HTRIP Highlights!

This month, HTRIP travelled to remote mountain

communities hit hardest by cholera, such as Barbe and La Bonne.

Dear Supporters,

This month was a busy and sometimes even overwhelming one for HTRIP. Our staff worked overtime and on weekends to assure that we'd be ready for the new challenges that await us this upcoming month as we prepare for our biggest graduation ceremony yet.

HTRIP kicked off the month with double soil-conservation konbit in two new communities. Each year, HTRIP accepts ten communities and holds konbit work days in March and April before the rainy season begins to install earthen and rock micro-catchments on the hillsides to prevent erosion and increase groundwater penetration. This year, we selected many of these new communities (such as Drice, Barbe and Dauphiné) on the basis of HAS Haiti's cholera and malnutrition data, targeting those areas most in need of ecological restoration and poverty relief.

Never much for half-measures, we began with the two furthest (and highest) communities we have ever worked with: Barbe (seen in the image to the left), on the top of the ridge that runs between the Artibonite Valley and Saint Marc and the ocean, and La Bonne, a community just below the ridge. Thes communities are located in the most severely deforested zones of the Hospital's service area, and despite the distance (it takes us about two hours to reach Barbe by car), we are pleased to be bringing our project to the places that need us most.

Shortly after HTRIP began work in its new communities, we had the pleasure of welcoming a group of masters-level students (seen in the images to the right) from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies who are taking a course offered jointly by the Forestry and Public Health schools in collaboration with Hôpital Albert Schweitzer Haiti. They visited us during two weeks in the beginning of March, and the forestry team will use the insights they gained during their time here to help our project research and implement new techniques, in addition to expanding the capacity of our program. In particular, they are developing shade-tolerant crop field testing for

us to implement together during the summer, some of our oldest tree plots already provide so much shade that it is impossible to grow traditional crops there anymore, and HTRIP wants to introduce shade-grown crops with high nutrient or market value to bridge the economic gap until the trees are mature enough to be harvested themselves. Yale hopes to continue this course over five years, and HTRIP is excited about the possibilities of this promising collaboration!

We began distributing food before the Yale group was even out the door. Since the World Food Program cancelled its food contracts following the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, HTRIP has been on its own to provide the food allotments it gives programme participants every year to help them mobilize community members for the labor-intensive soil conservation konbit work that is so important to the long-term success of our program. This month we purchased, transported, stocked, and distributed (in individually-wrapped packages, no less -- and guess who did the wrapping!) 7,000 kilograms of rice, 2,800 kilograms of beans, and 336 gallons of vegetable oil to 668 participants. This month, we plan to distribute even more to as many as 900 farmers who hope to finish this soil conservation work before the rains come.

Despite the considerable logistical resources that all of these activities consumed, we still managed to continue the usual cycle of education sessions, prepare the seed bags for 35,000 trees in HTRIP's central nursery (our target is 80,000 seedlings this year), complete a long-term ground-truthing project that was begun in October to construct several new databases that will help HTRIP evaluate its methods and make its reporting more accurate, hire a second driver, and even liberate one Friday for a staff development trip to visit the World Vision agricultural projects in nearby Mirebelais.

We finished the month much as we began it, with konbit work days; we finished our ninth (at Dauphiné, left), and our tenth is planned for next week. We are all looking forward to a somewhat less frenetic April as we welcome two new technicians and prepare for the 2011 graduation ceremonies. Viewing the number of people (about 1,200) we will be accomodating, HTRIP will be holding two graduation ceremonies this year; if you are going to be in Haiti the first week of May, consider yourself cordially invited!

Thank you,

The HTRIP Staff, including Starry Sprenkle and Dan Langfitt

Top Image: The community of La Bonne lies below Barbe in a cleft in the mountain ridge that divides the Artibonite Valley from the sea, and the only trees to be found are immediately around the houses of the people who live there.

Bottom Image: La Bonne takes its first steps with HTRIP in a konbit to install soil conservation techniques in a new demonstration plot.

All photos courtesy of Dan Langfitt.

Taking his Painting on the Road...literally!

Check out Joseph Augustin's impressive new car treatment!

Joseph Augustin is an Artibonite painter, who meticulously painted one of the hospital vehicles. This mobile mural was in part a reaction to the many different international aid vehicles that have been circulating Haiti since last January's earthquake disaster. These vehicles are labeled with the organization's name -- but none, the artist said, seemed to really represent Haiti and the Haitian people.

The van that Mr. Augustin has painted for HAS Haiti has many different aspects of Haitian everyday life. On the back, Augustin even painted amputees going to the hospital, and emerging with new prosthetic limbs, and walking.

Silkscreen Printing!

