Visiting from his native Bangladesh, the Nobel peace laureate poured out tale after tale Friday of how his concept of “social business” could apply to Haiti, a nation rife with woes well before last year’s punishing earthquake.

Yunus told how he started his Grameen Foundation by lending $27 each to 42 illiterate women so they could pay off their debts, how a small yogurt business lessened malnutrition in Bangladesh and about the importance of creativity.

“There’s a business world. There’s a charity world,” he told a hotel conference room crowded with college students and development workers. “Why can’t we take those ideas and try to make money and also solve (social) problems?”

It was Yunus’ first trip to Haiti, and he’s certain to make more after he leaves Sunday.

The Grameen Creative Lab based in Germany, which he founded, opened an office in Haiti last year after the earthquake. It gave an $80,000 loan to a new vocational and computer-training school to cover startup costs, and it plans to hand out four more loans before year’s end to other applicants with their own social business ideas.

Yunus, a celebrity in development circles for his ideas on helping the poor, recently joined a board of more than 30 philanthropists, former presidents and executives that seeks to advise Haitian President Michel Martelly on economic matters. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, also the United Nations special envoy to Haiti, is co-chairman.

Martelly and his advisers met with Yunus on Thursday on the grounds of the National Palace, still a crumbled heap of snow-white concrete almost two years after the January 2010 earthquake.

Yunus said the “social business” idea is different from the “microcredit” industry that he pioneered in the 1980s, when he gave tiny loans to poor people to help them start small businesses.

His Grameen Creative Lab focuses on the “social business” approach. It gives out bigger loans, between $10,000 and $100,000. The interest rate and duration of the loan are set according to the risk and type of business.

Whatever profit is earned by a “social business” financed by the lab goes back into expanding the company. The aim is that creation and expansion of businesses will help a society lessen ills like hunger and unemployment.

“This is a new paradigm,” said Kesner Pharel, a Haitian economist who was among a panelists of microcredit experts at the hotel. “This guy can be on the same level as Steve Jobs … This is a new form of capitalism. It’s not only about the bottom line but about how the community is doing.”

Following the conference, Yunus dashed off to talk with students at the vocational and computer-training school that got the Grameen Creative Lab loan. He told several dozen students that they should think of themselves as job givers, not job seekers.

The ideas that Yunus brought were not without skeptics in a struggling Caribbean country where employment has long been elusive. About 72 percent of the population earns less than $2 a day.

“It’s impossible for a young entrepreneur to do social business in Haiti,” said Stanley Pierre, 25, a student at the school. “It’s not until the business is truly successful and we have taken care of families can we then turn around and help the community.”

On Saturday, Yunus and his team planned to travel to Haiti’s Central Plateau to visit an office run by Fonkoze, a microcredit bank, and Partners in Health, a nonprofit group that provides health care to the poor.

He said he wants to encourage health-related “social businesses” in the countryside.

Benjamin Krause from Penn’s relief group J/P HRO says the money from the World Bank will be used for rent subsidies, repairs to houses and building new homes and solar-powered water kiosks.

The project is part of a $95 million effort financed by the World Bank and Haiti Reconstruction Fund that is aimed at helping more than 500,000 people move back into redeveloped neighborhoods.

Penn co-founded the relief group shortly after the January 2010 earthquake and has overseen maintenance of a large settlement camp on a golf course. He’s also testified in Washington.

Earthquake in Jamaica illustration by L. Johnson

The University of the West Indies (Jamaica) reports that the earthquake measured 5.0 on the Richter Scale.

A local newspaper (The Gleaner) has received reports that several buildings in Kingston have cracks in the walls. We (as well as the Gleaner) are surprised that this would be the case in Kingston taking into account that the epicenter was more than 100 km away.

Jamaica has 2 transform faults (on on each side of the island – green lines).  As these type of transform faults can be very dangerous (Lorca was also a transform earthquake).  ALL people in Jamaica should be well prepared if a strong earthquake would strike.

At least for the time being.

The chain of events started Friday when a magnitude-8.9 earthquake and tsunami severed electricity to the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex 170 miles (270 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo, crippling its cooling system. Then, backup power did not kick in properly at one of its units.

From there, conditions steadily worsened, although government and nuclear officials initially said things were improving. Hours after the explosion, they contended that radiation leaks were reduced and that circumstances had gotten better at the 460-megawatt Unit 1. But crisis after crisis continued to develop or be revealed.

Without power, and without plant pipes and pumps that were destroyed in the explosion of the most-troubled reactor’s containment building, authorities resorted to drawing seawater in an attempt to cool off the overheated uranium fuel rods.

Robert Alvarez, senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and former senior policy adviser to the U.S. secretary of energy, said in a briefing for reporters that the seawater was a desperate measure.

“It’s a Hail Mary pass,” he said.

He said that the success of using seawater and boron to cool the reactor will depend on the volume and rate of their distribution. He said the dousing would need to continue nonstop for days.

Another key, he said, was the restoration of electrical power, so that normal cooling systems can be restored.
Officials placed Dai-ichi Unit 1, and four other reactors, under states of emergency Friday because operators had lost the ability to cool the reactors using usual procedures.

