Photo by Nicolas Jolliet

Toronto – PTV Productions is proud to announce that Inside the Haiti Earthquake has been nominated for a 2011 Webby Award, in the category of Best Writing in Online Film & Video.

Users can vote for the project in the Webby “People’s Voice” competition, where ITHE is competing against several comedy submissions, including an Old Spice ad:

http://webby.aol.com/media_types/online-film-and-video?focused_on_category=899#cat_id_899

Inside the Haiti Earthquake combines documentary footage with an original script to allow users to experience the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake from the perspective of a survivor, aid worker, or journalist.  The simulation was written by Michael Gibson, a previous Webby Award honoree, and co-directed by Gibson and Nicolas Jolliet (bios here).

“Michael was tasked with creating a script structure out of a documentary that had not yet been shot, then bringing it to life with the real-life footage and stories our crew brought back from Haiti.  We gave Michael a near-impossible task and he wildly exceeded all of our hopes and expectations.” says producer Katie McKenna.

Voting for the Webby People’s Voice Award closes April 28th.  Webby Award winners will be announced June 13th.

Inside the Haiti Earthquake is a previous winner of a 2011 Applied Arts Interactive Award (Gaming), a nominee for the 2010 Canadian New Media Awards (Best Cross-Platfrom Project & Best Web-Based Game), and a nominee for the 2011 HistoryMakers Awards (Best Interactive Production).

After seven years in exile, Haiti’s first democratically-elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide will return to the country this week.

In today’s New York Times, author Amy Wilentz describes why Aristide’s return is a threat to Haiti’s elites, who are vastly outnumbered by the country’s poor — many of whom are intensely loyal to Aristide:

SAY the name Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti this week, and it’s as if the revolutionary slave leaders Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Dessalines were still riding over the plains and mountains here, astride Delacroix-worthy steeds, making their descent with sabers drawn upon the vast plantations of the French masters.

[...] Cut off their heads and burn down their houses, Dessalines told his troops, who went on to win a historic and singular victory over the French Army in 1804. Two centuries later, the elite, some of whom are descendants of the French colonists, still have a profound fear of the poverty-stricken general population. They understand fully that the triumph of the slaves never brought about the structural changes in Haitian society for which those early, bloody battles were fought. The ruling class still fears the overturning of the customary order. Revolution is a scary thing.

When the slaves gathered in 1791 to plot the end of French rule, there were about 500,000 of them on the island, and some 40,000 French colonists. Today the demographics are even more skewed, with about nine million people living in unimaginable poverty, while a microscopic elite guards among themselves whatever wealth is to be had here. Among all this flits the aid and development community, who have arrived in droves since the January 2010 earthquake, with their airy expensive apartments, S.U.V.’s, vans and pickup trucks, and packets of money to hand out.

[...] It’s perfect volatile tinder in which to toss the match of Mr. Aristide’s return.

It’s a great piece that draws on Haiti’s fascinating and contradictory history to make sense of this week’s sure-to-be major political development.  You can read the whole thing here.

The One World International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival, organised by the People in Need foundation, is currently the largest human rights film festival in the world. More than 100,000 viewers attend it every year. Half of these festival-goers comprise audiences from our network of regional festivals, which has expanded this year to 33 towns and cities in Bohemia and Moravia.

The Associated Press reports that the Pan American Health Organisation, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Haiti’s Ministry of Health tested four cases of paralysis in Port-De-Paix in northwest Haiti for polio, with three of the patients having died in the interim. PAHO spokeswoman Nyka Alexander reported that the surviving patient tested negative for the disease. She added that a planned vaccination campaign will also contain polio vaccination, calling it a “prudent measure.”

Watch the premiere of Inside Disaster Haiti on TVO tonight at 9pm ET.

Jean-Pierre Taschereau, one of the aid workers featured in the Inside Disaster Haiti series, led the International Red Cross response immediately following the earthquake. Jen Mayville from the Red Cross asked him some questions about the film, and what it was like to be part of it:

1. Have you watched the film yet? Was it emotional watching the film?

Yes, I have. The first time watching it, 5 minutes in I had to stop watching it. It brought back a lot of emotions that I didn’t know were there, especially watching the story about the kid that we helped at the base camp. It was amazing that it was caught on film.

2. What do you think about it?

It reflects well the dilemmas we were facing. A year later, listening to what we were saying then, it shows how clearly we knew how complex responding to this disaster was going to be. A year later, there is still so much to do. It’s kind of weird, but it shows what we accomplished then, but because of all the challenges after that, it looks like a drop in the ocean.

3. How does it feel to be one of the central “characters” in the film?

Read the rest of the interview at Red Cross Talks.

Tuesday January 11 (ep 1)
Wednesday January 12 (ep 2)
Thursday January 13 (ep 3)

Inside Disaster Haiti will then repeat in Prime Time on 3 consecutive Wednesdays at 9pm:

Wednesday January 26 (ep 1)
Wednesday February 2 (ep 2)
Wednesday February 9 (ep 3)

SCN will be airing the series in Saskatchewan
Sunday Jan 16, 23 and 30 at 8:00pm
repeating at 10:00pm

Canal D will be airing the FEATURE VERSION in French
on January 9th at 7pm

Toronto – “Don’t give up on Haiti”: that’s the message of an op-ed in this week’s Newsweek Magazine penned by MDs Paul Farmer and Jean-Renold Rejouit, members of Partners in Health and longtime health practitioners in Haiti.

