Reflections on the 2010 Earthquake in Haiti
At 4:53 pm, January 12, 2010 an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 on the Richter scale struck the island of Hispaniola, comprising the two nations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, 15 miles southwest of the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince.
“In ten seconds, everything the population took decades to build was destroyed,” recalled Goldin Institute Global Associate Malya Villard Appolon, co-founder of KOFAVIV (Commission of Women Victims for Victims). With additional damage from two aftershocks hours later, some three million people were impacted, one-third of the Haitian population. Over a million people were displaced as their homes were destroyed and between 85,000 and 316,000 were killed, based on varying estimates offered by USAID and the Haitian government with international relief agencies.
Reflecting on the recently passed ninth anniversary of the 2010 earthquake, Malya recalled, “On that day, nobody had a roof on top of their head. Everybody took refuge on the streets and parks, which caused what we called ‘the camp phenomenon’ and led to women enduring inhuman and degrading conditions. At that time, basic services were non-existent, insecurity was the norm, and women faced very difficult situations.” Assisted by the Goldin Institute as well as various international NGOs, Malya and her colleagues at KOFAVIV not only provided basic reproductive and medical assistance to displaced female survivors of sexual assault and rape, but also trained male allies to be guardians of women and girls at risk of gender-based violence.
The months and years since the earthquake have seen additional disasters, natural as well as man-made. In October of the same year as the earthquake, Haiti was hit by a cholera epidemic following the discovery of cases in the areas around the Artibonite River, the longest in the country and a major source of drinking water. Identified as a South Asian strain of the cholera bacteria, the disease was quickly traced to Nepalese soldiers who were stationed in Haiti as peacekeepers at that time. Before the epidemic could be mitigated, 770,000 Haitians were sickened and 9,200 died.
Two years later, Hurricane Sandy inflicted further physical damage on the island of Hispaniola, setting Haiti even further back on its slow march toward rehabilitation. Then last February, an internal investigation by Oxfam UK was made public, revealing systemic, widespread use of sex workers - many underage - by Oxfam foreign staff since the 2010 earthquake.
Despite the loss of their physical offices due to insecurity and death threats, the volunteers of KOFAVIV and the women they serve endure and persist. Exiled to the United States, Malya’s dedication and connection to the KOFAVIV community is unwavering.
“Even after nine years of these unfortunate events, the situation in Haiti remains the same,” she observed. “The consequences of the earthquake continue to haunt women. Their misery is not over. Even today, they are homeless and their safety is more at stake. They are raped every day.”
Chicago Peace Fellows Take Shape
The Goldin Institute recently brought together community leaders with key figures at a range of Chicago area civic institutions to gear up for the Chicago Peace Fellows, a joint initiative with the Conant Family Foundation and other philanthropies that will be the first domestic application of the GATHER curriculum and software, our tablet-based, capacity-building program for grassroots community leaders.
After yet another year where violence shattered too many of Chicago’s families, some of the city’s best minds talked over two dinners in December and January how technology, policy and communication can all be tools to empower those who are on the front lines of trying to mitigate, obviate and devise alternatives to terminate the violence. These civic leaders are helping to inform the curriculum that is based on the insights and aspirations of community leaders at the forefront of violence prevention in the city.
In coming weeks, the Goldin Institute will begin an intensive recruitment and application process to select the first class of Peace Fellows who will all be drawn from the grantees of the Chicago Fund for Safe & Peaceful Communities, a special grant opportunity which has drawn together the largest and most prestigious philanthropies in the city.
At the first dinner, Justice Stamps, who runs the Marion Nzinga Stamps Youth Center mentoring program on the Near North Side, expressed concerns about the general relationship in Chicago between community organizations and philanthropies, warning that current strategies were often “a band aid to a much greater problem.”
The voices of youths and young adults who are both the victims and perpetrators of violence are not included sufficiently in conversations about how grants are allocated, she elaborated. While many grants are won by small, grassroots operations, the dollar amounts are modest and these groups remain desperate for financial support. On the other hand, large, well-established non-profit organizations have a significant competitive advantage.
[quote]"We need the funders to get away from cookie cutter funding. We're going to do a block party in August and they are going to get killed in January." - Justice Stamps [/quote]
To remedy these issues, Justice suggested that an umbrella organization provide infrastructure and support to the “people doing the trench work.”
Dan Lurie, senior fellow and director of the Chicago office of the New America Foundation, agreed with Justice about the need to support grassroots operations, adding that while the dollar amounts of grants awarded under the Safe & Peaceful Communities Fund were too small to dramatically reduce the level of violence in the city, a strategic approach could leverage government agencies, in particular, to play a larger role.
