News posted on behalf of Professor Nadège T. Clitandre, Department of Global Studies (Affiliate: Black Studies, Comparative Literature), University of California, Santa Barbara

Some of you have reached out to me after yet another catastrophic earthquake in Haiti.  This disaster occured just a little over a month after the assassination of the Haitian president in July.  These multiple shocks are too much for the country to handle and overwhelming for those of us the diaspora who support Haiti in various ways.

For those of you interested in supporting Haiti at this time, I recommend the following organizations:

1. Lambi Fund (I was on the board of this organization while I was a graduate student at Berkeley. The org assists the popular democratic movement of Haiti.)

2. Fonkoze (a microfinance organization serving the poor. I work with some of the board members of this organization).

3. Direct Relief International (headquarters are here in SB; I worked with DRI in the aftermath of the earthquake in 2010 through the Center for Black Studies Research and the Haitian Studies Initiative now located at ISBER (for more information, go to https://haitianstudies.ucsb.edu). We helped them fund and support over 40 grassroots projects that were small community organizations not eligible for other funds from major donors as they were not officially recognized NGOs.)

4. Partners in Health (I think many of you are familiar with PIH. The org has been in Haiti since 1987 when it was founded by Paul Farmer and others after they created a community based health project in the country.)

I also linked the short piece "Haitian Exceptionalism in the Caribbean and the Project of Rebuilding Haiti" I published in 2011 that discusses the representation of Haiti after the earthquake in 2010 and the larger question of Haitian exceptionalism, which is the subject of my next book project.

In 2014, The Now Institute at UCLA published Haiti Now, a product of a year-long cross-disciplinary collaborative research study directed by The Now Institute, and funded by UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design, and The Graham Foundation.The volume surveys urban planning proposals encompassing infrastructural systems, community design, social networks, and sustainable off-grid strategies for future urban planning and design. I participated in this project as an advisor and have a couple copies of the book that I will leave in the department for those who are interested.