Post Project Report 2005

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Building costs Labour costs Transportation New challenges

In Port au Prince there is a large slum known as Cite Soleil. This is an extremely impoverished area, perhaps the worst in the Western Hemisphere. It is made up of two to three hundred thousand people living in a swamp area filled with garbage and open sewage. The people live in small hovels with little or no running water, no toilets, no jobs, and very few children can afford to go to school.

On the first trip to Haiti in 2003 we connected with a small school there run by an organization known as Action Chretienne pour Development. This organization is administered by three volunteers who run two schools in Cite Soleil with a total population of 440 students. The Administrators are Joel, Willy, and Jean-Marcel. We have brought school supplies for the children but we also undertook, in 2004 to assist in the rebuilding of a kitchen facility with the hopes of starting a regular meal program there. Most families in Cite Soleil eat only a few times a week and most, if not all, the children study without having eaten for days at a time. There is a woman who lives across from the School who cooks for the children but they must pay a small fee according to what they eat. 5 gourds for a small plate, 10 for a larger portion etc. Many children cannot afford even this meager fee and so do not eat. School costs money in Haiti and the slums are no exception. The school has no lighting except what little bleeds through the windows. There is a small dedicated group of teachers there doing what they can but they are dealing with worsening conditions. Teachers often go unpaid and as a result occasionally do not show up to teach because they have found temporary work elsewhere and cannot afford to turn it down. They return however when this work is done to continue teaching.

It was our goal to raise $30,000.00 (US) to build the kitchen, obtain a generator and begin the food program. Our first target was $4,000.00 (US) to build the kitchen facility itself. This figure was based on a budget supplied by our contacts in Port Au Prince. The actual expenses were higher and the total for the first target of building the facility was $6,618.34 (US). This includes materials, delivery fees, labour, lunches for the workers, "tap tap" transport to and from the work site and other incidentals.

Exchange rate changes depending on where you are and who you are dealing with. The general exchange rate used to make calculations for negotiations and transactions for the Kitchen Project is based on the local supermarket where we exchanged money. The rate was 7.6 Haitian dollars to the US dollar. The building supplier gave us a rate of 8 Haitian dollars to the US dollar for the building materials and we used this rate to negotiate the delivery charge.

There are 5 Gourd per Haitian dollar which needs to be noted as money is exchanged and quoted in Haitian dollars but paid in Gourd. Prices are stated in Haitian Dollars but paid in Gourd. There are 38 Gourd to the US dollar.

Total cost of the building materials - $4,406.97

Delivery fee - $375.00.

Note: The $375.00 delivery fee was higher than normally charged based on the fear factor of delivering to locations inside Cite Soleil. The original fee requested was $5,000.00 Haitian dollars (approx. $657.00 US dollars). We refused to pay such a fee. We consulted with the building supply manager who explained that the fear was well grounded because not only were materials stolen but sometimes the trucks themselves. He agreed to talk with the delivery guys and brought the price down to $3,000.00 which he said was a little high still but that we probably couldn’t get any lower. We used the building supplier rate of 8 Haitian dollars to the US dollar and paid him $375.00 to deliver the materials. We also took the additional precaution suggested by Willy and Joel, of delivering the materials in smaller amounts over a three day period and one of the School Administrators rode in the lead truck with the supplies each day. It should be noted that once the delivery guys realized that they had safe conduct into and out of Cite Soleil, the delivery charge of future materials dropped dramatically.

Negotiated salaries

Foreman - $200.00 H/day or $26.31 US/day

Labourers - $100.00 H/day for each worker or $13.15 US/day

Total cost of labour - $907.90 (US)

Note: These salaries were agreed to based on the suggested minimum wage we set for ourselves and based on our inquiries in 2004 as to what would be the minimum salary needed to survive in Port au Prince. We were told at that time that a wage of $200.00 (US) per month would allow a person to modestly feed their family pay modest rent and send their children to school. This is roughly $6.50 US per day. We had agreed to a minimum of $10.00 (US) per day among ourselves and the above wages which were requested by the Foreman were naturally deemed fair and agreed to without hesitation. These wages were generally higher than those paid on other projects in Cite Soleil.