An additional reactor was added to the list early Sunday, for a total of six _ three at the Dai-ichi complex and three at another nearby complex. Local evacuations have been ordered at each location. Japan has a total of 55 reactors spread across 17 complexes nationwide.

Officials began venting radioactive steam at Fukushima Dai-ichi’s Unit 1 to relieve pressure inside the reactor vessel, which houses the overheated uranium fuel.

Concerns escalated dramatically Saturday when that unit’s containment building exploded.

It turned out that officials were aware that the steam contained hydrogen, acknowledged Shinji Kinjo, spokesman for the government Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. More importantly, they also were aware they were risking an explosion by deciding to vent the steam.

The significance of the hydrogen began to come clear late Saturday:

Officials decided to reduce rising pressure inside the reactor vessel, so they vented some of the steam buildup. They needed to do that to prevent the entire structure from exploding, and thus starting down the road to a meltdown.

At the same time, in order to keep the reactor fuel cool, and also prevent a meltdown, operators needed to keep circulating more and more cool water on the fuel rods.

Temperature in the reactor vessel apparently kept rising, heating the zirconium cladding that makes up the fuel rod casings. Once the zirconium reached 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit (1,200 Celsius), it reacted with the water, becoming zirconium oxide and hydrogen.

When the hydrogen-filled steam was vented from the reactor vessel, the hydrogen reacted with oxygen, either in the air or water outside the vessel, and exploded.

A similar “hydrogen bubble” had concerned officials at the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear disaster in Pennsylvania until it dissipated.

If the temperature inside the Fukushima reactor vessel continued to rise even more _ to roughly 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit (2,200 Celsius) _ then the uranium fuel pellets would start to melt.

According to experts interviewed by The Associated Press, any melted fuel would eat through the bottom of the reactor vessel. Next, it would eat through the floor of the already-damaged containment building. At that point, the uranium and dangerous byproducts would start escaping into the environment.

At some point in the process, the walls of the reactor vessel _ 6 inches (15 centimeters) of stainless steel _ would melt into a lava-like pile, slump into any remaining water on the floor, and potentially cause an explosion much bigger than the one caused by the hydrogen. Such an explosion would enhance the spread of radioactive contaminants.

If the reactor core became exposed to the external environment, officials would likely began pouring cement and sand over the entire facility, as was done at the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident in the Ukraine, Peter Bradford, a former commissioner of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said in a briefing for reporters.

Another expert on the call, Ken Bergeron, a physicist and former Sandia scientist, added that as a result of such a meltdown the surrounding land would be off-limits for a considerable period of time, and “a lot of first responders would die.”

The RAND Corp. report being released Friday ticks off a crushing litany of problems in the Caribbean nation, many predating the Jan. 12 earthquake _ unqualified government workers, general lawlessness, horrific prisons, incapable police, an onerous business climate.

But it was the post-earthquake landscape that shocked James Dobbins, a former U.S. special envoy to Haiti and director of the RAND International Security and Defense Policy Center.

“Clearly the scale of the damage was surprising,” he said. “We’re also somewhat surprised at the Haitian and international response. Not the humanitarian response, which was actually dramatically quick. But the second stage _ so little of the rubble has been cleared, and so few of the basic decisions have been made.”

Leaders of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee have portrayed Haitian President Rene Preval as an ineffectual leader who has hindered recovery from the quake and urged their colleagues to reconsider sending money to Haiti if reforms are not made.

That Haiti is in disarray comes as no surprise to Jill Marie Michel, a 33-year-old mother of two living in a tent in one of the dozens of sprawling camps for Haitians left homeless by the quake.

She joined about 100 people in a public protest Thursday in front of the collapsed presidential palace in Port-au-Prince. She and others said the government is failing on its promises to provide housing as private landowners pressure the camp residents to leave.

At a large tent camp across the street, naked children bathed in buckets wedged between the gutters and tents.

“I don’t know where that change is going to come from,” said Michel, who also cares for an orphaned niece and goddaughter whose families died in the earthquake.

The report from the Santa Monica, California-based think tank gives recommendations on what the Haitian government and donor governments and groups should focus on in coming years, identifying key areas such as governance, education, health, security, justice and economic policies.

Donors, it says, should focus more on “state building” rather than rebuilding earthquake damaged structures.

The most important tasks, according to the report:

_Accelerate removal of rubble. The report calls that “the single most important step toward reconstruction of housing and infrastructure that the Haitian government and donors can take.”

_Reduce the cost and time to open a business or obtain property. “Haiti is poor in great part because of its difficult environment for business,” the report says.

_Build up the national police’s capacity and keep United Nations peacekeepers here for at least the next five years.

_Create a modern civil service. The report suggests Haiti’s government just monitor and regulate education and health services and not provide those services itself.

Dobbins said the current situation stems not only from hundreds of years of corruption and mismanagement but also from Preval’s inaction.

“Preval is well intended, but he’s characteristically indecisive,” said Dobbins. “We’re seeing results of that.”

Washington takes some of the blame in the report, and Dobbins recommends the Obama administration appoint a special envoy to Haiti.

