Since the 7.0 earthquake on January 12, 2010 devastated Haiti, Edwidge Danticat has written numerous essays, given interviews to keep Haiti's plight in the news and raised money for nonprofits working on the ground in her native country. Danticat was born in 1969, during the dictatorship of Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, and spent her childhood in Bel Air, the infamous Port-au-Prince slum. At the age of 12 she moved from Haiti to Brooklyn, New York to join her parents who had emigrated to the United States
Edwidge Danticat: Novelist, Professor, Activist.
Her first novel Breath, Eyes, Memory (Soho Press, 1994) was an Oprah's Book Club Selection and relates the culture shock of Sophie Coco, a 12-year-old Haitian girl who is summoned to New York by her mother to help provide for the family back home. In her most recent work, Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work (Princeton University Press, 2010) Danticat examines what it means to be an immigrant artist from a country in crisis. She also wrote a children's book in 2010 titled Eight Days telling the story of a little boy daydreaming about his life in Haiti while he is trapped under his house for eight days following the earthquake. Edwidge Danticat received a MacArthur Genius Fellowship in 2009.
Charities Recommended by Edwidge Danticat
In an interview with Kam Williams Edwidge Danticat recommends two nonprofits which provide relief in Haiti. Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees was founded in 1992 to respond to the refugee crisis faced by Haitian immigrants in the U.S. and Guantanamo Bay. It has provided support to hundreds of families who sought asylum in the U.S. after being persecuted in Haiti. The organization also sends disaster relief to Haitian communities, primarily in areas outside of Port-au-Prince which get less aid.
Another charity is the Lambi Fund of Haiti. It assists the popular, democratic movement in Haiti with the goal of strengthening civil society as a foundation of democracy and development. The fund channels resources to community-based organizations that promote the social and economic empowerment of the Haitian people.
The Apparent Project, The "Un-Orphanage", Empowers Haitians to Escape Extreme Poverty
Edwidge Danticat also supports the ApParent Project, a nonprofit that addresses Haiti's orphan crisis at the root by helping Haitian families before they fall into extreme poverty and abandon their children. Haiti is home to almost 500,000 orphans, many of whom were given up by living parents due to hunger, homelessness and lack of educational opportunities.The ApParent Project creates opportunities for impoverished parents to raise an income. The group employs and feeds over 180 artisans who make beaded jewelry, sew iPad bags, coin purses and wallets. Many live in post-earthquake tent cities.
The Apparent Project's twofold mission is to enable parents to "parent" their children, but also to make Haiti's plight apparent in the media and through visual arts. The nonprofit invites individuals and teams to serve in Haiti, even if it is for only a week, to help build homes and educational projects.
"Sometimes I think Sisyphus is a great metaphor for Haiti," says Edwidge Danticat in her recent interview with Brown Alumni Magazine, "every time the people push that boulder up the hill, they think it will be the last time. And then they go down the mountain again. Today we're at the bottom of the hill again, looking up."
Watch a video about the ApParent Project filmed by Corrigan Clay.
Sources
- Charlotte Bruce Harvey, Haiti's Storyteller, Brown Alumni Magazine, January/February 2011.
- Kam Williams, Edwidge Danticat: The "Create Dangerously" Interview, The Loop21, 11/26/2010.
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