We agreed to hire three workers in addition to the Foreman and his assistant for the first week with a further agreement to add on further workers if possible. The Foreman agreed to work with the deadline of May 20/05 to have the kitchen complete. Several people volunteered to help on site regularly and did so with no promise of compensation of any kind. We of course included these volunteers when we bought cokes and made sandwiches for lunch. Two workers worked the first week for food. One worked dedicatedly while the other slowly worked his way up. We paid the first worker for four days during the first week and put him on the payroll for the second week. We added the second worker onto the payroll for the second week. We paid $1,500.00 Gourd for additional Saturday workers or to be used as compensation for the week for volunteers at the discretion of Joel, the School Administrator. Many people wanted to work on the project as it developed but there simply wasn't enough work for everyone.

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It was further agreed that all money exchanges would happen in private and that the School Administration would pay the workers or buy items within Cite Soleil. It was important to establish that we ourselves did not have any significant amounts of money with us or the authority to hire workers. Requests by local people to be involved or hired had to go through the School Administrators. This also created the further advantage of getting materials or services at fair rates rather than artificially inflated ones. An example of this were the doors for the kitchen and store room. The original price from the building supplier was $500.00 (US). Joel found an iron worker who agreed to do both doors, custom fitted for $260.00 (US). Joel told me that the iron worker would not have charged this if I had gone with him because when he saw me he would have artificially inflated the price.

Transportation - $445.51 (US)

Note: Tap-Taps are the local means of transportation in Port au Prince for the poor and working poor. These are essentially modified pick up trucks that charge 5 gourd, or thirteen cents (US). It was established by the School Administration that it was not safe for us to enter into Cite Soleil alone. Further to this it was very difficult to get a Tap Tap to enter Cite Soleil or find one inside Cite Soleil. There were often fire fights between rival gangs and/or UN troops near the entrance to Cite Soleil. They adamantly opposed our request to be met close to this area. They had an agreement with Dread Wilme a local gang leader in Cite Soleil that we could work on the project without harassment and go to and from the work site. We could not however walk around within Cite Soleil unescorted by one of the School Administrators. We agreed to be driven to and from the Cite Soleil worksite in a privately hired Tap-Tap. The first few days cost approx. $30.00 (US) each day and then a final price of $40.00 (US) per day was accepted with an agreement that the driver would then take our volunteers to all three sites within the area and take them back to St. Joseph's Guest House at the end of the work day. Volunteers were dropped off at 31 Delmas where they could get a single Tap-Tap to the Malnutrition Clinic, and another group to the Brother's Clinic in Cite Pele which was on the way to Cite Soleil.

Kitchen and food supplies - $300.00 (US)

Note: To celebrate the completion of the kitchen facility on Friday, May 20/05 we hired the woman who normally cooks for the children plus two assistants to prepare a meal for all 280 students of the nearest school. We could not arrange to include the additional 160 students from the other school. We purchased a charcoal stove from a local resident plus pots and pans to cook in. We further purchased the food for the ceremonial meal. Each student had a large plate of rice and beans with a piece of chicken and sauce. There was food left over and was served to the mothers and other local residents who had come to watch the children be served and the opening of the kitchen.

New challenges emerged while we were there. The original plan was to renovate an existing facility inside the present school. We were informed later that the kitchen would be built in another school and not the existing building. Knowing that Action Chretienne ran two schools it was mistakenly thought by us that the building would be built in another school. This turned out to not be the case. The Administration had explained that they did not want to build the kitchen in a rented building in case they were evicted after making the improvements. They went to the community and parents and collected the down payment on new piece of land half a block or so from the existing school. This new building is in desperate condition and not ready for the students. The Administrators told us that the landlord of the existing building had evicted them after demanding that they buy the existing school building for an extortionate price of $20,000.00 (US). This new building and land which you can see in the above photos cost according to them approx. $8,000.00 (US). They had asked us to contribute the money to renovate and build a second story onto the building. We had only raised enough money to build the kitchen and that had to remain the priority. They agreed. They will be sending us a new budget for rehabilitating the new school and we agreed to examine the possibility of doing so.

The challenge of the food program is to now find a way of getting food on a regular basis inside Cite Soleil to the school. There are problems with getting shipments into Haiti unless already run by larger agencies. Financially supporting the purchase of weekly food for the students is expensive but not impossible. We have been communicating with various agencies and continue to look for a solution.

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