Rebuilding Haiti

Today is the first ever conference bringing together both Haitian business leaders/owners and the active NGO’s working here in Haiti. (NGO = Non Government Organization – i.e. The Red Cross, World Vision, The Salvation Army, Compassion International) There are 150+ business owners and over 30 NGO’s in the same room talking about rebuilding the communities here in Haiti! Saying that this room is filled with passion…would be an understatement. It’s a room filled with opportunity, a bit of frustration and a lot of hope. This conference was the brainchild of Partners Worldwide and a HUGE congratulations goes out to them for making this happen.

This project was over six months in the making but is bridging years worth of miscommunication. The real test will be what happens starting tomorrow as we begin to see if the relationships and understanding that is being forged today continues through tomorrow. The sad fact is that today there are tens of millions of dollars from the NGO’s being funneled out of Haiti to other countries for the procurement of products and services which could be obtained here in Haiti. The breakdown is two fold. First most NGO’s don’t have the time to slow down enough to find out what goods and services are offered here locally. Many times they don’t have time because they are under time constraints to complete a project in a short amount of time…which is something totally foreign to most cultures. Very few countries in the world run on the instant expectations which America runs under, so to tell a Haitian business person that they have only a week to respond to a RFP (request for proposal) is a task that makes no sense. The second major obstacle, once again a communication issue, is that the local business person has no reliable way to know that a RFP is issued and respond to it both in a timely and accurate fashion. Today many of these issues are being surfaced and worked through. In addition the business people have the opportunity to show their goods or services to the NGO’s attending.

Overall, today is a moment in history which has the opportunity to change the future and bring opportunity, life and hope to the people and economy of Haiti.

Thank you to the underwriter organizations which helped make this possible.