Clinton Global Initiative: Build It Back Better

“Build It Back Better,” this is the motto coined by Bill Clinton as he visited Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake.

His foundation the Clinton Global Initiative(CGI) has pledged to help Haiti and its people recover from this natural disaster. Haiti has a special place in the heart of Clinton who has been going to the country since 1975.

During this time of recovery and with a heavy hurricane season projected he tells the world that Haiti cannot be ignored and the situation is dire. People need to be moved out of tent cites and into permanent structures before the start of the hurricane season. Sanitation and clean water lines need to be repaired and restored as soon as possible which is at the brink of becoming a health risk for the populations, especially children and the elderly.

CGI says that the reestablishment of the educational system is its next push, with reopening and reconstruction of primary, secondary and university education facilitates. Clinton wants to focus on getting educators back into the system and getting the youth off the street and back in the classroom.

In order to get Haiti on its feet again, the world needs to respond quickly. Funds need to be placed in the right hands and go to the proper organization so that aid can get to the people. More work needs to be done with search and rescue, and on meeting people's basic human needs. Clinton and his foundation say that Haiti is not out of the game, the earthquake did cause massive damage but only in a small portion of the island. He believes that with proper organization and cooperation, development can be moved to other parts of the island temporarily, which will alleviate the strain off of Port-au-Prince, and once the city become stable industry can be restored in the city.

Clinton and CGI's goals is to bring dignity back to Haiti and its people by rebuilding on a foundation of hope and rich heritage of the Haitian people. CGI has made it a personal mission to not let the world push this country in the background, people still need help and the are still suffering months after the earthquake, they are in need of food, water and shelter; something people all over the world can identify with this on a very human level.

Clinton Global Initiative: What Haiti Needs

What Haiti Needs


Thursday, Jan. 14, 2010
Time.com
What Haiti Needs
By Bill Clinton
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1953379_1953494_1953521,00.html

Hillary and I went to Haiti for the first time in December 1975. A banker friend of ours had some business down there. He had built up a lot of frequent-flyer miles and called and said he was giving us a delayed honeymoon. We were married in October, and we went down there in December. Both of us just kind of fell in love with the country, and I have kept up with it ever since.

Why is Haiti so special to me? Haiti is completely unique in our hemisphere because of its history and culture. There are other French Caribbean islands, but none of them have Haiti's particular Creole influence. None of them feature Haiti's distinctive mix of West African religious and cultural influences, the most visible of which is the persistence of the voodoo faith, which is practiced alongside Christianity. Unfortunately, ever since the first slave revolt by Haitians in 1791, the country has been beset by abuses caused from within and without. It has never been able to fulfill its potential as a nation. (See pictures of the Haiti quake's aftermath.)

But I think it can. Haitian immigrants do very well when they come to America or France or Canada. I've always thought that given the right organization and support, Haiti could become a self-sustaining and very successful country. I still believe that.

In order to stave off a disaster and get Haiti on its feet again, the world needs to respond in rapid and coordinated fashion. The focus first must be on search and rescue, and on meeting people's basic human needs. After the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, where just one building was bombed and we had all the help in the world, it still took several days before all the living and dead had been recovered. There were survivors who were recovered many hours later in the rubble.

We need to get as much equipment as we can into Haiti. The military is sending in helicopters, and there will probably be a need for it to supply some logistics and communications support. The U.S. is going to have to carry a lot of the load there early on. But it's very important that the U.S., which is so pivotal to this emergency period, work very closely with the U.N. peacekeeping mission stationed in Haiti, which is very well organized and is operating well. In fact, the U.N. system has already swung into action: it has offered $10 million in immediate emergency relief and organized food relief through the World Food Programme. There are hundreds of thousands of people that are going to be coming out of there alive that have to be cared for; the World Health Organization is trying to meet the health care needs.(Hear Bill Clinton, U.N. special envoy to Haiti, talk about the earthquake.)

The international relief effort that followed the Asian tsunami of 2004 offers some lessons that can be applied in Haiti. First of all, there has to be national buy-in by the U.S. There has to be a national vision, and I think we have that. Secondly, coordination is really important both within the U.N. and among all the donor countries and nongovernmental groups. There are 10,000 nongovernmental organizations working in Haiti, the highest number per capita in the world except for India. We've got to all work together toward a common goal. We have to relentlessly focus on trying to build a model that will be sustainable, so we don't plant a bunch of trees and then revert to deforestation, or adopt a program to bring power to the country that can't be sustained, or adopt an economic strategy that is going to wither away in two years. (See TIME's photo-essay on the 2004 tsunami in Asia.)

