US Senate Report Says Haiti Rebuilding Has Stalled

By Jonathan M. Katz, Associated Press Writer – Mon Jun 21, 2010

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Haiti has made little progress in rebuilding in the five months since its earthquake, because of an absence of leadership, disagreements among donors and general disorganization, a U.S. Senate report says.

Obtained Monday by The Associated Press, the eight-page report is meant to give Congress a picture of Haiti today as U.S. legislators consider authorizing $2 billion to support the country’s reconstruction.

That picture is grim: Millions displaced from their homes, rubble and collapsed buildings still dominating the landscape. Three weeks into hurricane season, with tropical rains lashing the capital daily, construction is being held up by land disputes and customs delays while plans for moving people out of tent-and-tarp settlements remain in “early draft form,” it says.
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Plenty’s 2010 Kids To The Country begins next week and we are looking forward to another exciting season. It’s so amazing to watch the kids go through their changes as they experience nature, many for the first time. An encounter with a tadpole, to be surrounded by trees, to chase lightning bugs in the night to the sound of whippoorwills, nature has the power to inspire hope like nothing else can.

This year it costs approximately $300 per child, which covers all of their food, lodging and activities throughout the week. If you would like to sponsor a child, please visit our donation page, http://plenty.org/donate.html

This KTC video provides an excellent overview of the program and gives a real look at what the children will experience when they arrive at the 1750 acres that make up our community.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9Z1PNfqDOU&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

Here’s a news clip that describes children from New Orleans who were victims of Hurricane Katrina that were brought up to Tennessee to participate in the Kids to The Country Program.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Afek3vBEX4M&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/world/americas/30haiti.html
By DAMIEN CAVE

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — With graffiti and protests, from sweltering tents to air-conditioned offices, Haitians are desperately trying to get a message to their government and the world: enough with the status quo.

The simple phrase “Aba Préval” (Down with Préval, a reference to Haiti’s president, René Préval) has become shorthand for a long list of frustrations, and an epithet expressing a broader fear — that Haitians will be stuck in limbo indefinitely, and that the opportunity to reinvent Haiti is being lost.

While few have given up entirely on the dream that a more efficient, more just Haiti might rise from the rubble, increasingly, hope is giving way to stalemate and bitterness. “Is this really it?” Haitians ask. They complain that the politically connected are benefiting most from reconstruction work that has barely begun. They shake their heads at crime’s coming back, unproductive politicians and aid groups that are struggling with tarpaulin metropolises that look more permanent every day.

“We’re going to be in this position forever,” said Patrick Moussignac, the owner of Radio Caraïbes, a popular station broadcasting from a tent downtown. “We could be living on the streets for 10 or 20 years.”
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Gulf of Mexico oil spill reinforces the industry’s bad will for American Indians
By The Associated Press
May 18, 2010, 6:55AM

Like many American Indians on the bayou, Emary Billiot blames oil companies for ruining his ancestral marsh over the decades. Still, he’s always been able to fish — but now, with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, even that is not a certainty.

An oil spill — 5 million gallons and counting — spreading across the Gulf of Mexico has closed bays and lakes in Louisiana’s bountiful delta, including fishing grounds that feed the last American-Indian villages in three parishes. It is a bitter blow for the tribes of south Louisiana who charge that drilling has already destroyed their swamps and that oil and land companies illegally grabbed vast areas.

“Once the oil gets in the marshes, it’s all over, that’s where your shrimp spawn,” said Billiot, a wiry fisherman with tough hands, his fingernails caked with bayou dirt. “Then we’re in trouble,” he said in a heavy French-Indian accent.

In the month since an offshore drilling platform exploded, killing 11 workers, BP PLC has struggled to stop the leak from a blown-out underwater well. Over the weekend, engineers finally succeeded in using a stopper-and-tube combination to siphon some of the gushing oil into a tanker.

In Pointe-Au-Chien, 60-year-old Sydney Verdin felt a tingle of vengeful satisfaction at BP PLC’s misfortune over the oil spill.
“I’m happy for the oil spill. Now the oil companies are paying for it the same way we’ve had to pay for it,” said Verdin, disabled by a stroke, as he sat in his living room and watched his grandchildren play.

Even before the leak, oil’s influence on the south Louisiana landscape was unmistakable. Signs warning about underground pipelines are everywhere. So are plastic poles in canals to show the pipelines’ location. Out in the marsh, oil and gas facilities are often the only lights visible at night.

Since the 1930s, oil and natural gas companies dug about 10,000 miles of canals, straight as Arizona highways, through the oak and cypress forests, black mangroves, bird rushes and golden marshes. If lined up in a row, the canals would stretch nearly halfway around the world.

They funneled salt water into the marshes, killing trees and grass and hastening erosion. Some scientists say drilling caused half of Louisiana’s land loss, or about 1,000 square miles.
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Kids To The Country launched its 24th year in Tennessee on Earthday Saturday, April 17, 2010, at the Carver Food Park, Garden and Compost Site, in the Greenway along I440 at 10th Avenue and Gale Lane in Nashville. About a hundred folks attended and enjoyed a beautiful day in the park.

Plenty medical volunteer, Elaine Langely, went to Haiti with a team from the Louisiana/Haiti Sustainable Village project and worked with a Haitian EMT, two other volunteer nurses and an American doctor in a makeshift clinic in the southern coastal town of Cayes Jacmel. These are some of the photos she and a Haitian friend shot during her stay.

Wilma Mankiller, Cherokee Chief and First Woman to Lead Major Tribe, Is Dead at 64
April 6, 2010
By SAM HOWE VERHOVEK
Wilma Mankiller, who as the first woman to be elected chief of a major American Indian tribe revitalized the Cherokee Nation’s tribal government and improved its education, health and housing, died Tuesday at her home near Tahlequah, Okla. She was 64. The cause was pancreatic cancer, said Mike Miller, a tribal spokesman. Ms. Mankiller was the Cherokee chief from 1985 to 1995, and during her tenure the nation’s membership more than doubled, to 170,000 from about 68,000.
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Elaine Langely, RN is in Haiti working at a clinic in Cayes Jacmel, a town of 30,000 on Haiti’s south coast. She and another nurse from New Orleans and a Haitian EMT are seeing 80 patients a day. There’s a serious shortage of medicines and medical supplies in the area. They’re seeing a lot of malnutrition, and high blood pressure and kids with stomach ailments. There’s no doctor so they’ve been consulting with Plenty Board Member, William Meeker, MD who works at a hospital in Nashville.

Last Saturday, Feb. 27) Kate and Carolyn flew to Haiti with Daniel Sussot of Airline Ambassadors. Carolyn Bell is representing Plenty.

Kate writes: “Friday we will take a convoy of trucks with food water and medical supplies to villages around Jacmel and a clinic at Caye Jacmel, very intense but all coming together with brilliant teamwork sprinkled with synchronicity. Not lots of time to write but this trip has been life changing, inspiring and very challenging!! I am loving the Airline Ambassadors team I’m with and esp. my Carolyn Bell, CNM who went off in scrubs to volunteer in a PAP (Port-au-Prince) hospital here. It rained all night and I kept waking up thinking about the all the people who were out in that with NOTHING, no water food shelter. The need here is still so great.

A couple photos attached of some of the AAI team, a tent city ( these are everywhere…) and a destroyed house. Up the hill from us was a 7 story hotel that collapsed completely killing hundreds.

My best wishes to you all,

Kate

PS: I am fine and safe and doing very well here…”