“I think everyone has been moving too slowly,” he said. “It’s time to get with it.”

Not everything is bad news. Dobbins said that unlike other “fragile” countries, Haiti is not in a troubled region, there is no internal ethnic conflict, and Haitians living abroad are large in number, skilled and economically supportive.

“Daunting as the current challenges are _ acute problems layered on chronic ones _ the need for reconstruction and the likelihood of an infusion of international resources to fund it open up the possibility of laying a new foundation for stability and economic growth,” the report says.

Before the earthquake, Haiti experienced five consecutive and unprecedented years of economic growth.

“Just to further underline what a low base we’re starting at, the current government we have is one of the best we’ve had in 200-plus years,” Dobbins said.

Many in Haiti hope November elections may usher in change. Haiti’s next president is slated to oversee the spending of nearly $10 billion in reconstruction aid promised at a March U.N. donors conference _ though less than 10 percent has been delivered so far.

Possible presidential candidates to succeed Preval include Haitian-American singer Wyclef Jean and former prime minister Jacques Edouard Alexis.

The former Fugees frontman made the comments to Radio Metropole on Tuesday after returning to Haiti from the United States.

Politicians in Haiti traditionally speak mainly Creole and French _ the latter for many things being the language of government in Haiti. Jean’s American-accented Creole and lack of French are constant reminders he did not grow up here.

Jean, who was born in Haiti but raised in New York City, also urged overseas Haitians to invest in Haiti.

Jean announced his candidacy Aug. 5, then left Haiti the next day. He returned Tuesday afternoon, an adviser said in an e-mail.

He had been scheduled to appear at a fundraiser in Massachusetts for Gov. Deval Patrick on Tuesday evening, but bowed out to travel to Haiti.

It was unclear how long the 40-year-old Jean, who owns a home in New Jersey and property in Haiti, would be in the country.

There is some debate over whether Jean will even be on the presidential ballot Nov. 28. According to the constitution, Haitian presidents must have lived in the country at least five consecutive years before election day.

An eight-member provisional electoral council is spending this week verifying candidates’ credentials.

Jean’s campaign is expected to argue that his 2007 appointment as an ambassador-at-large for Haiti exempts him from the requirement.

He has entered a highly competitive and crowded race for a difficult and dangerous job. Only one person has completed a democratically elected 5-year term in Haiti’s history _ current President Rene Preval, who is poised to do it a second time and hand off to an elected successor since he is barred from seeking re-election.

The winner of the election will take on responsibility for a destroyed capital, 1.6 million homeless people and countless groups fighting over billions of dollars in international reconstruction funds pledged after the January earthquake that killed an estimated 300,000 people.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI, 19 January 2010

It’s a place where women are raped so frequently it takes place in broad daylight, where gang members roam the narrow, stinking tented alleys with weapons, and where newly-orphaned street children fight over the odd piece of change handed out by aid workers stopping to take photos in front of the ruined palace.

At the President’s medal ceremony, there was talk of hope and progress. It was acknowledged that better performance was needed to deal with the aftermath of the disaster. But that was followed quickly with reminders of the scale of the tragedy and of the achievements made over the past six months.

Outside, nobody in the camp even knew the significance of the date, such is the day-to-day nature of existence for many here. Our friend Joel Joseph arrived in Champ de Mars on the first night after the quake. He had just watched his house collapse with his young daughter inside. He hasn’t worked for months, but he speaks four languages, in a small, sad voice that only gets louder when he’s asked about the international aid effort.

Joel says the lack of obvious progress has convinced many Haitians of conspiracy theories: that NGOs are paying families to stay in camps to prolong the emergency and receive more funding; that reconstruction and rubble-removal are on hold so the government can extract the maximum from international donors. “Even this isn’t for us,” he added, pointing to food distribution by Brazilian peacekeepers just meters from where foreign media were gathered for the medal ceremony. “They haven’t done this here for months, why today? They pretend to help us, but the truth is we’re not receiving any help at all.”

During my six months in Haiti, I have seen an aid effort proceed on an uneven course – from its problematic inception, to successes in disease prevention, and back to somewhere in between. As the UN Mission Chief Edmond Mulet and others freely admit, the sense of urgency has been lost here. That might sound hard to believe when there are more than 1.5 million living in squalid camps, exposed to the elements with extreme weather on the way, but it’s true.

And for most Haitians, the failures of the aid effort are more obvious than its successes. The fact that in six months only 5,500 storm proof shelters have been built in the entire country, the huge rise in assaults on women in the camps, the rubble spilling out over every neighbourhood, a city which still looks much the same as it did in the days just after the quake…

Perhaps it’s a little early to be giving out medals?

The proposal introduced by senators John Kerry of Massachusetts and Bob Corker of Tennessee calls for spending nearly 25 percent more than President Barack Obama had said in March was needed to rebuild. Kerry is the chairman and top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Corker is the committee’s No. 2 Republican.

Proponents say the legislation is essential to help a country of nearly 10 million people that saw its capital destroyed, government decapitated and 1.3 million people left homeless by the magnitude-7 quake. The Haitian government estimates between 230,000 and 300,000 people were killed.