I'm trying now to get organized to make sure not only that we get the emergency aid that Haiti needs but also that donors come through on their pre-existing commitments. We need to keep the private sector involved. Once we deal with the immediate crisis, the development plans the world was already pursuing have to be implemented more quickly and on a broader scale. I'm interested in just pressing ahead with it.

Haiti isn't doomed. Let's not forget, the damage from the earthquake is largely concentrated in the Port-au-Prince area. That has meant a tragic loss of life, but it also means there are opportunities to rebuild in other parts of the island. So all the development projects, the agriculture, the reforestation, the tourism, the airport that needs to be built in the northern part of Haiti — everything else should stay on schedule. Then we should simply redouble our efforts once the emergency passes to do the right sort of construction in Port-au-Prince and use it to continue to build back better.

Before this disaster, Haiti had the best chance in my lifetime to fulfill its potential as a country, to basically escape the chains of the past 200 years. I still believe that if we rally around them now and support them in the right way, the Haitian people can reclaim their destiny.

Clinton is the U.N. special envoy for Haiti.

See how to help the Haiti earthquake victims.

See more about Haiti.

Sub Channel Radio, and Radyo Pa Nou

Sub Channel Radio, and Radyo Pa Nou.

Regulations work – when they regulate the other guy.

Toward the end of the 20th century, the FCC played with the idea of licensing very low powered radio stations to serve small town governments and local organizations as a way in which to encourage community participation and access to public issues.

Mainstream media (radio in particular) did not like the idea at all. They imagined that advertisers might support these efforts in ways that could threaten their own license monopolies – and they successfully quashed its growth through a strong lobbying effort designed to impose both complicated rules for access, and highly restrictive legislative regulations.

Years went by without much of a fight. But as ‘Pirate Radio’ (full power – illegal stations) began to appear and proliferate – and as the government had more and more trouble trying to find and eliminate such stations, Big Media decided it might be better to deal with the ‘controlled’ threat of local (what would become sub-channel radio), rather than the all out assault of full power – pirate - competition.

In other words, if you can’t beat them – and you can’t kill them – then control (and regulate) them.

The 21st Century advent (and explosion) of digital technology made this possible. And sub-channel radio (not to be confused with low power radio) came into existence as a way for very local radio to be made available to a very local community, while allowing mainstream media to control it – and to profit from it as well.

Today’s sub-channel stations are higher in power, but controlled by the owners of broadcast radio stations already holding FCC analog station licenses. In this way they are able to make money by sub-leasing the digital sub-spectrum to community radio stations, and at the same time limit the number of sub-channel broadcasters allowed.

But even though it now costs money to start such a station, sub-channel radio stations are turning up at an increasing rate, and are making money by serving very local (and targeted) markets, along with their attendant advertisers.

Radyo Pa Nou falls into this category of being a sub licensed, sub channel radio station. It has been serving the Haitian community living in the neighborhood of Flatbush, in Brooklyn, since 2006.

Sub channel radio is not available however, to the general public through conventional radios. It requires a special radio receiver in order to get its signal. This is because the signal is a digital division of an existing frequency, and requires a specially designed digital receiver to decode the technology.

Radio Pa Nou’s strategy has been to pretty much ‘give away’ (at almost no cost) these radios to any and all customers requesting them. These radios receive not only Radyo Pa Nu’s signal – but all digital sub channels (including competitor stations like Radio Tropical, and Radio Soliel) in the region.

While people may have been initially interested in listening to only one or another of the Haitian stations in their local area, by purchasing a radio from Pa Nu, they are now able to listen to them all. This makes the radios very attractive to residents throughout the entire New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut area – where a large concentration of Haitian immigrants now live - and has had the added benefit of attracting additional revenue from regional advertisers, as opposed to advertisers located only in one of the local communities.

It is also true that small operations in general - like Radyo Pa Nou - are extremely flexible and quick to react to changing situations (unlike large corporate run operations), and are therefore also able to change their programming quickly to meet such changing situations. They become - if not the first source of information - certainly the continuing source of information for a local community. In fact, it might be said, that they are the local community.