In one month, Haiti’s cholera epidemic has already killed half the number who died over the course of a year in last year’s cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe.  Farmer and Rejouit argue that those numbers, combined with the virulence of the cholera strain in Haiti, demand an aggressive response from the international community.

The two MDs make the case for widespread use of antibiotic therapy and oral cholera vaccines, a response that is relatively expensive and complex compared to the current treatment in Haiti, which focuses on oral re-hydration once the patient has become ill.  But Farmer has never believed that the world’s poor should settle for lower standards of health care; in this article, he argues that we’re all in this together:

The Haitian cholera epidemic exposes the fallacy of setting goals based on a country’s GDP. Pathogens like HIV, cholera, and dengue move within a complex web of global social connections, binding the richest and the poorest countries together in vulnerability. But while those microbes jet around the world, their remedies remain stuck in customs.

The full article can be found here.

Photo Credit: Eduardo Munoz, Reuters Read it on Global News

The November 28th election in Haiti is still processing results, amid calls of election fraud and ballot stuffing, with results projected to arrive December 7th. In spite of 12 opposition candidates calling for an annulment of the results, Haiti’s Provisional Election Council claimed only 3.3% of the ballots showed evidence of fraud. Election protests have become sporadic, and although the UN has expressed concern over the claims of fraud, it is expected that election results will stand.

Marie's Beauty Studio - part of Hait's micro-economy. Photo by Oxfam International.

Toronto – How can Haiti move from crisis to active reconstruction?  Last weeks’ article on micro-lending from the New York Times demonstrates the basic infrastructure challenges that are still keeping the country’s recovery in limbo.

Daniel Costello’s “Can Microlending Save Haiti?” explores the economic challenges that are still facing the country almost ten months after the earthquake.  Not only is the economy expected to contract a massive 9% this year, but only 15% of the $8.75 pledged to Haiti’s reconstruction has arrived.

The article asks whether micro-lending could spark Haiti’s economic recovery:

MICROCREDIT banks, or microbanks, were pioneered by Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank, which started 40 years ago by giving loans of a few dollars each to poor entrepreneurs in Bangladesh. In 2006, Mr. Yunus received the Nobel Peace Prize for this work.

In most cases today, microcredit clients start off with loans of as little as $25 to start a small business. The loans are often given to women who tend to spend their earnings directly on their families and communities. Many borrow in groups of five or more, and all members of the group work together and are responsible for repayment.

Some microlenders provide only loans, while others also offer education and health services. Partly because costs are so high, effective interest rates are often significantly steeper than those at traditional banks. In Haiti, rates range from 30 percent to 55 percent a year.

The micro-credit model has become a global success story, but faces unique challenges in Haiti.  One of the largest groups, Finca Haiti, “wrote off almost a third of its portfolio after many clients died in the earthquake or lost their homes and businesses. A staggering 53 percent of its borrowers were late on their payments”.

Overall, 18% of microcredit clients in Haiti have defaulted or are at risk of doing so — more than double the rate of a year ago, and far higher than the international standard of 2 to 3 percent.

Despite the challenges, some micro-credit banks are doubling down on their investment in the country.  One of the biggest, Fonkoze, wrote off 10,000 lost loans with funds from the Red Cross and others: “The bank then gave each client a new loan and a one-time cash payment of $125, at a total cost of $8.5 million.”

Will these small loans be able to kick-start the massively-damaged economy?  Unlikely, but they are playing a crucial role in Haiti by allowing thousands of small-business owners to stay afloat during a time of crisis.

Red Cross Hygiene promotion volunteers visiting residents in La Piste. Photo: British Red Cross

The Guardian newspaper has confirmed what many have feared for weeks – Haiti’s cholera outbreak, previously confined to the country’s rural regions, has spread to the capital in the wake of hurricane Tomas.  The outbreak has already killed 544 people in Haiti, and now endangers the 3 million residents of Port-au-Price who are still living in tent camps nine months after the January earthquake.

From The Guardian:

At least 114 of the people suspected of having the disease in the capital are in the Cité Soleil slum, the oceanside shantytown at the city’s north-eastern edge and its closest point to the valley.

Since its discovery in late October, the disease has spread to half of Haiti’s 10 administrative regions, or departments. More than 200 people have been hospitalised in the West department, where Port-au-Prince is located.

Cholera had never been documented in Haiti before its appearance last month. In little more than three weeks it is suspected of infecting tens of thousands of people, though only about a quarter of people infected normally develop symptoms of serious diarrhoea, vomiting and fever. Nearly 4% of the thousands taken to hospital have died, most from extreme shock brought on by dehydration.

UN experts are calling for an investigation of the origin of the outbreak, which some claim may have been introduced by UN peacekeepers from Nepal, where the disease is endemic.  Full article here.