As springtime weather starts to emerge here in Pittsburgh, we are greatly inspired by the art that is fully abloom in Haiti.

We've been keeping you regularly updated as to the progress of our newest project, the Philip Craig Arts program. This past week, two local high-schoolers, Erin and Miller, journeyed to Haiti to teach silkscreen printing through PCAP.

And what were their self-professed goals?
1) Set up screens and ink and other supplies
2) Get kids and people in the art program and around the hospital to share with us their dreams for Haiti through printing
4) Have fun!
3) Save the world. (well...maybe)

Erin writes of their first day teaching amputees and disabled Haitians to make prints: "This morning was awesome. About twenty people came to learn to screen print behind the prosthetic legs clinic where we set up. We made Haitian flags in red and blue which were super popular. One guy thought it was so cool he took off his shirt and printed the flag right on it. Smiles and eager learners were welcome sights after months of planning.

"The prints were far from perfect, but that is what makes them so interesting. What's cool about the printing process is that the slight imperfections of each print make them unique and personal to each individual."

Click to view more pictures and stories from Miller & Emily's trip.

HTRIP Highlights

Dear Supporters,

February was devoted primarily to finishing HTRIP's work from the first half of the dry season, and to preparing for the busier months of March and April. We began tree nurseries in our current communities, reached out to the new communities that will begin to work with us in the 2011-2012 year, and prepared for a visit from a group of agro-forestry experts.

Although HTRIP believes strongly in the importance of participating communities sustaining small, self-sufficient tree nurseries, we still do a great deal to both nurture these community efforts, and foster long-term sustainability from the very start. This year, we built hundreds of germinating trays, and bought and distributed 567 shovels, picks, hoes, digging bars, wheelbarrows, and other essential tools to our 41 participating communities. These tools were used for nursery and soil conservation work. We bought nearly 295,000 small seedling bags ourselves, and we hope that the additional bags that community members recycle will bring our total tree production this year to close to our goal of 400,000 trees. HTRIP's nursery specialist Gérard Alvarez was particularly busy in January and February; not only did he work overtime in HTRIP's central nursery in Deschapelles, but he also managed to visit more than half of our communities' local nurseries to lend a hand in places that have struggled in the past, teaching them more efficient cultivation techniques.

This month, HTRIP also began to reach out to new communities. Each year we select ten new communities (communities also select us!) on a rolling basis. In our final decision-making process, we consider the extent of deforestation, the community's interest in agro-forestry techniques, and cohesion and leadership within that community, but we also take socio-economic issues into account. This year we are making a special effort to focus on communities where reports compiled by Hôpital Albert Schweitzer show that cholera and malnutrition rates are highest. Diseases like cholera and tuberculosis are diseases of tropical poverty, and the central tenet of HTRIP's mission is to use environmental restoration to fight poverty in the mountains that HAS servers, so this is a natural step. We look forward to taking on more challenging communities this year.

As we begin the new month, we not only look forward to beginning a new year of konbit (or "community tilling/gardening") days to prepare the terrain for tree planting, but we are also eager for a special visit from masters students taking a course offered jointly by the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and its School of Public Health. The course focuses on sustainable development in the post-disaster context of Haiti, and is spotlighting HAS's work (view course description here). There is a specialized agro-forestry group within the class that will be advising HTRIP on exciting new possibilities like shade-grown crops and the introduction of new tree species.

Thank you for supporting these endeavors!

Yours,

The HTRIP Staff, including Starry Sprenkle and Dan Langfitt

About the Images:

TOP LEFT: HTRIP's Gérard Alvarez visited 26 communities in January and February.

BOTTOM RIGHT: HTRIP reaches to mountain communities where poverty is perhaps felt the most.

Arielle's Story

There are no coincidences in Haiti

By Lauren Lyons, MSPT

I had the privilege of spending two weeks at HAS working with the staff of the Hanger Clinic and HAS's Rehabilitation Services Integration Initiative (which includes the Rehabilitation Technician Training Program). My time at HAS was preceded by a week teaching rehabilitation to nurses at the Justinian Hospital in Cap Haitian.

During our time in Cap, we met two journalists from an organization called Food for the Poor, who were staying at the same hotel. Upon hearing that we were therapists, they immediately brought out their cameras to show us a child they wanted us to meet.

Six-year-old Arielle both sustained an injury to her right hand and lost her left leg below the knee in the earthquake that struck Haiti on January 12, 2010. After the quake, her family was relocated to Cap Haitian for medical care and since their formal discharge had been living in a makeshift shack in a swamp. Her mother had been severely injured in a car accident eight years prior, and had also sustained a partial foot amputation.

