Children in Servitude, the Poorest of Haiti’s Poor

[groovedaddy]

GONAÏVES, Haiti — Thousands of desperate women pushed and shoved to get at the relief food being handed out on the outskirts of this flooded city last week. Off to the side were the restaveks, the really desperate ones.

As woman after woman hauled off a sack of rice, a bag of beans and a can of cooking oil, the restaveks, a Creole term used to describe Haiti’s child laborers, dropped to their knees to pick up the bits that were inadvertently dropped in the dirt.

The hurricanes and tropical storms that have whipped across the western half of Hispaniola, the island divided between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, in the past month have laid bare the poverty and the deep divisions in Haitian society, where there are rich, poor and downright destitute.

Nobody illustrates that last group better than the restaveks, the thousands of young Haitian children handed over by their poor parents to better-off families, most of whom are struggling themselves.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/14/world/americas/14haiti.html?th&emc=th

[applegrove]

1. There needs to be a manhattan project for Haiti. I know all sorts of aid

agencies are there but really. We are so rich in the west.

[JonQ]

2. Did you mean

Marshall plan? That would make more sense.

Anyway, to really make a difference the source of their problems, their government, would need to be removed or seriously altered. I don't think there is any interest within america to get involved in another such venture.

[applegrove]

3. Yes Marshall plan would be a better example. I just meant a plan with a goal that

if implemented with lots of $$$ and lots government backing. And is completed on a timeline.