Since its inception, Radyo Pa Nou has paid close attention to the needs of its community, as evidenced by its coverage and service to the community during the earthquake of 2010. Joseph Geffard (founder and CEO of the station) recognized right away that by building a large, local, and loyal audience, it could also build its revenue - and it has been very successful in doing both.

Ushahidi in Haiti

The organization, Ushahidi (originally based on a form of citizen journalism), has developed to become a web platform for collecting and disseminating information while including interactive visuals in the form of maps and timelines. Ushahidi is the Swahili word for "testimony," and was created as a result of post-election violence in Kenya in the early part of 2008. Although its roots stem from the crisis in Kenya, the model is now being employed all around the world. Part of its appeal is the simplified technology, which allows anyone to use it since it was designed to be a community collaboration. It utilizes free software, which serves as a broadcasting hub to receive information via email and text. Basically, an SMS (Short Service Message) is sent from a conflict zone; the message is synched to Ushahidi’s software; outreach is then enabled after information has been verified; finally the report is posted on the site with the time of occurrence and linked to Google Map to indicate the divergence area.

One of Ushahidi’s latest activities has focused on the unfolding crisis of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. In order to get immediate attention and assistance to those affected by the disaster, they have mobilized efforts for relief by tracking victims, coordinating requests for help, and organizing volunteers. Known as the Crisis Map of Haiti, a number of volunteers took on the task of translating Creole SMSs, pinpointing GPS coordinates, and labeling the reports in near real-time. The site also displays photos, asking viewers to tag and identify people in the hopes of locating missing persons, as well as providing training documents and user tutorials. Areas of emergencies, vital lines, public health, security threats, infrastructure damage, natural hazards, and available services are all plotted on the online map and labeled in both French and English. Ushahidi represents a tremendously comprehensive and up-to-date platform and continues to use technological advancements to disseminate information and deploy assistance in the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake.

Ushahidi’s strength lies in its ability to customize their platform for various locations and needs through an uncomplicated means of aggregating information from the public. As a result of combining technology, media, and globalization, they have succeeded in implementing a system, which utilizes all these factors to their advantage. Equally as important, they have brought awareness to emergency situations and other conditions within a local space while simultaneously directing the information to an open source, allowing for a larger global participation. Finally, the integral asset of Ushahidi is the subsequent partnership of local media with other international organizations. For example, since radio is one of the most popular forms of news media in Haiti, radio deejays working with Ushahidi began broadcasting text messages and emails throughout the country. In Haiti, this is one of the methods that has revolutionized humanitarian response efforts and seems to be working in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake.

http://haiti.ushahidi.com/

The Agronomist (2003) - Trailer

The Agronomist is a 2003 documentary, which illustrates the continued significance of radio as a form of news media in Haiti. The film follows the life of Jean Leopold Dominique as the host of Radio Haiti-Inter, Haiti's first independent radio station. Through live interviews and archival footage, this documentary portrays Dominique's radio broadcasts as a platform for free expression, where he advocates for reform and disseminates information during Haiti's three regimes.

http://www.un.org/Pubs/chronicle/2004/issue2/0204p30.asp

The Second Migration Peak: Immigrating to the US

The second major migration of Haitian people arriving to the US began in 1991 and extended until 1993 and was the result of a military coup to dethrone the first democratically elected Haitian President, Jean Bertrand Aristide. Because the US government strongly condemned this military coup, the George W. Bush administration saw these migrants as in need of a safe haven and granted them paroled asylum in the US. According to this chart, the number of Haitian immigrants in the United States peaked at almost 50,000 in 1991 but went down in mid-1990 when the US government required the coast guard to intercept and send back Haitians attempting to arrive to the US by boat.

The First Migration Peak: Immigrating to the US

The flow of migration of Haitians to the US has always been dependent on the political conditions in Haiti at the time. In the late 1970’s the first substantial spike in Haitian “Boat People” arriving to the US took place as a result of the desperate plight of the Haitian population under the rule of the dictator, Francois Duvalier (or “Papa Doc”). Despite the US’s disinterest in accepting these refugees seeking asylum, crude sailboats continued to arrive overflowing with Haitians looking for safety. Even after Papa Doc’s death, his son, Jean-Claude (or “Baby Doc”) continued his violent reign until 1986 when he was finally overthrown. As a result, immigration to the US went down until the next wave of political chaos that came only a few years later.