What We Did Right
Haiti Mama started as a research adventure for an overly zealous, possibly manic social worker. This was essentially a great experiment headed up by five Haitian Social Workers + one American-single-mama-social-worker. In the beginning, we exhaustively discussed every single detail of every single family till we had headaches. Our American social worker explained the evidence-based practice we would use in the States for the client problem + then our Haitian social workers spent hours applying cultural competency to the practice.
In some cases, it took years to realize that not all approaches with proven success in the US translate in Haiti. We are tweaking our model to this very day, we’ve learned from every mistake and get better as we go.
Going into our seventh year, we are confident in our interventions because we have the data to back them up. This was cause for a moment of reflection on things we were doing right while learning from our set-backs.
We literally did the opposite of what everyone else was doing: we brought the children home.
Once while visiting a family in a dangerous village where strangers weren’t allowed- a neighbor approached us and said “Don’t worry, you’re not in danger here, you did the right thing, you brought her son to her. White people never do that.”
We formed a Haitian leadership team with equal responsibility + accountability. The Haitian culture is 100% dependent on teamwork. Everyone pulling all the weight is the cultural sweet spot. Everyone on the team having equal accountability over finances prevented any funny business in 7 years. That’s unheard of for Haiti.
We did our best NOT to disturb the economic survival-system that is Haitian community.We obsessively evaluated the dependency our services could create.
We used a client-centered approach. There is not a one-size-fits-all solution to poverty.
We sought approval from the Haitian Government to work in their country. This was key to being an ethical, respectable service provider in Haiti and we learned a lot in the long, annoying, sometimes ridiculous process.
We met our clients where they were at, literally. Home visits shift the client-provider power differential. Sitting on upside down bucket in a hot tin shack after climbing a mountain helps us humbly serve our families.
We built relationships and trust. Haitians don’t trust quickly or easily, but we manifested relationships over time through honesty and integrity. The relationships we have with our clients are genuine, empathetic and warm.
We learned to set clear service guidelines and parameters 100% of the time. There was a cultural learning curve to this because Haiti’s poorest cultural framework functions outside of time. Setting clear parameters helped us as much as it helped our clients because- no matter how clearly we present our service plan- we will receive requests outside of our capabilities on a daily basis.
We did not try to “save” children from poverty. There’s sickening misconception that children in orphanages are better off because “their parents are just too poor.” Poverty is a economic status, it is NOT character trait. On the website of an orphanage functioning in Haiti it was parents relinquishing their children is described as “the ultimate act of love.” We understand what they’re trying to say but that train of thought is fundamentally flawed + comes from a place of privilege.
We didn’t give up. When we first started, orphanage directors told us time and time again: “Working with the parents is just too hard. It doesn’t work. The only thing we can do is try to give the kids a better future.” Haiti is a difficult place to vacation, of course it’s hard to rehabilitate parents in poverty. We didn’t give up and eventually we realized- we’re doing it right.