[quote]"There needs to be new money, but is there a way to disrupt philanthropy with this kind of fund? A lot of funders would welcome being disrupted.” - Dan Lurie[/quote]
Jose Rico, a political activist and aldermanic candidate, pointed out that the enormous sums spent on criminal justice and incarceration dwarf the amounts spent on education, prevention and alternative activities.
[quote]“We know we are not getting the outcomes we are hoping for.” - Jose Rico[/quote]
Robin Robinson, a longtime Chicago television news anchor who is currently a special adviser to Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, added that race and racism must be included in discussions of how to stop the violence in the city.
[quote]“There is a way to talk about race that doesn’t make everyone cringe back." - Robin Robinson[/quote]
At the second dinner in January, participants discussed the role hospitals and research institutions could play as well as how the collateral effects of violence radiate throughout the community.
Daniel Cooper, author of The War on Neighborhoods: Policing, Prison, and Punishment in a Divided City and Director of Research at the Metropolitan Planning Council said that while good research was essential, it had to be shared with the communities who were being researched: “With that data, there is a great deal of responsibility to use it to be uplifting to community members and to be as transparent as possible.
[quote]“We have to make sure we are turning back the power of data to the community organizations that worked with us." - Daniel Cooper [/quote]
Leif Elsmo, executive director of Community and External Affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals, discussed his institution’s recent experience with opening a trauma center, noting that they had discovered that the emergency room was an opportune location for intervention.
[quote]“People who come into the hospital with gunshot wounds are more likely to be hurt again or to hurt someone themselves." - Leif Elsmo
Ghian Foreman of the Washington Park LLC described the effects of a six-week basketball tournament he organized in the Harold Ickes Homes public housing development more than a decade ago, citing it as an example of the types of programs that can be effective: “It was only 6 weeks, but those 6 weeks were six weeks of peace.”
Nedra Sims Fears, executive director of the Greater Chatham Initiative, noted that the financial burdens of the criminal justice system fall disproportionately on the women who live in the same communities where incidents of crime and violence are highest. She described a neighbor who mortgaged her home to pay for a lawyer representing her son in a criminal case and then explained how her own family spent thousands of dollars to house a nephew who had been released from prison.
[quote]“Black women are the ones paying for this missing generation of Black men. We pay for their absence, for their lost wages, for their criminal defense, and for the revolving door of the justice system. These are not statistics. These are people we know, in our families. This is real. - Nedra Sims Fears [/quote]
Eddie Bocanegra, a senior director at the Heartland Alliance who was both the perpetrator and victim of violence and was incarcerated, said that he grew up in the Little Village neighborhood during the years Chicago suffered more than 1,000 homicides each year, but had a close, loving family who welcomed him back into the fold when he completed his term in the penitentiary.
[quote]“My family was my infrastructure that I could tap into when I got back. Today, what’s it going to take for young people for young people to stop for the amount to think about the direction they are going? Part of it is therapy but mostly it is just relationships.- Eddie Bocanegra [/quote]
Celebrating the Graduation of the Gather Fellows
Twenty grassroots leaders from 16 countries around the world celebrated their graduation from the first class of Goldin Institute’s GATHER Fellows program on November 8th hosted by Board Member Mimi Frankel.
GATHER graduate Raymond Richard, founder of Brothers Standing Together, the Chicago-based anti-violence non-profit, attended the celebration on a rooftop venue overlooking Lake Michigan. ‘Brother Ray,’ as he is best known, communicated throughout the evening with other fellows online as he has throughout the four-month GATHER program. His colleagues participated in their respective regions across the globe in an innovative live broadcast of the graduation event.
Made possible by a new tablet-based online capacity-building curriculum that combines shared learning, local practice and robust reflection amongst the Fellows, GATHER’s inaugural participants have learned and worked together over the last 16 weeks. The highly diverse inaugural class included the manager of an orphanage in Kenya; a peace and reconciliation advocate in Colombia; a spokesperson for survivors of sexual violence in Kentucky; and a young lawyer in Puntland, Somalia. Throughout the course, these grassroots leaders engaged their respective communities in identifying existing assets, and built the personal capacities they need to design community-driven approaches to address local challenges. Both the software and core exercises were developed by Goldin Institute executive director Travis Rejman informed by 16 years of collaboration with a global network of grassroots leaders.
