One Truck BYO Event Sucess

Wow.

I'm still recovering from the success of our One Truck BYO event- we raised almost $7,000 dollars in lil' ol' Williamsburg. Thanks to all of you for your support; and donations. So much has happened in just the last few days of my return it's hard to know where to start...

Essentially there are two parts of the One Truck responsibility here in Port Au Prince; I came here as the eyes and ears for Patricia Arquette, who was an early supporter of One Truck. She and her organization (www.givelove.org) have created a sustainable, community oriented housing solution, and One Truck is proud to provide on the ground support for this project. We will continue to oversee implementation and management of the unique housing based on modified shipping containers designed by Christopher Robertson in Houston TX. Patricia and Givelove.org's search for a community in need led me immediately to Cite Soleil. As we assessed the needs of the local community here, it rapidly became clear that the displaced persons here would need more than a pilot housing project. My presence here at Citè Soleil has inevitably led to our partenership with Boby Duval of LADH. Not only has Boby provided us with a location for our pilot project- he has given us a home operating base (i.e. a place to pitch my tent).

Today, Bobby and I met with people at the UN and solidified our position as camp Managers for our two IDP camp locations, LADH 1 and 2.

So- going forward, One Truck will be wearing 2 hats;

-project managing the Bois Neuf Shelter development
-assisting Boby Duval and LADH in the management of the two spontaneous encampments.

We currently have two IDP populations- one at LADH Bois Neuf, and another at LADH Droulliard - these are both children's soccer fields... (are you still reading this cause I'm siting Indian-style in my tent batting at Mosquitos) Our populations are around 6,000 all together (I think less- many tents are like Prop tents that folks put up in multiple locations to try and get more services- kind of like trying to collect social services at two different addresses) At any rate we have had a breakthrough with the camp- and now that we are recognized by UN/IOM as Camp leaders, we should have access to all the resources we need. Like toilets. And water. Yay! Water!

The US Army has been really instrumental in helping get to this point. It turns out that the army has entire divisions of caring people whose sole focus is to do humanitarIan work of saints with the aggressive efficiency of the military- I did not know this-

Tomorrow we will meet with the Office of interagency management and hopefully be on our way to improving life in our camps. In the meantime- our Pilot Housing Project moves forward -meaning the sixty or so shipping container homes that we are deploying onto bobbys property. Our first four prototypes are coming in next week from the DR.. our current focus is getting the site graded to prep for their arrival. The remaining 50+ units are being purchase or donated and will flow to site over the next few weeks.

We will hope to use Cash For Work programs to modify the containers with local labor.

So - we have a bunch to do. I was saying to Betty tonight, "it's like 2 steps forward, 1 3/4 back-" nothing is easy here, the Haitians have to work really hard for every good thing that happens, and those rules apply to us now  too... I feel great tonight- 2 steps forward today- but I know tomorrow will have it's share of challenges....