The LAMP for Haiti Foundation
Shining a light in Haiti's darkest places

The LAMP for Haiti’s mission it to provide humanitarian assistance to the poor of Haiti. In particular we focus our efforts on the urban poor of Cite Soleil. Cite Soleil is the largest of several slums in the capitol of Port-au-Prince.

The people we serve are among the world’s most destitute. Haiti itself ranks as the poorest country in the western hemisphere, and most residents of Cite Soleil would rank as the poorest in Haiti. Here it is not uncommon to see a young child walking barefoot adjacent to a pig foraging through a huge pile of trash. Open sewers, lack of drinking water, and essentially no electricity make each day a struggle to just maintain existence.

Our name is derived from an acronym in the native Haitian Creole “Libete Ak Medesin Pou Ayiti”, or “liberty and health for Haiti.”

Our strategy for addressing the ills so obvious to even a casual reader of Haitian current events has led us to open the LAMP Community Center in August 2007. Our efforts focus on three main areas: Health Care, Legal and human rights advocacy, and community support.

Much of the efforts and resources of the LAMP are directed toward serving the health care needs of the people of Haiti. In August 2007 the LAMP clinic opened its doors to patients for the first time. Our goal for the clinic is to provide basic primary care to patients in the Bwa Nef section of Cite Soleil at no charge, either for physician consultation or for medications. We aimed to become a neighborhood clinic and we have quickly attained that status among residents.

Like PIH, we wish to support and to develop the skills of native Haitians. Rather than staff our clinic with U.S. or Canadian doctors, we use Haitian talent, supporting it and developing it and enabling it to flourish.

Currently we are treating approximately one hundred patients per week. We have three staff members, salaried, including a Haitian doctor. The diseases we mostly see include the so called “DAMMn” diseases (diarrheal illness, acute respiratory illness, malaria, malnutrition) as well as Tb and HIV. Most of the medications we dispense are purchased by us, with a small percentage being donated. We currently have the ability to take a limited number of chest x-rays.

Patients too sick for outpatient care are referred to either a local state-run hospital in Cite Soleil, or to a pediatric hospital in nearby Tabarre.

Not surprisingly, healthcare throughout Haiti is spotty throughout much of the country. On the other hand, there are some organizations like Partners in Health (www.PIH.org) that provide a stellar example of how treatment goals in the developed world can and ought to be transported to the developing world. Further, they demonstrate quite convincingly that despite resource poor settings those same goals can be met in places like rural Haiti. Our challenge is to meet those same goals in the midst of overcrowding, poor sanitation, and other obstacles unique to an urban slum.

The LAMP is founded on supporting the local landscape, and not supplanting it. To that end, using several successful models in the urban US, we are currently developing this component.

As an example of some accomplishments, we recently gave a generous grant to the Haiti Athletic Association. This group, founded by a former player on the Haitian National Soccer Team, is a well established youth sports organization currently with over 1,300 players, boys and girls. They provide a meal each day to the players, as well as clean water to drink. The coaches are paid and well trained while the children pay nothing to belong.

In the Spring of 2007 a field (previously used as military outpost) was donated to the Athletic Association. Fortunately for the LAMP community it is only about one mile away from Bwa Nef. The field is being cleared, with the ultimate goal of having a small stadium for regional soccer matches.

Other projects that we have set our sights on include education programs at the center, dealing with such issues as water, women’s health, children’s health, basic finances, etc.