMURTEL are working with our community-based partners providing logistical support and community facilitation, transport of medicine and patients, and providing support for the additional medical volunteers who are beginning to arrive in greater numbers. Over the next weeks, AMURT & AMURTEL will continue expanding support for their established network of community-based partners, to help ensure that supplies arrive in time, are directed to where they are most needed, and that no one remains without medical support.
Ecological Sustainability
Simultaneous with its emergency response, AMURT-Haiti is maintaining and strengthening its long-term focus on developing sustainable solutions for Haiti’s historically challenging problems. In this regard, in collaboration with its long-term partner Trees, Water, People, AMURT & AMURTEL built more than 5000 Ecological Rocket stoves in 2008-2009, a low-cost and sustainable cooking solution using scraps of wood and branches. The stoves will be part of AMURT’s facilitation allowing local committees to manage mass canteens for the neighborhood’s most vulnerable groups – children, elderly, sick, and people with disabilities.
Trees, Water & People was quick to respond to the earthquake emergency by calling on their broad base of dedicated donors to unite and help Haiti through this devastating event. TWP raised over $15,875 for AMURT’s emergency response in Port au Prince. To learn more go to http://treeswaterpeople.wordpress.com
Vulnerable Children Wellness Program
AMURT-Haiti has started a child-centered wellness program focusing on vulnerable children in the areas of Delmas and Boudon. This child protection program is funded by CRS and KNH, and is establishing 10 IHECs (Integrated Healing and Education Centers, reaching out to more than 5,000 vulnerable children.
RECOVERY
AMURT & AMURTEL will continue to align both their immediate and long-term responses through the lens of the human rights-based framework of community empowerment, self-determination, and leadership capacity building. With its long-term strategic partners, AMURT has begun planning longer-term sustainable programs focusing on nurturing and reinforcing patterns of decentralization, sustainability, and local self-sufficiency and food production so critical to Haiti’s future.
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