This Weekend with the Friends!

Come join us tomorrow night at Brigadoon Gallery for the opening of a special exhibition of new silk screen prints from Haiti! The event is from 7-11 PM on Saturday at 1033 S. Braddock Avenue in Regent Square / Edgewood. Silkscreen prints will be available on display and for sale, and light refreshments will be served. Hope to see you there!

AND...

Also, if you're in Pittsburgh, come this Sunday to cheer on our 2011 Marathon Team! Or, support our runners by contributing to their First Giving pages, by clicking HERE.

When the Teacher is Also the Student

This is a guest entry written by Denise English, the director of the Rehabilitation Technician Training Program (RTTP), one of the programs in HAS's Rehabilitation Services Integration Initiative (RSII).

We come to HAS eager to teach; eager to share what we know with the students of the Rehabilitation Technician Training Program (RTTP). We think and discuss and come up with ideas of how best to get the material across. We talk about how to organize labs and schedule observations of patients in the clinic. We make games, organize diagrams, practice review questions and create discussion questions. We plan and prepare and want to do the very best we can to share with these precious students as much information as we're able during the short time we spend with them. We want them to succeed, to learn the material and grow more confident in putting knowledge into practice in real time.

And then we enter the classroom -- and discover how much we have to learn. Over the month that we spend with these students, they will teach us more than we ever could have imagined. We will give them our knowledge and skills, and they will teach us about the culture here and how better to teach and treat patients in the culture that they know best. They bring us their unique insights into the struggles and the joys of living in Haiti. They lighten us with their humor, and see the bright side of a life that often has few spots of joy, but many moments of peace. They invite us into their lives, and inquire after our own, back wherever we came from. They patiently teach and practice Krèyol with us -- delighting at our successful attempts, dissolving into infectious laughter at the more ridiculous efforts to the same end. They ask the hard questions about who will survive, and for how long. Who will take care of them? What will become of them? They teach us about the strength and beauty of their people, their cultures, beliefs and traditions and encourage our curiosity to learn more.

Our time together always moves too quickly, and before we either know it or are ready, the days draw to a close. We realize at this moment that the tables have in fact been turned, that we have learned as much, if not more, than what we have taught. We leave behind bits of knowledge and tools for providing compassionate, family-centered physical rehabilitation. Yet, it seems that we take so much with us as well. We leave with a renewed appreciation for life and its simple joys, even in times of struggle. We are inspired by the stories, which we have been fortunate to be a part of. And when we return, we do so vowing to be more patient, more compassionate, stronger, more humble.

The grace of Haiti leaves a mark on each of us -- taught by those who know it best: its students.

About the Images in this post:

Top Left: The 2011 RTTP class

Bottom Right: Ronel, graduate of the 2010 RTTP class, doing a wonderful job of providing rehabilitation services to the community from the rural dispensary at Bastien.

Ink, Squeegees, and Hope! Silkscreening in Haiti Comes to Pittsburgh in an Exhibition!

A few weeks ago, Heal, Grow, Celebrate featured a post about a couple of local high-school students who journeyed all the way to Haiti to teach silkscreen printing as part of the Friends' newest program, PCAP. Well, we're thrilled to announce that their trip was a huge success, and now these fantastic young people are planning to mount an exhibition of the fruits of their labor in Pittsburgh, PA! The exhibition, called PRINT HAITI will feature new silkscreen prints created by recovering patients of Hôpital Albert Schweitzer Haiti, as well as acrylic paintings by artists from the Artibonite Valley of Haiti.

If you plan to be in the Pittsburgh area, please stop by to see their beautiful work!

What? Print Haiti: A Screenprinting Project of Hôpital Albert Schweitzer Haiti

Where? Brigadoon Art Salon, 1033 South Braddock Ave., Edgewood

When? May 14, 2100, from 7-11 pm

Project Description:

This project was created by two tenth graders from Pittsburgh, PA. Me, Erin West, and Miller Schulman. Our connections to Hôpital Albert Schweitzer in Deschapelles, Haiti, led us to a trip down there this spring. The time we spent there was so inspiring that we wanted to come back again, but with something to offer to the people there. We are both art students and Miller has a big interest in screen printing.

My uncle runs "PCAP," an arts program at the hospital where hospital patients, specifically amputees, can create and learn about all different kinds of art. We decided we wanted to bring supplies for screen printing and print with the patients in the program. For one week, we set up our supplies behind the rehabilitation clinic where many patients, often victims of the 2010 earthquake, came to explore and have fun with the process of creating prints.

The experience was incredible and our wish now is to share the products of our time there with everyone in our hometown, Pittsburgh! Prints that were created by some of the patients along with acrylic paintings made by local artists will be on display and for sale.

All sales profits will benefit Friends of Hôpital Albert Schweitzer Haiti. The show will run through May 16th.

For questions, please call Friends of HAS Haiti at 412.361.4884 or email us at info@friendsofhas.org.

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.