The largest project to be undertaken is the rebuilding of the public school, Ecole Nationale Jacob Martin Henriquez. The nine-building school complex will provide a new educational home and free daily meal to more than 400 local children in grades K through 7.

Operation USA has partnered with Honeywell Hometown Solutions, the philanthropic organization of Honeywell Corporation, to reconstruct this primary school that will serve students who couldn’t otherwise afford to go to school. This project was built in cooperation with the City of Jacmel, with the support of its exceptional Mayor (now Senator), Edwin Zenny—a nationally known anti-corruption figure and committed activist for Jacmel’s future.

The school—designed pro bono by global planning firm Gensler, with structural engineering services provided by seismic experts Miyamoto International—was built using contemporary, sustainable building methods and was designed to withstand any potential future earthquakes. The school’s construction process was used to train local builders in modern earthquake-resistant construction and environmentally-conscious techniques that can save Haiti both money and natural resources in the years to come. Operation USA will establish a scholarship fund to help cover the cost of books, uniforms and other student expenses.

UPDATE: MARCH 2011
Construction nears completion! Inauguration ceremonies were held on March 11, which included a ribbon-cutting ceremony with both Operation USA and Honeywell’s CEOs in attendance.

UPDATE: OCTOBER 10, 2011
The first day of school is here! The brand new campus proudly welcomes its first students today.

Press Releases
Gensler Donates Design for Haiti School
Operation USA and Honeywell Break Ground on New School in Jacmel, Haiti

A powerful 8.6 magnitude earthquake and a series of strong aftershocks struck off Indonesia on Wednesday, sending people scurrying from buildings as far away as southern India, but there seemed little risk of a disastrous tsunami as in 2004.

Indonesia has been reported to be checking for damage and casualties but remarkably, no such reports had been received for several hours after the quakes, including in Aceh, the closest province and the area decimated by the disaster eight years ago. However, some areas close to the epicentre are remote so it could take some time to find out if there was any damage.

Operation USA worked intensively over 2 years in the aftermath of the 2004 quake and tsunami which took over 200,000 lives in that same area. 

Operation USA funded 7 health clinics (through IOM), an Acehnese language health training school in Meulaboh (IOM), conducted air and sea shipments of emergency supplies and funded a number of follow-up projects aimed at children and those with severe quake/tsunami-related mental health conditions.

Typically, Operation USA consults other agencies–especially those based in the affected country–and decides whether international material aid from as far away as our California headquarters is warranted.

11:40AM, Tuesday, March 20.
A large earthquake has struck near Acapulco on Mexico’s Pacific coast. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) said the quake had a magnitude of 7.4 (downgraded from original report of 7.6) and put the epicentre at 15 miles (525 km) east of Ometepec, in Guerrero state. Witnesses said buildings swayed in the capital, Mexico City, sending office workers rushing out onto the streets. It is not immediately clear whether the earthquake has caused any significant damage.

The BBC, in Mexico City, says buildings swayed for at least a minute. Office workers and residents were sent running into the streets in wealthy districts and poor neighbourhoods alike. Sirens could be heard across the city, and police helicopters are crisscrossing the skies. Mobile phone networks have been affected, correspondent says. Residents in the southwestern states of Oaxaca and Guerrero and the eastern state of Veracruz reported that phone service had been knocked out in their areas.

CNN reports from Mexico City: Mayor Marcelo Ebrard sent tweets saying that there was no visible damage in the capital and that the sprawling city’s strategic services and water system were functioning. Regardless, he tweeted, numerous buildings were being evacuated.

Earthquakes are a frightening experience for the more than 20 million residents of Mexico City, where about 10,000 people perished in a massive quake in 1985. The city, built on volcanic ash and clay, is particularly vulnerable to temblors.

Operation USA has a long history of work in Mexico–and had a significant response to the 1985 quake.

The Japanese National Police Agency confirmed 14,981 deaths, 5,279 injured and 9,880 people missing across eighteen prefectures, as well as over 125,000 buildings damaged or destroyed. The main tremor split highways, flattened buildings and ignited fires all over the northeastern Pacific coast. The ensuing tsunami wiped out entire villages.

As many as 4.4 million households in northeastern Japan were left without electricity and 1.5 million without water. Many electrical generators were taken down, and at least three nuclear reactors suffered explosions due to hydrogen gas that had built up within their outer containment buildings after cooling system failure. Residents within a 12 mile radius of the Fukushima nuclear power plant were evacuated.

