Lent collection money to benefit rebuilding in Haiti

March 30--Some Catholics in San Diego have Haiti on their minds this year as part of a Lenten tradition of raising money for impoverished communities around the world.

Catholic Relief Services' Rice Bowl fundraiser gathers money during the 40-day period from parishes across the country. Cassandra Bissainthe, who works for the program in Haiti, came to speak to parishioners at St. James-St. Leo Parish in Solana Beach before Lent began to help them understand current conditions in the island nation and what their contributions would mean.

Haiti, already the poorest country in the Americas according to the World Bank, was wracked by an earthquake in 2010 and Hurricane Matthew in 2016.

Bissainthe has been part of the recovery effort.

"I think Haiti has come a long way, but every time we feel like we're progressing, there's an additional thing that comes along and sets us back four years," she said.

Conditions in the country became part of a political debate first when large numbers of Haitians began arriving at the San Diego border from Brazil in 2016 and again when the Trump administration was deciding whether to end temporary protected status for Haitians.

Brazil took in many Haitians after the earthquake to help with large construction projects for the World Cup and the Olympics. When those projects were over, many Haitians struggled to find more work and decided to head north.

After the influx of Haitian migrants, former President Barack Obama decided to begin deportations to Haiti, which had been paused since the earthquake hit. Deportations paused again for about a month after the hurricane.

Many Haitians who arrived in Tijuana after that decision have stayed there, building new lives in Mexico instead of asking to come into the U.S.

Haitians who had been in the U.S. around the time of the earthquake had been allowed to apply for temporary protected status, which meant they could stay and work in the U.S. The Trump administration decided that conditions have improved enough that those Haitians should also return, giving them until July 2019 to make arrangements.

Bissainthe worried that deportations of Haitians from the U.S. and the Dominican Republic could negatively affect conditions.

"That's putting more stress on an already very fragile economy," she said.

She sees progress where communities have been affected, she said, but they're not where they used to be.

For the first 30 days following the hurricane, Catholic Relief Services distributed food and hygiene items, and then the program moved into recovery mode, training communities to rebuild homes and helping farmers get seeds to start over. The organization's work is based on conversations with and buy-in from the community.

"It's not only providing, it's empowering the community to remain resilient and grow," Bissainthe said.

Much of the country's economy is based on agriculture, she said. Cacao trees take years before they start producing, so farmers have to find other means of income while they regrow.

Recently, Haitians have been migrating to Chile to find work, she said, further depleting the agricultural sector.

In one affected community, Catholic Relief Services rebuilt about 2,000 houses over a year and a half.

She said it was difficult to say how long it would take the island to recover because of its likelihood to be hit by more natural disasters.

"Haiti has been proven to be in the route of major hurricanes," she said. "You get hit by those emergencies back to back."

She worried what might happen in Port-au-Prince, the nation's capital, which was heavily affected by the earthquake, if another disaster strikes.

The country created building codes following the earthquake, but they aren't well-enforced, she said.

"If we had another major disaster, these communities could be hit hard again," Bissainthe said.

Evangely Ward, who works as a youth coordinator at St. Leo, said parishioners and staff found Bissainthe's work powerful.

During a Lenten community conversations that Ward led, some parishioners made the connection between Bissainthe's talk and those who had immigrated to the U.S.

"I was glad it stuck," Ward said. "They were making that relationship between what we are called to do locally and what we can do internationally."

Last year, the combined English and Spanish-speaking parish raised just over $5,000 in direct donations to Catholic Relief Services during Lent. The parish won't know until after Easter how much it raised this year.

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