Daniel O'Neil

Rebuilding communities, not just houses

This is the text of the speech that I gave at the Earthquake Symposium on January 11th in Port-au-Prince. Although I am very proud of the work that we have done to repair houses in Port-au-Prince, I hope that we are able to move beyond just repairing houses to rebuilding communities.

Ladies and Gentlemen, good afternoon.

The Pan American Development Foundation has been partnering with the Haitian government for over thirty years. We remain committed to helping Haitians to rebuild their homes, rebuild their neighborhoods and rebuild their lives.

I have lived on this island for more than a dozen years. I was living in Santo Domingo when the earthquake hit and drove here bringing the first load of relief supplies the next day.

We have heard of the progress being made on repairing houses, removing rubble, and building transitional houses. These are important steps on the path towards rebuilding communities.

I would like to finish these talks by discussing what it takes to rebuild a community and how we have succeeded in involving both the local community and the Haitian government.

Haiti's reconstruction lessons are found on the other side of the world

I had this article published today in the Miami Herald:

Haiti's reconstruction lessons are found on the other side of the world

As published in the Miami Herald 

BY DANIEL O'NEIL

WWW.IMUNITEDFORHAITI.ORG

As I rushed relief supplies from the Pan American Development Foundation through the streets of Port-au-Prince just after the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake, I could not fathom how Haiti would recover from the worst humanitarian disaster in the history of the Western Hemisphere.

Nearly a year later and on the other side of the world, I saw what could be Haiti's future.

In October, I traveled to Indonesia with a World Bank study group to see how that country recovered after the post-Christmas 2004 tsunami, which killed in excess of 200,000 and leveled some 139,000 homes, and the 2006 Yogyakarta earthquake, which took the lives of more than 5,700 and damaged 175,000 buildings.