In addition to tripling U.S. funding for next year, the bill would create a senior Haiti policy coordinator, appointed by Obama and based in the State Department, to oversee a program of improving governance, economic growth, environmental restoration and investment in women and children.

The measure includes the $1.15 billion pledged in March at a United Nations donors conference for Haiti, plus adds an additional $500 million a year through 2014, on top of other funds already pledged by Congress.

That would raise the total money pledged by the international community for Haiti’s rebuilding to nearly $15 billion, including the money pledged by nearly 50 donors at the U.N. conference and $2.7 billion already pledged for humanitarian relief.

The international aid group Oxfam praised the Kerry-Corker bill for supporting Haitian-expressed needs and leadership in the country’s rebuilding. But it expressed concern that the policy coordinator would keep development experts from effectively organizing the U.S. response.

The money could still be a long way off: Even if the bill passes the Senate and House, its proposals then would have to be separately approved by congressional appropriations committees, which would take it up as a contentious midterm election approaches.

Kerry and Corker’s bill is the latest in a flurry of Haiti-related legislation in recent weeks.

On Wednesday, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a bill to expand trade preferences for Haitian textiles. Lawmakers had already passed bills that make it easier to contribute to Haitian relief efforts and calling on international financial groups to forgive Haiti’s $1 billion in international debts.

Haitian and international officials had hoped to use the devastation of Port-au-Prince _ a densely packed sprawl of winding roads and ramshackle slums that is home to a third of Haiti’s 9 million people _ to build an improved capital and decentralize the country.

An estimated 500,000 people fled to the countryside in the days after the quake, many on buses paid for by the government to move quake survivors away from the heart of the destruction. Hundreds of thousands more are camped atop the rubble of their homes, or packed into makeshift camps.

Now some of those who fled are beginning to return after enduring the rural misery that drove them to Port-au-Prince in the first place.

“I didn’t like it there,” said Marie Marthe Juste, selling fried dough on the streets near the capital’s Petionville suburb after returning from La Boule, in the mountains 20 miles (30 kms) to the north.

“My friends help me down here. Up there, I just sat around all day. At least here I can sell things to make a little money,” she said, hobbling on crutches because she injured her ankle in the quake.

The government is largely powerless to keep people from returning, though Prime Minister Max Bellerive protested this week that Port-au-Prince cannot withstand another influx of people.

“It’s impossible for these people to come back before the capital is reconstructed,” he said.

The idea was to use the quake as an opportunity to fix some of Haiti’s long-standing problems.

President Rene Preval’s “Operation Demolition,” an ambitious plan to clear the rubble, includes provisions to remove people living in unstable buildings by force, according to Aby Brun, an architect and member of the government’s reconstruction team.

“We will destroy in an orderly and secure manner,” Brun said.

Haiti’s government on Friday announced a ban on rebuilding until it completes damage assessments and introduces a new building code to be developed with “international partners.” A notice broadcast in Creole on radio warned people against sleeping under or near any damaged buildings. It was not clear how the government would enforce the edict.

A major part of that reconstruction plan is encouraging Haitians to move away from the capital, providing jobs and basic services in other cities, towns and villages.

“We want to create opportunities for them as well in the second cities,” said the U.S. Agency for International Development’s No. 2 official, Dr. Anthony Chan.

But Haitians are already streaming back to their shattered capital.

“This has been my home,” said Alberto Shoute, 62, who returned to his flattened concrete house after eight days in the southern town of Jeremie. “Most people are from here and they didn’t want to stay with people they barely knew. More are planning to come back soon.”

Alfredo Stein, of the University of Manchester’s Global Urban Research Centre, said planners must assume people will return _ and must work closely with them to rebuild. Rather than thinking people are in the way, planners must consider their return to be an opportunity to fix not just the bricks and mortar but Haiti’s social fabric, he said.

Haiti plans to build camps with sanitation outside the city, but Stein said such efforts usually fail.

“You’re going to be constructing ghettos that are far away from where people will need to restore their economic lives,” Stein said. “Experiences in other parts of the world show that after disasters, when people are resettled far away from where they were living, (they) turned out to be very complicated places where there is a lot of crime.”

In Port-au-Prince, the U.N. says there are a half-million people in 315 encampments, most without sanitation. Schools are closed _ or gone. There’s enough rubble to fill five football stadiums the size of New Orleans’ Superdome, and more than 1 million people need to be provided with food and water.

But if the government has a plan to rebuild, Bellerive did not reveal it _ and no one knows when, or to what extent a new capital will rise.

The need remains pressing.

A crowd of Haitians swarmed into a Dominican tractor-trailer near the capital’s airport Friday and stole 2 tons of food and water. The looting happened when someone noticed the Dominican driver got stuck while trying to make a U-turn.

In a nearby industrial park, other desperate and hungry Haitians ransacked eight truckloads of food and water, also from the Dominican Republic. It happened virtually under the noses of soldiers of the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division.

