Yele Haiti

While the provision of funding and/or direct humanitarian assistance - e.g., school scholarships - is one component of Yéle Haïti's work, the organisation has also developed various communication strategies to get Haiti's citizens involved in learning about community problems and figuring out how to resolve them in collaborative ways. Reflective of the passion of Yéle's founder Wyclef Jean, each initiative creatively integrates music as a central element in project delivery and as a means of mobilising community members. The use of music, especially of the hip hop variety, is mean to support the mission of helping to "project a new forward-thinking image that accurately reflects Haiti's youthful population and their unique and irrepressible spirit, which is an integral part of their culture." The strategy of using music - in addition to interpersonal exchanges - to engage youth is evidenced by the following programming examples:

• Supporting the environment
  1. Yéle Haïti is directing the public awareness campaign for a garbage removal project in Port-au-Prince called "Pwojè Lari Pwòp" in Creole. Carrying the slogan "Respekte tèt ou, netwaye peyi w" ("Respect yourself, clean your country") and implemented by the Pan American Development Foundation (PADF), the project employs an average team of 1,700 workers a day and 50 trucks. The Yéle Haïti logo is on T-shirts worn by the workers and signs on the side of the trucks. Phase II of this USAID-funded project will include bulldozing the garbage in the canals in Cité Soleil, rehabilitating buildings, and the like. Wyclef has written a jingle for the radio to encourage people to clean up their city, and he has created a mixed tape on the same theme that is being distributed on local tap-tap buses.
  2. Pwojè Lari Pwòp held a hip hop song writing and performance competition incorporating themes about cleaning up the country. The 12 finalists recorded their songs in a local studio; the songs were then played on the radio throughout the country for 3 weeks. Listeners were invited to call a telephone number to vote for their favorites. The competition will be broadcast live on television, and a panel of musical judges, combined with the results of the telephone votes, will choose 3 winners - one from Cité Soleil, one from Bel Air and one from Marche Salomon. The grand prize winners each receive a cash prize (20,000 Grdes) and an opportunity to re-record their songs, which will then be included as part of a special release CD featuring Wyclef Jean.
  3. CARE hosted Yéle Haïti festivities at 10 schools in Port-au-Prince that involved provision of backpacks, CDs by Wyclef, posters of Wyclef, dictionaries, notebooks, maps, pens, soccer balls, geometry kits, pencils, drawing pencils and Pwòje Lari Pwòp t-shirts. A DJ played music, and musician Gracia Delva performed a song as part of an effort to teach children the importance of keeping a clean country.
  4. Yéle Haïti has catalysed a national association of NGOs called Haiti Vert Espoir (Green Hope), which will focus on the establishment of community-based tree nurseries but will also include a hip hop caravan that will tour the country giving free concerts for youth, combining music with a message about planting and caring for trees as the "cool new thing."
• Improving the educational climate
  1. The use of interpersonal strategies is reflected in Yéle Haïti's efforts to upgrade teacher skills in Gonaives (an area that was devastated by floods caused by tropical storm Jeanne in September 2004) to move away from corporal punishment and to, among other things, eradicate the use of the whip through on-site workshops conducted in schools for a total of approximately 500 teachers by the Centre d'Apprentissage et de Formation Pour la Transformation (CAFT).
  2. Yéle Haiti is also supporting an after-school sports and tutoring programme called L'Athlétique d'Haïti. This group works with youth from the Cité Soleil and Bel Air slums of Port-au-Prince. Founder Bobby Duval, who sponsors children in soccer, basketball, track and field and ping pong, has upgraded his track toward meeting Olympic standards so that athletes in Haiti can have the proper infrastructure (with the idea that they can work toward participating in the Olympics.) He also purchased stadium lights and installed bleachers in an effort to create a collective organisation and so that parents and friends can watch their children and friends play sports.
• Addressing hunger: Twice per month, Yéle Haïti's hip hop musicians visit the slums, including Cité Soleil and Bel Air, to distribute rice, beans and vegetable oil provided by the World Food Programme (this food will feed 2700 people, or 540 families of five, for two weeks). As reported by the Associated Press (AP), the food distribution was "backed by the pulsating beat of hip-hop blasting from speakers on a makeshift stage. The music wasn't just entertainment. It was the way the aid group secured permission to enter the territory of gangs who dominate a slum that is home to more than 200,000 people. 'The gangs are really into my music, so we use that to connect with the population,' Jean said by telephone from New York. 'It helps us get in to help people that others may not reach.'" Also according to the AP, Mamadou Mbaye, head of the U.N. World Food Program in Haiti, said the agency doesn't allow its staff to enter Cite Soleil because of the danger - so it provided food to Yéle Haïti to distribute. Jean explains, "What you need is for people to participate in the aid programs, feel like human beings - not just receive food like animals"; music is a tool for that.
• Fostering access to information and communication technologies (ICTs): Yéle Haïti, with the help of Fondation Seguin, has distributed battery operated radios to people living in remote areas of the mountains of Seguin. As many people in the mountains cannot read or write, radios were distributed that had cassette tape players so that the recipients could listen to letters in the form of audio tapes that they typically receive from their family and friends in other countries. The radios also had cassette recorders so that they could create their own audio tapes. The radios were distributed with four sets of batteries, blank cassette tapes and a cassette tape that had music by Wyclef. Yéle Haiti notes that, for many, this was the first radio that they had ever owned. Organisers suggest that, as one of the primary solutions to poverty is education, having a radio to access news and information is one practical step to take. Each recipient also received an avocado tree (one of Fondation Seguin's missions is to plant fruit-bearing trees so that the environment gets replenished and so that people may have a future income from them).

In addition to relying on Wyclef Jean's own celebrity, Yéle Haïti draws on prominent personnel and the media to get its messages across. For example, Wyclef Jean put out a public request for a cease-kidnapping during the January 2006 visit of American celebrities/actors Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. Wyclef explains, "I did so by calling the radio and television stations in Haiti and asking them to put the request over the airwaves. I also asked my friends to call the radio and television stations. I wanted everyone to call so that the message would be heard across the land and Haiti could have peace for a day....Yéle Haiti is about stopping the violence; the hand in the Yéle Haiti logo means 'stop the violence.'...If it works to stop the violence by calling the radio and TV stations, even for one day, we have taken a small step toward the success of that goal."

Youth, Conflict, Environment, Education, Hunger, Economic Development.

"Haiti is my native country, one I know as the first Black nation to gain independence in 1804. Most other people seem to know Haiti only by the statistics about how bad things are there. The majority of its 8 million residents live on less than $1 per day. Unemployment is close to 80 percent. Average life expectancy is less than 50 years. Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere." - Wyclef Jean

Because the government of Haiti cannot afford to operate the school system, 95% of all schools in the country are fee-based. At present there are almost one million children and youth out of school, and an equal number are under constant threat of dismissal because their parents have trouble making regular payments. In 2005, Yéle Haïti, with funding from Comcel, awarded 3,600 scholarships to children in Gonaives. In 2006, the organisation plans to award 6,000 scholarships, half to those in Gonaives and half to those in Port-au-Prince and nearby municipalities. Some of the funding projects draw on children's participation; for example, as part of the "Help Haiti" initiative, in spring 2005 several thousand students in Alberta, Canada each gave 25¢; the result was that 20 children are now back in school. (For every US$60 that is given, one child will be put in school for a year.) What started in Slave Lake, Alberta, is expected to go province-wide in what is hoped will become an annual activity where students donate a bit of money while learning about life in Haiti.