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The COINS Foundation will be committing resources from its office in the United States and Britain to offer support to Haiti. We will be following advice from our Patron Professor Paul Collier, onetime advisor to the UN on Haitian affairs, who urges greater co-ordination of the relief effort and a focus on the longer-term development of this small country which has been so dogged by natural disaster and political instability.
 The picture above makes the point well – in the foreground, temporary housing for those affected by the latest disaster whilst in the background, the tumbledown informal housing that constitutes ‘normal’ accommodation for so many of Haiti’s people.
 As Paul Collier says, “Haiti needs transformation rather than reconstruction. We aren’t putting Haiti back on its feet – sadly, Haiti was never on its feet. The Haitian government has recently produced a long-term development plan and it is now vital that the International Community use the energy of the moment to pick up on this plan to do longer-term transformation. If we don’t do this we will be back in the cycle of catastrophe.” Working closely with Habitat for Humanity, the COINS Foundation will be looking beyond the relief effort of the next few weeks and be seeking to help with the long-term construction of decent permanent housing and other community facilities which will be so desperately required long after the attention of the world’s media has moved on.
Photographs courtesy of Habitat for Humanity |