[quote]In many ways, Gather is the culmination of the last 16 years of experience gained by partnering with grassroots leaders and their communities across the globe. Literally thousands of conversations with community leaders from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, the streets of Port au Prince to the Boardrooms of international agencies, have informed the curriculum and improved the platform. -- Travis Rejman[/quote]
President of the Education for Change Association in Romania, Laura Molnar, summarized the GATHER Fellows’ sentiments when she shared:
[quote]It’s a joy and an honor to graduate GATHER – Goldin Institute, a high-quality course, with a real capacity to transform and empower global community leaders. Grateful to be part of a community of wonderful and inspiring people who are not afraid to dream and to work hard for making dreams become true. -- Laura Molnar, GATHER Fellow, Romania [/quote]
Dieudonne Allo, founder and CEO of the Global Leading Light Initiatives in Eastern Cape, South Africa added:
[quote]Today is a historic day for you at the Goldin institute, but it is also a historic day for me and Global Leading Light Initiatives. Thank you for empowering my community through me. I have learned (and applied) so much from Gather's unique curriculum and in the process, been greatly inspired your organisational culture. Community-driven leadership isn't just something Gather taught me about, but it made me see how it is practised. As leader of a nascent organization, trying to build an organisational culture, this was a very process for me. -- Dieudonne Allo, GATHER Fellow, South Africa [/quote]
As the final assignment in the GATHER course, Fellows crafted Indiegogo campaigns to invite local and global support for the projects they created with their communities over the last four months. These projects are built on the core principles of the course which include building on the assets that already exist and making sure that those people most impacted by local challenges are part of the team designing the solution.
We invite you to learn more about these inspiring campaigns by visiting the GATHER Fellows collection on Indiegogo.
Goldin Institute Advisory Board Member Mimi Frankel, hosted last night’s event, and saluted the graduating cohort as well as the Goldin Institute staff members. “I consider it a privilege and an honor to present the First GATHER graduating class,” Mimi explained. “It’s an extraordinary program.”
In welcoming the participants who joined us to celebrate the graduation in Chicago, Goldin Institute Founder and Board Chair Diane Goldin toasted the dedication and assiduity of the entire Goldin community:
[quote]“This GATHER graduation is a celebration of our Fellows who represent the heart of our mission. I couldn't be more proud of them and the team that made it all possible". -- Diane Goldin, Founder and Board Chair[/quote]
Deborah Bennett, a Senior Program Officer at the Polk Bros. Foundation was likewise elated and impressed by what she saw at the graduation event. Beginning early next year, the Goldin Institute is working with the Conant Family Foundation in partnership with the Polk Brothers Foundation and many other Chicago-based philanthropies to create a new GATHER class for grantees of the Partnership for Safe and Peaceful Communities:
[quote]“I’m so inspired by the asset-based approach to working with grassroots organizations,” Bennett explained. The people most impacted should always guide the solutions, and I’m excited for what we can do to reduce gun violence in Chicago. -- Deborah Bennett, Polk Brothers Foundation[/quote]
Jazz Legend Kahil El Zabar was invited to attend the GATHER graduation by the Goldin Institute’s Executive Director Travis Rejman, and commented that he was “intrigued” by the “collective of unique, innovative minds concerned with human need and real change – I find it inspiring.”
Seeking Peace from Somalia to Dharamshala
Meeting for the first time in Dharamshala, India over the course of seven days in October, I had the opportunity to meet Goldin Institute team member Jimmie Briggs with whom I shared the unique opportunity to not only be in intimate dialogue with Tibetan spiritual leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate the Dalai Lama, but be in community with nearly two dozen global youth peacemakers from around the world. The program which brought them together was the United States Institute of Peace’s (USIP) “Generation Change” initiative.
I was selected to participate as a grassroots youth leader based on my organizing work in Puntland, Somalia; while Jimmie attended as a mentor based on his past with the organization on the issue of child soldiers and SGBV (sexual and gender-based violence) against women and girls. In total, I was joined by 26 youth leaders from 14 countries spanning the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and South America.
Through a competitive call for online application to a youth exchange program for young peacebuilders from around conflict zones of the world, I was able to secure a position. I had high expectations for my trip to Dharamshala! I was very excited to meet with inspiring and courageous youth leaders from across the world to learn from them and see and hear their experiences in bringing peace and change within their communities.
Goldin Institute’s Jimmie Briggs was one of half a dozen mentors present throughout the trip, including accompanying the youth leader cohort to meet with the Dalai Lama, as well as participate in group exercises and workshops. As Jimmie told me:
[quote]In fact, I met His Holiness a number of years ago at a peace conference in Derry, Northern Ireland, but this was my first opportunity to actually sit and have a true conversation. It was definitely a memorable visit. -- Jimmie Briggs, Goldin Institute Director of Community Learning [/quote]
My trip to Dharamsala was another step taking me forward toward a bright future in my career and life. I hoped to meet with thought leaders who were source of wisdom and experts in building sustainable peace for communities and I did. To listen to their powerful, personal and professional experiences -- as well as the choices they have made -- met, exceeded and surpassed my expectations.