Our new acquaintances wanted to know what we could do, if anything, to help. However, our time in Cap Haitian was limited, and so we did not have the chance to go meet Arielle. Even so, we took her name and contact information, as we were aware that there was no one in that area doing prosthetics.

In a short time, we left Cap Haïtien for Deschapelles and HAS Haiti, without having seen the little girl, and not sure whether we ever would. However, after the first two hours that I spent in the Hanger Clinic my first day at HAS, I knew it was the right place to bring her. Food for the Poor helped us contact her, and even arranged transportation to HAS. She arrived two days later. Our incredible prosthetists, Chris Blades and Eric Ramcharran, cast artificial limbs for both her and her mother, turning them around in less than twenty-four hours. Arielle and her mother lived in the LaScale housing community so that she could receive physical therapy and training with her new leg. She quickly made progress, building strength, and soon she was able to walk. Within a very short period of time she even started running and climbing the steps.

Although Arielle was experiencing having an artificial limb for the first time, this was not the case for her mother. This woman came in with an ancient prosthesis, which had been almost completely destroyed and was hardly usable. She was also fit with new bracing, and as a result she was able to get rid of her crutch and walk with an almost normal gait pattern.

And, what is more: Food for the Poor is in the process of building them new housing so that this small family has a home to return to. The amazing work being done by the Hanger staff, in partnership with HAS and this collaboration with Food for the Poor is truly putting people back on their feet again. It was my blessing to be a part of the amazing work being done there.

Tout moun gen you bwa dèyè bannan yo ~ Everyone has someone to support him.

About the Images:

Top Left: Arielle and her sister upon arrival

Middle Right: Arielle being fitted for a cast by Chris, Mom being cast by Eric.

Middle Left: Arielle's cast ready for socket fabrication.

Bottom Right: First steps with Lauren and Chris.

HTRIP: January Highlights

Dear Supporters,

HTRIP started the new year with both feet forward as it conducted another month of its revised agroforestry curriculum, completed data collection about promising tree-planting equipment, and finished purchasing and constructing equipment for its newest community nurseries.

The political disruptions in December set HTRIP's schedule behind, but with the hard work of our technicians and communities, we were able to get back on our feet in January, doubling up education session topics to make up for sessions that were missed. December's primary topic was seed collection and storage (communities collect the seeds for the trees they plant in their own nurseries, and HTRIP supplements these with seeds of rarer species). January's class sessions discussed soil conservation techniques, and we augmented the depth of the material in both.

Communities began putting this educational material to use this month, as they built their nurseries for the 2011 planting season, collecting soil, filling planting bags, gathering seeds, and cultivating seedlings in large germinating trays. HTRIP sponsors several large, central nurseries (in Deschapelles and Bastien, for instance), but the trees it produces there are only meant to supplement the production of each individual community's tree nursery; we consider it important that each community be able to function independently during each phase of the operation, from gathering seeds to pruning adult trees. We will finish distributing supplies to these community nurseries by the end of the week.

HTRIP director Starry Sprenkly planted seven replications of eleven thirty-six-tree plots in the summer of 2009. In the beginning of January, HTRIP staff visited each replication under Starry's guidance to measure tree growth, and collect soil samples and spatial data. The preliminary results from this experiment are excellent (some of the trees ghave grown more than three metres in sixteen months!), and may already provide us with tentative conclusions about the interaction of different tree species in Haiti's mountainous regions, a question that has never been adequately researched--but one that is very obviously tied to HTRIP's mission and goals.

We are looking forward to the next two months as we reach out to select the ten new communities we hope to take on for the 2011-2012 year and begin soil conservation work to lay the groundwork for the summer planting season. Thank you for your continuing support of these endeavors.

The HTRIP Staff
Including Starry Sprenkly and Dan Langfitt

About the images:

Top Right Deschapelles' central nursery: constructing equipment to distribute to communities for sifting soil.

Bottom Left The HTRIP staff atop the hydroelectric dam at Péligre, during a staff retreat last week.

See the RTTP Class in Action!

"I recently completed my first trip to Haiti as a Health Volunteer Overseas instructor in the Rehabilitation Technician Training Program. I found comfortable accommodations in Kay 7 on the HAS campus, and wonderful food cooked by Edith. I was privileged to begin the third class of RTTP students at HAS, and recognize that a lot of work preceded the first class session in selecting these students. The students expressed a desire to help others and recognized the need for rehabilitation services in Haiti. I found the students inquisitive and open to learning, so it was fun to work with them. I admire their spirit in traveling distances to get to class and learning new information through an interpreter. The needs of the people of Haiti are great, and I believe that the RTTP program meets some of these needs and improves the quality of life for many."

--Toni Sanders, Instructor
Rehabilitation Technician Training Program
HAS Haiti Rehabilitation Services Integration Initiative