Haiti: From Tragedy to Transformation?

Participatory practice and research for community development and social change

           

January 12^th, 2010 marked one of the most catastrophic human disasters of our time.  It left many tens of thousands of people dead and over a million families homeless.  Most central government buildings were destroyed as were thousands of schools, hospitals, churches, and businesses.  Reconstruction efforts have been painfully slow. For many, what’s important is to not reconstruct what was, but rather to see the tragedy in part as an opportunity to re-conceive Haiti and to construct not only buildings differently, but also communities and society.  One community taking an education-centered approach to reconstruction and community development is called Bellevue Lamontagne.  Collaborative efforts are underway there to build a new school, vocational training center, social enterprises, a health clinic, and a number of sustainability projects.

 

My PhD research underway involves learning from local people in Bellevue-Lamontagne through participatory research methods which incorporate photography, mapping, storytelling, and dialogue.  By engaging people and sharing power in the research, such as by inviting participants to photograph their everyday lives and then talk about what they mean to them, I have been able to better understand how redevelopment projects are affecting the community and people’s lives, in positive, negative, and unexpected ways.

 

Through this research I am exploring in what ways the community development processes and projects underway may be contributing to social change.  I seek to understand if the so-called post-disaster window of opportunity has opened up for new forms of social innovation and collaboration to emerge.  And I plan to identify the conditions that made it possible to successfully carry out development in this community, when so many post-earthquake projects have failed.  A few early findings reveal that: participants tend to value community over individual well-being; participants feel that their voices have been heard and that they have contributed to shaping decisions; and participants do not expect the state to act in their interests. 

 

At the heart of this work is learning about and bringing about change through meaningful collaboration with Haiti’s complex and resilient social institutions.  Going forward, I aim to contribute to international development policy and practice in Haiti by proposing new community development strategies and tools that would make state and international investments more effective.