Prime Minister Naoto Kan described it as the country’s worst crisis since World War II.

Immediate response
Operation USA began immediately working to address needs for material aid in the face of the enormous damage caused by the earthquake and tsunami, with a focus on shelter and medical supplies. Staged disaster supplies were prepped and dispatched from OpUSA’s Port of Los Angeles warehouse—distributed through on the ground partner agencies in Japan.

With an onslaught of cold winter weather following the disaster, the first shipment of a $1.1 million donation of Gap brand winter clothing was distributed to tens of thousands of recipients in Miyagi, Fukushima and Iwate.

A focus on rebuilding and recovery
Given the incredible scale of this catastrophe, second phase needs will be tremendous. Operation USA has worked with a well-established network of local partners and resources in Japan dating back to the Kobe quake.

While further assessment is needed before committing to specific recovery projects, Operation USA will focus its efforts on supporting communities that may be overlooked by larger agencies or the Japanese government.

Projects will be identified where the efforts can have the maximum impact. Operation USA has over 30 years experience in both education and community health projects (most recently in Haiti, China and Chile), and will focus its recovery efforts in these areas.

Operation USA takes the intention of our donors seriously. All funds raised that have been specifically designated to support our work in Japan will be spent on Japan relief.

SUPPORT AND PARTNERS
Generous corporate support and in-kind donations have been provided by:

California Community Foundation
Cascade Designs
Etón USA
The Gap
Honeywell Hometown Solutions
Kaiser Permanente
Manitha Neyam Trust
Pelican Products, Inc.
United Airlines

Local partners include:

Peace Winds Japan
Second Harvest

Children receive free schooling and sports coaching at L’Athletique d’Haiti, a sports centre run by Haitian Boby Duval on the outskirts of Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince.

By Anastasia Moloney

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AlertNet) – Former Haitian soccer star Boby Duval has spent most of his life fighting on and off the pitch. In the mid-1970s, he battled near death from starvation during a 17-month stint in Haiti’s Fort Dimanche, a notorious prison which served as a torture centre during the dictatorship of Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his son Jean-Claude. Tortured and placed for a while in solitary confinement, Duval witnessed the deaths of fellow rights activists, who dared to speak out against the Duvalier regime. The political prisoners had been beaten to death with clubs in the fetid 13 feet by 14 feet cells they shared with up to 40 others.

After his release, Duval, who played for Violette soccer club, one of Haiti’s most successful teams, turned again to sport, converting a wasteland near Cite Soleil, a slum on the edge of the capital Port-au-Prince, into a youth sports centre. “We are in an area most Haitians don’t want to see at all or know about,” Duval, 58, told AlertNet. “There are two worlds in Haiti. You have the very rich, who have kind of everything and you have the very poor who basically don’t have anything.”

One of the aims of the centre – L’Athletique d’Haiti – is to provide children with a free education in a country where around 90 percent of schools are private and 50 percent of children do not attend primary school. But an equally important goal is to use sports to teach some of the city’s most deprived children life skills and basic values such as tolerance and teamwork. Since 1996, the sports centre has been Duval’s way of struggling against what he says is widespread indifference among Haitian society to the country’s poor. Eight of out 10 Haitians live on less than $2 a day.

“I’ve had a privileged background. I’ve travelled and seen the world,” said Duval, whose businessman father sent him to Canada and the United States to study. “I’ve always felt a responsibility to give it back.”

SAFE HAVEN
As the bell rings to signal the end of the school day, around 200 pupils dressed in blue shirts, and girls sporting white ribbons in their hair, pour out of the brightly painted large tents that serve as classrooms. Along with free schooling, children receive basic healthcare, hot meals and coaching in sports such as soccer in the open grass fields. Basketball, karate and boxing in a shaded ring are also on offer. It’s a safe haven for the children who live in the nearby slums.

“Their parents have given them everything they possibly can,” Duval noted. What parents cannot give, Duval sees as his responsibility to help provide. “I believe you can teach values of self-esteem, tolerance, teamwork and respect through sports,” Duval said. “Playing a sport, you learn the rules of the game, you develop discipline and self-esteem.”

