By Adella Khan
One and a half million people displaced, hundreds of thousands of deaths, even more injured, and millions of dollars in humanitarian aid only begin to show the impact of the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that hit Haiti in January, 2010. Global humanitarian aid started flowing to Haiti in an effort to combat the natural disaster.
The effects of the earthquake are so broad that, years later, the developing country received more than $200 million of combined global aid in 2014 alone, according to a public financial tracking service.
Humanitarian aid takes many forms, from canned food to millions of dollars, but the impact of giving bodies when people travel to emergency situations can be hard to measure.
Two months after the earthquake, Toronto midwife Tracy Gerster travelled to Haiti with the North American organization Midwives for Haiti. Nadene Brunk founded the organization in 2003 after travelling to Haiti and witnessing the lack of resources and skilled care available to women before, during, and after pregnancies.
Gerster said she decided to go to Haiti because because she knew she had a skill that was needed. While there, Gerster worked and lived in a Port-au-Prince orphanage, which also acted as church, school, and medical facility for the community. From there she diagnosed any women, children, or newborns who were within her medical scope—the breadth of practice she is granted by the Canadian government, with strict rules.
“There’s no gauging the rules. I have the scope of a general practitioner and to prenatal care, birth, newborn care, and postpartum care,” she said. “Those rules I know the way people know the constitution.”
Tracy Gerster worked in Haiti as medical relief and to train midwives for sustainable relief. © Provided by Tracy Gerster.
Although Gerster said she witnessed people working outside of their scopes, she said it wasn’t worth the risk. Instead, she said she came prepared with money to help support people as she saw fit and ensured she had antibiotics and other medicine she could administer beyond her midwife duties.
“Where I had choice was how to take the money that I came with and divert it to people, if I felt like they needed it,” she said.
“I came with a few thousand dollars so I could do things like buy formula for a grandmother who was taking care of a baby who was otherwise breastfed until the mom died in the earthquake. And then, at least, she had six months worth of formula.”
While this short-term intervention provided much needed relief, Gerster said her most important work was done in the latter half of her stay where she helped train local women as midwives. Teaching is seen as long-term aid, where citizens are empowered to fulfill the needs of their own communities and help create a sustainable solution.
Humanitarian aid comes in many forms, but the act of giving your body and time with an aid organization requires a lot of training.
Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders, began in 1968 during a Parisian uprising as the first independent group to provide humanitarian aid. According to the organization’s website, a group of non-combatant doctors went directly into the revolt to help provide medical support, changing global ideas of emergency aid.
Today, the MSF is a leader in global medical relief and provides aid to over 70 countries, according to their website.
Getting involved requires full education in your field—this includes doctors, nurses, midwives, as well as pharmacologists, water sanitation specialists, amongst others—as well as a minimum of two years experience. On top of the medical training, applicants must go through a rigorous screening and interview process that can take months to complete.
Though most documented humanitarian aid takes place as part of a larger group like Midwives for Haiti or the MSF, that doesn’t stop independent individuals who want to help.
Yaman Marwah is a fifth-year Carleton University student and the chairman of the Syrian Association of Ottawa—an organization he helped found. Marwah is a Syrian immigrant who said knowing the situation in his home country during the uprising, he simply had to help.
He started a student club at Carleton to raise money for Syrians and help provide relief to them, in conjunction with other charitable organizations. The group works with Watan, a Syria-based organization, on two main projects: providing blankets to Syrians, and helping fund underground bakeries to help feed people safely.
Since Marwah’s first visit to Syria in October 2012, the organization has grown incredibly.
“When we first started, we were able to raise coins in our events . . . like two, three dollars in every event we had,” he said.
“But after I was able to go to Syria, take pictures and document each and every single project we have, the outcome from our donations started to double and double. Now we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
Marwah said sacrificing his time and safety to go back to Syria has made a large impact on the group’s fundraising tactics. During his first trip, Canadian media organizations leant him equipment to collect his first-hand experience and the exposure has given the group enough traction to become an independent NGO.
Yaman Marwah has visited Syria three times to help provide humanitarian aid during a time of unrest. © Provided by Yaman Marwah.
“Physically being there is totally different. You’re sacrificing something for other people to know what’s happening,” he said. “Going there doesn’t actually help the Syrian people inside Syria, but . . . you need to be physically present there to get the people in Canada to feel what’s happening and be a part of it.”
Although the Syrian Association of Ottawa boasts providing thousands of dollars in relief, University of Toronto development studies expert Will Prichard said it is hard to measure how much impact humanitarian aid actually has.
Measuring success would take decades, he said, but the most accepted approach to humanitarian aid is ensuring organizations coordinate with governments to create long-term strategies wherein the projects will eventually become self-sustainable.
“The big question for any organization, is how do you link the provision of short-term relief to strengthening long-term capacity for the country to provide those things for itself,” he said.
While Prichard said providing blankets to Syrians may not be the most effective way to give relief, something is often better than nothing.
Bosnian refugee Ivanna Mitrovic echoed these sentiments.
Mitrovic emigrated to Canada when she was 11-years-old, in the midst of the Yugoslavian conflict. Mitrovic remembers constantly moving and hiding in different basements as the war wound down but lives were still being lost.
Now, she manages a business in Ottawa and attributes her survival and success to all of the aid her family received when still in Bosnia. She recalled seeing the United Nations peacekeeper’s blue berets everywhere, and mostly subsisting off of the Red Cross food packages.
“I don’t think we would have made it without the help. When you’re in a situation as a refugee, you have no self worth. Every single thing in your life is going against you,” she said. “Even as small a thing as a pair of shoes or a blanket that can uplift a human . . . why wouldn’t that be a good thing?”
Header image © Yaman Marwah.