“Our guys weren’t going to break out shields and start hitting people. That’s not what we are here for,” Lt. Col. Keith Pelligrini said as his troops cleaned up the mess.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton visited Friday in his role as a U.N. special envoy for Haiti relief. He expressed faith in Haiti’s leaders and predicted the country would emerge stronger than before.

“They have a commitment to building the country they want to become, not just the country they were,” he said during a tour of the Port-au-Prince clinic GHESKIO, widely considered to be the world’s oldest AIDS clinic.

While the government says it will build suburban camps, the International Organization for Migration is trying a different tactic: Handing out tarpaulins, tools and basic building materials so people can erect simple shelters where they are.

“People need to be where their support networks are,” said spokesman Mark Turner. Otherwise, he said, “They will be dependent on aid for a very long time.”

Port-au-Prince has long been a powerful magnet for people throughout Haiti. It generates about 60 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

“In Haiti, things are not easy, so you go where you find the opportunity,” said 23-year-old Ebed Jacques, a law student who left the capital after the earthquake and has returned _ for now _ to his native St. Marc, a bustling fishing town 70 miles (110 kms) north of the capital. “The jobs are in Port-au-Prince and the schools are in Port-au-Prince, so that’s where you go.”

And despite Haitian and international efforts, opportunities remain few and far between in the countryside.

Most refugees from the capital are in northern Haiti’s Artibonite Valley, a starkly desolate region of rice fields and deforested mountains the color of cigarette ash.

The influx has strained small towns with few schools and few jobs beyond subsistence farming. It inflated prices for sugar, rice and other basics, and a lack of rain could hurt upcoming harvests in the region, which is Haiti’s breadbasket.

In Gros Morne, a town of unpaved streets at the valley’s northern edge, Ann Rose Solitaire, 36, is living with eight relatives crowded into a simple shack with a corrugated metal roof. She sent her mechanic husband back to Port-au-Prince, 100 miles (160 kms) to the southeast, and will probably join him soon.

“I’m here because I have nowhere else to go. But I don’t want to stay,” Solitaire said. “There’s no way to support my family.”

A shocking three out of five respondents said they had lost some of their “loved ones.” Two-thirds felt the situation in their country was so dire they were willing to move back to Haiti for a period of time to help with the reconstruction.

A large majority of those interviewed said that they have been sending remittances back home on a regular basis but are now willing to increase the amount. Seventy-eight percent of Haitian adults in the United States reported having sent a financial contribution to help victims of the earthquake.

Additionally, 62 percent indicated that they were willing to adopt or foster a Haitian orphan from the earthquake. Three-fifths felt that the United States should welcome at least 50,000 new Haitian refugees to alleviate the calamity in the island nation.

Pollster Sergio Bendixen, president of Bendixen and Associates which conducted the poll on behalf of NAM, said that Haitian Americans were also aware of the long-term challenges Haiti faces. “The Haitian community in the United States indicates that for them, the most important long-term need is improving the nation’s health and education systems,” Bendixen said.

“Thirty-seven percent of those polled said the health and education systems needed to be addressed; 24 percent said strengthening the security and safety of the people should be the top priority, while a majority also agreed that Haiti would benefit from the opening of American markets to Haitian agricultural produce and manufactured goods.”

Haitians in the United State are not concerned about the large U.S. military presence in their homeland.

The Haitian Diaspora in the United States also gave high marks to President Obama and his government (96 percent) and to the United Nations (88 percent) for their response to the earthquake. But three-fifth of the respondents also said the Haitian government has become unresponsive, and 63 percent disapproved of the way president Rene Preval and the Haitian government conducted themselves in the aftermath of the earthquake. Moreover, more than three-quarter of Haitian Americans believe that the $100 million pledged by the Untied States to help the country recover was not enough. They would like to see more than $1billion given.

The diaspora in the United States is split on whether the Haitian government is still a viable entity. Forty-six percent agree that Haiti will never be able to govern itself, while 41 percent disagree that Haiti is a failed state.

The NAM poll also found that more than 90 percent of Haitians in the United States follow the events in Haiti “closely,” mostly through English language television. The large majority – 87 percent – characterized coverage of the earthquake by CNN, Fox News, ABC, CBS and NBC as fair and comprehensive, and less than 10 percent felt it has been “unbalanced and sensationalistic.”

According to Risk Management Solutions, a catastrophe modeling firm, the Haitian earthquake caused an estimated 250,000 fatalities. Disease, starvation and lack of medical care could push the death toll higher. “We’re too close to events, but the impact [the earthquake] has among Haitians, as well as among the rest of the world, may be among the worst catastrophes in the last century,” Bendixen said.

“This poll should help the American public, as well as our policymakers, understand the strain and emotional connection between Haitian Americans and their native country,” said Sandy Close, executive director of NAM. “Some of the responses regarding the respondents’ concerns for the recovery effort may also be useful in helping shape U.S. and international policies aimed at rebuilding the nation.”

The NAM poll interviewed 400 respondents between January 22-24, 2010, in English or in Creole, depending on their language of preference. According to the U.S. Census, there are approximately 800,000 Haitians living in the United States.

The beach resort of Labadee is just 60 miles (100 kilometers) from Port-au-Prince, but it’s a world away from the devastation of the Haitian capital, where some 200,000 people are believed dead in an earthquake.