One of Duval’s favourite teaching drills is to get boys and girls to play soccer together – except only the girls are allowed to score goals. Another is to make teams play in pairs, tied together at the wrist, a tactic that soon instills the importance of teamwork, he said. It is the kind of training that has helped the club’s boys and girls soccer teams win local and international competitions, Duval said, as he proudly pointed to a shelf cluttered with silver cups and medals in his otherwise bare office.

Duval, a stocky man whose voice is as big as his frame, also sees sport as a way of breaking down Haiti’s highly stratified society and narrowing the gap between its social classes. Amid raised eyebrows, Duval has over the years organised soccer tournaments where teams from Port-au-Prince’s wealthier neighourhoods and private schools play against L’Athletique d’Haiti.

Against the odds, Duval has kept the sports centre running through years of political turmoil. More recently, the sports grounds served as a refuge for around 30,000 Haitians, who had lost their homes during the 2010 earthquake.

SELF-DISCOVERY
Duval’s latest education programme targets 400 young adults, aged from 16 to 24 years old. It is designed to help them get jobs or encourage them to keep studying. Through soccer, other sports and workshops, they are taught life and jobs skills and the programme helps place students on work experience and internships.

“There is no system for these kids. We knock on doors for them. We are trying to give them a hand. To lift them up,” Duval said passionately. “It’s like a very opaque ceiling they have to break. We try to help them break that ceiling, but not break it in a violent manner – rather by giving them the tools and the know-how.”

Getting a job in Haiti, though, is a near-impossible feat. Despite government promises of creating more jobs, around 70 percent of Haitians remain either unemployed or underemployed. “The kids know the reality on the streets. They have a school diploma, some have been to college but they can’t find jobs. They start doubting whether they can get somewhere. They are really hurting,” Duval said.

Still, for 17-year-old Floriant Dieulet, the three-month course has raised his confidence and self-awareness. “I’ve discovered things I didn’t know about myself, good things too. I’ve realised I’m a good communicator,” he said.

Meanwhile, Duval continues his fight to raise the $20,000 or so a month he needs to keep the sports centre going, which has grown to cater for around 1,500 children. “There’s no choice,” Duval said. “We have to keep going and serve these kids.”

(Editing by Katie Nguyen) 
 

REPOSTED FROM:

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/feature-haitian-run-youth-centre-gives-deprived-children-sporting-chance

He traveled with us to Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Ethiopia, Tibet, China and Nicaragua.  Having spent more than a half century in numerous governmental and nonprofit public health agencies as well as having an earlier career as a community-based physician in East Palo Alto, CA, Paul was well versed in anti-poverty and public health programs. He was unyielding in his commitment to Operation USA over 32+ years.

He will be greatly missed.

With a history of work in Sri Lanka both before and in response to the devastating 2004 tsunami, Operation USA remains dedicated to projects in these impacted communities. OpUSA is currently working with community-based organizations to meet the immediate survival needs as well as to develop sustainable long-term programming in education, health and livelihoods–with a focus on programs to support women’s development.

PROGRAMS OVERVIEW

Education

Working with a local partner with expertise in early childhood education and curriculum development, Operation USA has identified some of the core barriers to education in the North and East. These include a lack of access to trained teachers, overburdened educational staff, inability to cope with trauma, and lack of basic school supplies and materials. These challenges manifest themselves in recent statistics compiled that show that 58% percent of children in 2011 were unable to pass their math standardized exams. Operation USA is supporting programs that focus on the holistic development of the child, rather than the traditional exam-based education. These programs emphasize psychosocial support, family counseling, after school tuition, teacher training and interactive forms of learning. We are also continuing a previous program of “catch-up” educational support with a long-time local partner. Part of our education programming will include the support of a preschool attached to an integrated agricultural/feeding program that also adopts a holistic approach to education.

Livelihoods

Operation USA will focus on supporting livelihood programs through groups that target primarily women-headed households. In the North, we are working with women’s federations comprise of women from each village, that are working to provide psychosocial support, income-generating projects to affected communities, as well as build up their own organizational capacity. Similar programs will be done through organizations in the east, also with a focus on war widows, and including some micro-finance support and revolving funds for small business operation.

Health

Operation USA’s health initiatives are inclusive of all aspects of health including mental health, public health, primary health care, and medical supplies. Operation USA will support a public health training initiative designed to integrate basic hygiene and reproductive health into youth programming, as well as offering trainings for those affected by gender based violence or alcoholism. Our educational programs will also include nutritional support to communities where malnutrition has been identified as large problem.