Gaunt, ill faces of Haitian children and adults haunt a photo presentation created by a Courier-Journal photographer Kylene Lloyd. The photo presentation was produced from real pictures Lloyd took while visiting Haiti after the tragic earthquake that killed thousands.
On Tuesday, April 13, the Social Sciences forum hosted an event featuring a Courier-Journal journalist who was sent to Haiti after the earthquake hit.
The event, “When Disaster Strikes: Haiti and International Aid,” took place to inform faculty and students about U.S. international aid and the catastrophe that occurred in Haiti.
Lloyd and Chris Kenning, a journalist for the Courier-Journal, visited IU Southeast to talk about their experience in Haiti after the earthquake.
Kenning said after he heard of the disaster in Haiti, he wished so much he could be sent there to report for the Courier-Journal. Kenning began researching endlessly for a local connection.
“It is pretty rare for local places to send people overseas,” Kenning said. “I needed some sort of link that would connect our paper and area to the disaster in Haiti.”
After a few days of research, Kenning hooked up with a local group called Edge Outreach. Edge Outreach is a group that travels to developing countries to provide low-cost water purification systems.
A week after the earthquake shook thru Haiti, Kenning, Lloyd and the Edge Outreach group traveled to Haiti together.
“The whole town was completely overwhelmed,” Kenning said. “Prisons fell and schools and government buildings were destroyed. The death toll was so incredibly high, and there were so many horrific injuries.”
Kenning and Lloyd described their inability to eat or drink while around the people of Haiti. They said they were unable to get a bottle of water or an energy bar out of their bag because of the chaos it would cause among the people.
“I wanted to help and couldn’t really,” Lloyd said. “I felt so bad that I was hungry while there, especially when I knew that the Haitian people were starving around me.”
At the beginning of Lloyd’s trip to Haiti, she said she encountered some guilt while taking pictures of the people in Haiti and of their local tragedy. Her guilt was swept away after one of her photographs was printed in the Courier-Journal.
“After my photo was printed, businesses and organizations back home raised a lot of money for Haiti,” Lloyd said. “I felt like my photo helped because it provided awareness to those outside of Haiti and how this earthquake has hurt an entire mass of people.”
Prior to the seismic earthquake that killed thousands, Haiti was already a destitute place where 80 percent of Haiti’s people were unemployed and living in poverty.
“Haiti has always been a needy and dysfunctional place to begin with,” Kenning said. “It has absolutely no infrastructure to help bounce back from this disaster. Ninety percent of the buildings were hit slightly or completely destroyed.”
Cliff Staten, dean of Social Sciences, spoke at the seminar and educated the audience about U.S. international aid.
“A lot of people don’t realize that the U.S. also benefits from providing international aid to other countries,” Staten said. “If another country was suffering and needed rice, the U.S. would buy the rice from a U.S. business and send it to the country in need. The U.S. has a .9 percent spending budget for foreign aid and we are putting the money back in to the U.S. economic flow.”
Kenning said that a lot of the aid agencies from the U.S. and other countries are focusing on providing shelter for those left homeless in Haiti.
“It is all so daunting,” Kenning said. “There is so much rubble to remove and so many people left without homes. However, Haitians are so resilient because of their dire poverty and are used to disaster. I just hope people in the U.S. become more informed on what is still happening in Haiti. The problem still exists and needs to be covered while Haiti tries to recover.”
Staff Writer
comckinl@ius.edu