[quote]The Dalai Lama said to me that ‘Humans are social animals and everyone needs a community survive.’ This statement taught me the importance of building strong connections between active citizens of my community to unite their efforts and avoid conflict of interest between them. [/quote]
I was able to participate in this unique opportunity as the Chairperson of the Somali branch of the African Youth and Child Network for Human Rights (REJADH), but also as a participant in the inaugural class of GATHER Fellows. It was a whirlwind trip, as I graduated as a GATHER Fellow exactly two weeks after returning home from India. Without question, my experience with the Dalai Lama and fellow youth peacemakers in USIP’s Generation Change improves the project I developed through GATHER and deepens my commitment to work for peace.
This reaffirmed my strong believe towards the old saying “Your network is your net-worth.”
You can learn more about the project I am working on and get involved by visiting my Indiegogo campaign!
Nothing For Us Without Us
On the 3rd of October, 2018, we at Youth Leaders for Reconciliation and Development (YOLRED) hosted our community visioning summit, an important part of the Gather curriculum, which was attended by 56 community members from various categories including youths, older people, and local leaders.
During the sessions, participants were formed into four groups by Diana Opira Alaroker, a YOLRED staff member and also a Gather Fellow who served as facilitator, to give possibilities to everyone to discuss the community assets they have. The leaders from these groups later made a presentation based on their identified community assets and Diana presented a summary as well as shared with them the asset map.
I then took the participants through what adaptive challenges are, asked how do we as a community respond to such challenges as well as the opportunities and the vision for the future. Collectively, the participants identified land conflicts, alcoholism, their voices not being heard, stigmatization, and segregation of the former child soldiers and their children, laziness and corruption among others as being adaptive challenges. They noted, however, that taking a joint leadership and responsibility by every member of the community might provide answers to such challenges.
Looking into the opportunities and the vision for the future, the participants considered greatly exploiting and putting land into use as one of their most valuable assets and noted that this also will provide opportunities to employ the unemployed youth. Similarly, they also viewed the Village Saving and Loan Associations (VSLA) scheme as one way of improving their social cohesion and avoiding segregation since it brings people together and requires them to work together. This will improve their household income as well and put them in position to manage their basic needs and attain financial independence.
On speaking to 56 participants of the summit, the Hon. Susan Lapat, a community representative to the office of the Mayor, asked the participants to put into practice what they have learned, adding that this is an eye opener programming to the community that keeps the brain thinking. For long, people have had assets in their community unexploited and hence remained in their current situation. Consequently, she asked the members of the community to now start exploiting and putting into use the assets they have, including engaging the leaders, the Gather Fellows’ teams and other stakeholders in order to realize a joint community leadership towards achieving the change we want in our community. In the same way, the Chairman of Local Council 1 also asked the participants to embrace love and trust for one another so that they can realize the dreams of their shared aspirations as a community.
At the end, everyone was able to realize that “There is nothing for us without us.”
Geoffrey Omony serves as Executive Director of Youth Leaders for Restoration and Development (YOLRED), the first organization in Uganda designed and run by former child soldiers.
Going Big in South Africa
What a year! What a week! Two years ago, I set out on a crazy journey of helping African youths discover their light – their creative talents – and supporting them to shine this light by transforming their creative talents into solutions to critical challenges facing their communities. I founded an organization called Global Leading Light Initiatives, a grassroots initiative with a global focus in mind aimed at enhancing the capacities of youths to be real assets, and not liabilities, to their communities.
Two years on, with no funding, GLLI has been able to generate community impact which most million-Rand-funded organizations only dream of achieving. This achievement has been thanks to tens of passionate local and international volunteers who have been attracted by our work to give their time and other resources.
The Gather Course has made me understand how many assets I have and how I have been under-utilizing them. And so I decided to go big.
At the end of September, in collaboration with the Association of Universities in South Africa, our organization brought the 2018 National Entrepreneurship Week to our community. GLLI hosted the first Student Entrepreneurship Roadshow at Walter Sisulu University, featuring 3 of South Africa's hottest celebrities and officials from the Association of Universities of South Africa, headed by their CEO, Dr. Norah Clark.
Through this event, hundreds of emerging entrepreneurs from Walter Sisulu University and 6 high schools were inspired to create solutions to critical challenges. Students were offered great sponsorship opportunities to become innovative.
