Period covered by this Ops Update: January to June, 2013
Appeal target (current): The overall budget is 294,309,878 Swiss francs including the Emergency Response Units (ERUs) value. The current appeal target without the ERUs value is 259,457,988 Swiss francs.
Programme Summary: The Haiti Red Cross Society in coordination with IFRC and other partners have been implementing initiatives that would enable the Haitian population effectively recover from the devastating effects of the earthquake and become more resilient as well as be prepared for future calamities. These initiatives range from shelter solutions, sanitation, livelihoods as well as creating awareness on issues related to health, hygiene practices and disaster preparedness.
To ensure that urban communities live in safer, healthier and improved habitat, several trainings have been conducted in targeted communities. The trained members have formed working groups that go out and collectively clean the streets as well as gather and dispose of waste so as to reduce risks of water-borne diseases. The community members have also assessed the risks in their environment and developed plans of action on how to address them. Implementation of the action plans is on-going.
To improve livelihoods, IFRC supported Community-based Organizations (CBO’s) to run micro-projects that would benefit the communities. The CBOs were trained in various business ventures and some were provided with toolkits to start-up of their businesses. In total, 854 people have been trained so far and/or provided with toolkits for start-up. IFRC also supported entrepreneurs by training them on rubble recycling for use in the manufacture of items such as roof tiles, flower pots, pavements, among others. The Federation has also provided some micro enterprises with loans to grow their businesses. To ensure that communities lived in security, IFRC provided trainings in violence prevention and conflict management. A total of 936 households have been trained during the reporting period.
The repair and retrofit project is working with selected households to repair houses and ensure that the physical living environment is being improved. Seventy four per cent (74%) of the targeted households are now living in repaired/retrofitted or new permanent houses. The addition of toilet and shower facilities has given many a very positive outlook on their living environment being improved and it has been observed that they are keeping these facilities clean.
The French Red Cross (FRC) with funding support from the IFRC secretariat has constructed 160 Ecological Sanitation (ECOSAN) latrines in Croix-des-Bouquets, Ouest Department. In total, 1,371 individuals (263 households living in 200 shelters) have benefited from the latrines within the time frame of this project. In addition, FRC and a local institution called ‘ECCSA’ are setting up a waste management system, which will provide the community with economic incentives for those that are interested in recycling.
The IFRC, through its shelter solutions programme, continued to contribute to meeting the shelter needs of the affected population in Haiti. IFRC is also supporting beneficiaries of its programme with unconditional grants for families to engage in small business opportunities, develop skills, sustain their habitat and improve their living conditions. As of June 2013, a total of 13,616 households had received resettlement grants. This represents a 105% achievement of the planned target.
For camp mitigation, the hygiene promotion (HP) team was replaced by a smaller “Camp mitigation” team of four staff and has mainly focused on preparing community mobilizers to continue HP activities in view of IFRC phasing out its intervention in camps by June 2013. IFRC continues to facilitate collaboration between camps committees and a private operator called JEDCO that manages desludging activities for DINEPA.
In order to increase community resilience in the face of natural disasters, First Aid, Epidemic Control for Volunteers (ECV) and Disaster Preparedness trainings were conducted for community mobilizers. In addition, vigilance committees were set up and equipped to ensure they are prepared and are quick to respond to the needs of camp residents in case of a disaster.
The Leogane water and sanitation project was completed on 30 June 2013 with most of the targets being 100% achieved. A total of 3,065 latrines were constructed/rehabilitated to which 3,003 hand washing stations and 3,026 garbage bins were provided. The hygiene promotion team completed its support to water and sanitation components and will, in future, continue as part of the Health project. For health and care activities, a total of 597 community facilitators have been registered and 58 of them have completed the CBHFA training. These community facilitators have been conducting sensitization session on Malaria, mother and child health as well asproper hygiene practices reaching a total of 8,928 households (34,060 beneficiaries).
The Health department of the Haiti Red Cross Society (HRCS) has been implementing various activities during the period under review with the aim of strengthening the capacity of target populations in preventing and managing injuries and common health problems in emergency and non-emergency situations. This has beendone through a network of well trained volunteers. From January to June 2013, community volunteers were trained in Community Based Health and First Aid (CBHFA) in action approach. HRCS volunteers trained in ECV have been conducting awareness sessions in the community on prevention of Malaria and Diarrhoea. Through financial support from United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the psychosocial support programme has been able to train its volunteers in psychosocial activities, who in turn conducted various activities in the communities reaching 580 people. With the support of Netherlands Red Cross, HIV activities were conducted in South and South-east departments. The violence prevention unit conducted several activities during the reporting period including awareness raising on violence prevention targeting women and youth, campaigns during key international days as well as dissemination of Information, Education and Communication (IEC) materials. The major challenge for the Health department is that of delayed implementation of planned activities due to the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between HRCS and IFRC not being signed.
For the Disaster Risk Management Department, the Red Cross Movement has been supporting HRCS in establishing, equipping and training community intervention teams (EIC1), with about 191 EICs formed as of 30 June 2013. This has ensured that the teams are ready to respond to any disasters as well as participate in risk reduction and mitigation activities in their communities. The community intervention team has also enabled the reinforcement of the community early warning system (EWS). This has complemented the pilot project “first responder initiative” where trained communities are prepared to respond to different disasters in their communities. In addition, a great investment has been made in terms of supporting community preparedness with the component of community sensitization on risk knowledge using “KDV – Kuri di Vwazan w”. This is done with support from trained community volunteers.
The Technical Movement Coordination Unit continued providing technical, strategic and programmatic inputs to RCRC partners. This was in the areas of Livelihoods, settlement, Disaster Risk Management, Health, Water and sanitation as well as evaluation, accountability and learning.
With the aim of implementing long term programmes, the National Society Knowledge Development (NSKD) unit has been supporting HRCS to develop its long term planning framework (2014-2017) as well as its corresponding 2-year operational plan (2014-2015). In this regard, before the end of 2013 a Revised Emergency Appeal will be published which will revise the budget taking into consideration the programmes which will be henceforth under the long term planning framework.