Homecoming gets Up Close and Personal
When the devastating January 2010 earthquake struck Haiti, Régine Chassagne of the Montreal indie group Arcade Fire, Domtar executive Madeleine Féquière, and other prominent members from Montreal’s Haitian community were already in the midst of developing an organization called KANPE to help the country break free from its cycle of poverty.
“The earthquake only really revealed the very fragile aspects of life in Haiti, and the fragility of the infrastructure,” says Chassagne, BA 98.
She’s on the Up Close and Personal panel that will discuss engagement, sustainability and capacity-building in Haiti on Thursday, September 22, in Concordia’s Henry F. Hall Building, during Homecoming ’11.
Fellow panellist Dr. Paul Farmer, UN Deputy Special Envoy for Haiti, is an American physician who has delivered health care to destitute Haitians for more than 20 years with Partners In Health, a medical aid organization that he co-founded.
Chassagne met Farmer in 2008 on her first trip to Haiti, her parents’ homeland, and was impressed by what he was accomplishing in the poorest country in the Americas. Farmer is now a board member of KANPE (Creole for “to stand up”).
The fact many Haitians are still living in tents and contracting cholera is not unexpected because the government has been in flux.
Féquière, the director of corporate credit at Domtar Corporation in Montreal and the third panel member, believes that Haiti, to get back on its feet and move forward, must get its government in order and better coordinate the foreign assistance that’s come in. KANPE’s founders felt these aid agencies often duplicate efforts and work at cross-purposes.
“If we show we can manage the help we’re getting, then things will get going,” says Féquière, BA 85, who was born and raised in Haiti.
KANPE’s mission is to help one village at a time, identifying the “poorest of the poor” and then delivering integrated aid — health care, nutrition, education and literacy — to these families for 18 months. Its ultimate goal is to encourage financial independence. KANPE began delivering these services in April in the village of Thomonde through its associates on the ground, Partners In Health and Fonkoze, a microfinance institution.
“I hope that the people who come [to the panel discussion] make a connection with the brilliant work going on in Haiti,” says Chassagne of the upcoming event.
Related links:
• Up Close and Personal (information and registration)
• Homecoming ’11
• KANPE
• Partners in Health