The cruise ships that stop here have become the center of a controversy: Should vacationers relax and have fun with so much suffering elsewhere on the island? Or would it be worse to halt the port calls and deprive locals of what they earn from tourism?

Jameson Charitable, 20, stood near the pier with a sign offering tours. “Without this,” he said, motioning toward the boat, “we don’t eat.” He said he makes $15 every time a ship comes in.

About 200 people work here, and a few hundred more vendors and service providers are allowed in whenever ships arrive. The resort enclave, which has a beach, a zipline in the mountains and other activities, is leased by the Haitian government to Royal Caribbean International, which also owns the Celebrity cruise line.

Royal Caribbean allowed a team of journalists from The Associated Press to visit Labadee on Friday, but the cruise company’s spokeswoman, Tracy Quan, would not allow them to interview or photograph cruise passengers.

Carol Myers, 53, a nurse from New Jersey, was not on the cruise ship but was enjoying the beach. She had spent an intense week tending to earthquake victims in a hospital in the nearby town of Milo, and was decompressing for a few hours before her scheduled return to the U.S. on Saturday.

“I almost feel guilty for being here after what happened,” Myers said, sitting in a beach chair in blue scrubs. “But the people need a job, the people need to eat.”

Royal Caribbean President and CEO Adam Goldstein said the decision to continue with scheduled stops in Labadee was an easy one. The site sustained no damage, and he said the Haitian government welcomed the ship. The country reaps a fixed cost per passenger, plus annual fees and the cash tourists spend on local goods at a marketplace where artisans and artists sell trinkets and crafts.

Royal Caribbean is also donating $1 million, delivering food and water on every call and pledging net revenue from Labadee to the relief effort. Maryse Kedar, president of Royal Caribbean’s Haitian subsidiary, SOLANO, said the cruise visits are “the only substantial commerce taking place in northern Haiti.”

But the cruise line found itself on the defensive after criticism spread online. Melissa Bacchus, a Brooklyn, N.Y., teacher, was among several veteran cruisers to dominate message boards on sites like Cruisecritic.com with the debate.

“I do think morally it is wrong to go (to Labadee), where less than 60 miles away people are suffering,” Bacchus said in an interview. “And because we have the resources, we have the wealth, we can frolic using the beauty of their island?”

Bacchus suggested Royal Caribbean pay Haiti its regular port fees, but not actually stop there. She said they could also give local artisans money to go back home and assist in the relief effort.

Public relations experts quoted by AdAge.com said Royal Caribbean had made a mistake by mixing leisure business with humanitarian efforts. “The brand will take a hit,” Paul Gallagher, managing director of WPP’s Burson Marsteller’s issues and advocacy practice, was quoted as saying.

Haiti shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic. The Dominican Republic suffered no damage from the earthquake, but the government is clearly worried that vacationers may cancel trips there because of the disaster on the other side of the border.

The Dominican Ministry of Tourism has issued repeated statements that it was unaffected by the quake, including pointing out that Port-au-Prince is hundreds of miles (kilometers) and several mountain ranges away.

That message was lost on travelers like Debbie Ulin, a 39-year-old mother of two in Hillsdale, N.J., whose family and two others canceled a group trip planned to the Dominican beach resort of Punta Cana for February.

“With everything happening as it did, we sort of all came to the realization that it’s probably not the best time to be traveling to the Dominican right now,” Ulin said. “As selfish as I feel when I say that, it’s not so important, my vacation. We didn’t feel like it would be the safe place to go with the families this soon after the devastation has occurred.”

Arthur Applbaum, a Harvard University professor of ethics and public policy, said that while it shows “moral sensitivity to be disturbed by the thought that one is vacationing on the beach when others are suffering nearby … it also shows insufficient moral reflection to think that proximity makes a moral difference.

“The people of Haiti are suffering whether you take your beach vacation in the Dominican Republic or in Hawaii,” he said, “and it is a failure of the moral imagination not to be equally troubled in Waikiki.”

Penn arrived in the poor Caribbean nation Thursday accompanied by 11 doctors and a U.S. businesswoman with whom he has established a private Haitian relief organization.

The star of “Mystic River,” “Dead Man Walking” and “Carlito’s Way” chatted with paratroopers from the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division and searched for areas to bring aid in and around the capital, Port-au-Prince.

“It is a devastated area,” said Penn, dressed in torn jeans, cowboy boots and a dark blue T-shirt. “I’ve seen the same thing your cameras have seen: People are suffering and a lot of people are doing their best _ the U.S. military and human aid groups _ to help them.”

Penn brought 1,000 water filters that were distributed to villages outside Port-au-Prince. He spent part of Friday meeting with aid groups and hospitals.

“The idea of us being here is to make sure the aid gets to them,” he said.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano suspends the deportation of Haitians.

MIAMI — Haitians in the U.S. illegally have for years pleaded for the same treatment the federal government gave Central Americans in 1998 after Hurricane Mitch devastated their region: temporary legal status that would allow them to stay, work and send money home to their loved ones in need.