In mid-October, we finally we held our Community Visioning Summit! It was a wonderful day, with a total of 69 participants – 41 students, including 15 from Walter Sisulu University and 26 from 5 high schools in Mthatha as well as 28 adults, 1 official from the Department of Social Development, 8 teachers, 3 university lecturers, 4 social workers and 12 community members.
The youths taught us many things on that day and based on what we are seeing in our community, we can "Build prosperity on resources in which poor people are rich" i.e. their talents, skills, knowledge and culture.
The day after our Community Visioning Summit, I was invited by the department of education to make a presentation at a district teachers' workshop. A majority of high schools in Mthatha district were represented by a teacher at the workshop. I gave an overview of the Community Visioning Summit and shared the experiences with them. Most of the teachers were disappointed they couldn't make it.
I made a presentation about Iziko, our community and school-based parenting program aimed at building healthy child-adult relationships to support young people achieving their full potential.
It was a great honor. Many teachers want to join the "Iziko." They also want our student-entrepreneurship program in their schools.
Dieudonne Anumbosi Allo from the Eastern Cape in South Africa is the Founder and CEO of the Global Leading Light Initiatives, a registered non-profit organization formed in 2014 on a strong conviction that collective prosperity can be achieved in Africa and globally through coordinated grassroots initiatives aimed at creating nurturing and enabling environments for children and youths.
Gather Platform Previewed at Community Writing Conference
The Goldin Institute was pleased to participate in the Conference on Community Writing hosted at the University of Colorado at Boulder from October 18 - 21, 2017.
In a presentation on the theme of Building Global Networks that Support Local Action, Executive Director Travis Rejman previewed the Gather Platform alongside partners Lisa Dush and Delasha Long from DePaul University.
The conference overall focused on the field of “Community Writing” which is typically associated with the physical movement of students, teachers and researchers into local spaces to write, teach and learn. In our presentation, Lisa and Delasha offered a tool and framework for understanding how space, curricula and activities work together to facilitate learning. In light of this theory of space, Travis presented a new way to imagine spaces in a digital environment that incorporates the sense of being and working together in physical learning environments.
[quote]This was my very first time presenting at a conference, and the attendees made me feel very welcome. I enjoyed the discussion on rethinking our current models of service-learning projects. It was exciting to see how participants said they were blown away by the presentation on the Gather Platform.[/quote]
-- Delasha Long, DePaul University
The 2017 Conference on Community Writing featured dozens of enlightening presentations on the overall theme of “Engaging Networks and Ecologies.” The conference convened community writing teachers, students, scholars and activists from across the country to address the issues facing our communities—climate change, population movements related to climate, political instability, systemic misogyny, racially motivated police killings, mass incarceration, expansion of corporate rights, resurgence of anti-immigrant rhetoric, educational injustices and gun violence—from both scholarly and practical perspectives.
Questions that were explored at the conference that were of particular interest to the Goldin Institute network included:
- How can we apply or use ecological theories of writing as distributed, hyper-networked, circulatory, and remixed in order to strengthen our work to catalyze change in our communities?
- How can we work to expand our networks and ecologies to include the voices and writings of historically and chronically marginalized members of our communities?
- What projects have you completed or envisioned that take advantage of digital technologies aiding community development?
A special thank you to our partners Lisa Dush and Delasha Long for co-presenting and to our new friends at the Conference on Community Writing for hosting such a wonderful event.
Gather Update: Building a Platform for Grassroots Leadership
The Goldin Institute is making great progress in building GATHER, the tablet-based distance learning course to promote grassroots leadership for community driven social change.
As the Director of App Development and User Experience, I have been building the interactive capacity of the Gather platform which now includes real time chat built into the educational platform. We have been focused on
My colleagues on the curriculum development side have welcomed a new instructional design expert to the team, Kelly Salek of Lessons Learned Consulting. As Kelly noted:
The curriculum "map" developed by the Gather Team offers a concise overview of the range of values, tools and frameworks of the course. Together, these insights and strategies will help Gather Fellows to
The Gather curriculum Content will include, but not be limited to, the use of readings, interactive assignments, video and audio stories and commentary, illustrations, synchronous web chats, a “virtual café’’ and robust discussion boards. We will look for a media mix that encourages the course participants to establish relationships with one another as they move through the coursework.
One example of an audio-visual resource that will be included in the Gather Library is "The Danger of a Single Story" by the novelist Chimamanda Adichie:
We are excited to host our inaugural class of Gather Fellows later this year. If you or someone you know wants a chance to develop and share grassroots leadership skills, click here to sign up for updates and a chance to apply.