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Fostering Role Models: Cash-for-Relief
in Haiti
Cash-for-Relief

Training in Cap-Haïtien

For the ambitious Cash-for-Relief program to work,
local volunteers would have to lead by example.
Johan Alwall

n November 2014, Cap-Haïtien in northern Learning about the situation, Dharma
IHaiti experienced heavy flooding. Worst Master Cheng Yen reminded the volunteers to
affected was the low-lying community of Blue take a long-term view of the situation. What
Hills. The name is a play on words—for a French is the source of the problem? How can the
speaker, the English word lives of the people in the
“hills” sounds like “île” After just two days, many of community be improved
(island). The area is not the volunteers had already in the long run? What
at all hilly, but is instead made lasting changes in can we do that can bring
encircled by a muddy the community together,
river. When a team from their personal lives. teach the residents to care
the United States visited for their own environment,
the area for disaster assessment, they quickly and create a sense of hope in a community
realized that the reason for the frequent where the majority of residents have never had
flooding was that the water flow in the river a job and the children face a life no better than
was heavily obstructed by vegetation, and that that of their parents?
both river and drainage systems were blocked
by enormous amounts of trash. The answer was to be found in Tzu Chi’s
recent experience in the Philippines. After

The author leads a volunteer training session. Photo: Mike Tang
www.us.tzuchi.org | 29