But they have been denied, despite four tropical storms in 2008, massive floods almost every other year since 2000 and the long-running political strife that has prompted thousands to seek asylum in the U.S.

Thousands of Haitians immigrants in the U.S. are hoping Tuesday’s catastrophic earthquake will at last push Washington to honor their request. Several lawmakers support the request, including South Florida’s three Republican, Cuban-Americans in Congress, the Democrat who represents Miami’s Little Haiti and representatives and senators from Florida, New York and Los Angeles.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano temporarily halted deportations of Haitians Wednesday but advocates want a longer-term solution.

About 30,000 Haitians have orders to leave the U.S., according to Department of Homeland Security statistics. Many others are appealing their cases. Thousands of others live underground.

Among those hoping for the relief is Yvrose, a soft-spoken mother of two who declined to give her last name for fear of hurting her case.

Yvrose fled Haiti in 2003 after men searching for her husband _ a member of a political opposition party _ beat her so badly she ended up unconscious in the hospital.

She says family members spirited her by boat to the U.S., where she applied for political asylum. The request was denied and a temporary work permit was canceled last year, but an appellate board has ordered her case reheard. Now, like thousands of other Haitians, she remains in limbo _ she can stay for now due to Napolitano’s order, but she can’t work or get a driver’s license.

Yvrose, 31, said the current halt to deportations means little if she can’t get a job to help her family rebuild their home in Port-au-Prince. Her father, who supported the family as best he could in Haiti with sporadic work as a tailor, is unlikely to find jobs any time soon _ if he is still alive, she said.

“I need so much to work for my family in Haiti and to put food on the table for my kids here,” she said through an interpreter Thursday, her voice heavy with exhaustion.

Federal law permits Homeland Security to grant immigrants temporary protected status or TPS in the event of a natural disaster or civil war. Since the earthquake struck, the department has said only that TPS is an option.

Those who favor a stricter U.S. immigration policy have in the past vehemently opposed giving temporary protected status because they argued it is a backdoor to granting amnesty. TPS given to Salvadorans, Nicaraguans and Hondurans following Mitch was repeatedly extended for more than a decade, presumably long after those countries were able to rebuild. About 350,000 Central Americans have the designation as do about 950 Somalis and Sudanese in the U.S. since 2001 and 2004.

“TPS was invented for this kind of situation, but it has been turned into something much more permanent” said Mark Krikorian, of the Center for Immigration Studies. “And while we probably should grant TPS to Haitians who were here before the earthquake, we really need to make sure it’s temporary.”

Krikorian said he hopes if it’s granted to the Haitians, the U.S. government will use the opportunity to revamp the policy.

“Congress and or the administration should be forced after a few months to either fish or cut bait _ to either resume deportation or grant green cards,” he said. “Either they need to home go home and start their lives over or do it here. We’re keeping them limbo.”

U.S. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Miami, is among South Florida congressional members who have long pressed for TPS for Haitians. He and others called on President Barack Obama to grant the status immediately following the quake.

Diaz-Balart was instrumental in pushing for TPS following Mitch. Yet he and others like South Florida Democratic U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek have been repeatedly rebuffed when it comes to the Haitians.

“This is an unfathomable tragedy,” Diaz-Balart said. “It begs the question: ‘How much does Haiti have to suffer before Haitians in the U.S. are granted TPS?”’

Immigration attorney Ira Kurzban, who has represented the Haitian government, is blunt in his critique. Racism against blacks “is the only logical explanation” for why Haitians have yet to receive the designation, he said.

Randy McGrorty, head of Catholic Charities Legal Services in Miami agreed racism is a factor but not the only one.

“It’s about timing,” he said. In the decade since TPS was granted for Mitch, the debate over immigration has heated up, making any perceived effort to offer amnesty for those in the country illegally a riskier political move, he said.

Meek remains optimistic the White House will officially grant Haitians TPS in coming weeks or days.

Meek said Friday that the White House may be taking time to grant TPS in order to ensure people on the island understand it would only affect Haitians in the U.S. before the earthquake. That is to ensure those still in Haiti don’t leave the nation en masse thinking they will be granted protective status when they arrive in the U.S.

But for Yvrose, who has been out of work since her asylum case was rejected last year, time is ticking.

“I wasn’t even able to send my family anything for Christmas,” she said, wiping tears from her face. “And now? What can I do?”

A January 14 fundraiser at TiGeorges Chicken drew approximately 200. Another event is planned at the restaurant for the afternoon of January 16.

It was just six months ago that CaribPress spoke with Los Angeles restaurateur Jean-Marie Monfort Hebert Georges Fils Laguerre about his passion for his native land of Haiti and his efforts to revive the “Haitian Bleu” brand of coffee he has brought to market.

Laguerre has a new job to handle at his colorful restaurant in the Echo Park district northwest of Downtown, where the Hatian émigrés and other community members have now made a gathering place where they can work off some of their anxieties by sharing hope and working toward aiding relief efforts in the wake of the devastating earthquake that has devastated Haiti — the largest temblor to strike in the Caribbean in more than two centuries, by some estimates.

TiGeorges Chicken has already hosted one fundraiser, an event that drew 200 or so to the restaurant on the evening of January 14. Another is planned for January 16, with the prospect of a Saturday afternoon likely to boost the turnout.

Laguerre (right) speaking with a fundraiser participant.

The relief efforts come as many Haitian Americans are frantically trying to get in touch with their families back home, and TiGeorges has turned into a clearinghouse of sorts, where émigrés can share information.

“The country of Haiti is in chaos and they truly need our help,” say Laguerre.

Various countries are responding, including some of Haiti’s neighbors in the Caribbean. Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding is expected to lead a delegation that will include the opposition leader Portia Simpson Miller. The Jamaican delegation is expected to assess immediate needs that their nation could help meet in conjunction with international efforts.

U.S. President Barack Obama has directed his administration to play a key role in the effort, calling on appropriate agencies to respond with a swift, coordinated, and aggressive effort to save lives.

“The people of Haiti will have the full support of the United States,” Obama said.

Obama acknowledged that many in the U.S. are struggling with the economic downturn these days, but the nevertheless Americans who want to support the urgent humanitarian efforts in Haiti to go to whitehouse.gov on the Internet, where they can learn how to contribute.

Tigeorges remains on duty with efforts to spur local support and donations. The January 16th event will start at 2 p.m. at TiGeorges’ Chicken, located at 309 Glendale Boulevard, south of Temple Street.

Various other groups are planning fundraisers around Los Angeles in coming days, including:

* Mother’s for Africa, a non-profit organization that will host an event at 6p.m. on January 16 the Afiba Center, located at 5730 Crenshaw Boulevard, Los Angeles. Contact Micheline Robertson at (310) 903-3932 for information.

* Hollywood Unites for Haiti (HUFH). The organization was founded by Haitian native and Los Angeles-based actor Jimmy Jean-Louis, who spent more than two days wondering about the fate of his elderly parents in Haiti after learning that a house he had grown up in collapsed, killing several of his relatives. (He located his parents, who are alive, on the afternoon of January 16). HUHF is a nonprofit organization whose original mission was to provide sports and cultural education to underprivileged youth on the island. HUFH is currently focusing on providing support for victims of the earthquake and accepting donations of all kinds for this purpose. At the present time, HUFH is seeking two kinds of donations: Financial and equipment. Please log on to www.hufh.org for further information on how to make your donation.

If you need any information about any other local Caribbean-American community relief effort or event in the Los Angeles area please call our CaribPress office at (323) 508-2626 or visit the publication’s website at caribpress.com.

Haitian Flag Art

When he arrived at Miami International Airport, the 41-year-old said he isn’t sure if they are alive.

“I call. I call. I call. No one answers,” he said.

Haitian-Americans in Miami, New York and other U.S. cities tell the same story of frantically trying to get through to relatives and friends to see if they survived the largest earthquake to hit the Caribbean nation in 200 years. Communications were widely disrupted, making it impossible to get a full picture of damage and casualties as powerful aftershocks shook the desperately poor country where many buildings are flimsy.

“Everyone is in shock right now. No one can get through,” said the Rev. Robes Charles, pastor of St. Clement Church in Wilton Manors, Florida. About 275,00 Haitians live in the South Florida metro area.

The Archdiocese of Miami is accepting donations for earthquake victims. Other South Florida Haitian relief groups have not announced their efforts but planned to meet Wednesday.

Singer Wyclef Jean, a Haiti native, is asking for donations to his Yele Haiti Foundation via his Twitter site. Jane Cocking, humanitarian director of Oxfam America, an international relief organization, said the group also is ready to respond and is accepting donations.

“Given the desperate needs that people face on a day to day basis, this earthquake is grim news for the poor people of Haiti,” Cocking said in a statement.

Not only are major organizations planning to help. King Moshe, 43, who works at Chef Creole in the Little Haiti area of Miami, said he plans to speak with local groups on Wednesday about collecting food, clothing and money.

“Right now is a time to come together to help the unfortunate ones,” Moshe said.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, whose district includes Little Haiti, said some people have been able to get calls from relatives but are seeking his office’s help to find others.

Dozens gathered at the Veye-Yo community center in Little Haiti, where a pastor led them in prayer. Members embraced each other as they tried to reach relatives on the island and took turns discussing what they could do to bring aid to the country.

Tony Jeanthenor, 50, said a friend he reached in Haiti described hearing people cry out for help from under debris.

“Haiti has been through trauma since 2004, from coup d’etat to hurricanes, now earthquakes,” Jeanthenor said.

West Palm Beach firefighter Nate Lasseur tried to reach family and the firefighters he trains in Port-au-Prince.

He was doing training through his International Firefighters Assistance in November 2008 when a school collapsed, killing nearly a hundred people. He described chaos then _ firefighters pushing through panicked crowds, digging through the debris with steel rebar. He feared the fire station would be overwhelmed by debris from the capital’s many unsafe buildings clogging the narrow roads.

“They are not prepared as far as equipment and training goes for something of this magnitude,” Lasseur said. “Their adrenaline and pure will to save their families _ that only lasts for so long.”