Haitian Brothers and sisters, friends of the Haitian people, January 12, 2010 has become another day that will sadly be remembered for years to come. Once again, Mother Nature has forgotten what a forsaken nation we are, as if more than 4 million people leaving in abject poverty wasn’t enough, we have been struck by a 7.0 earthquake.
It struck 15 kilometers from Port-au-Prince, a city of 2 million people with no infrastructure to face such a catastrophe.
Brothers and sisters, Haiti needs help, Haiti needs your help. This is the cry of a country that has nothing except human beings. Many have died today however; we can insure that some of those who are alive stay alive.
We cannot change what happened but we can influence what will. My name is Dennery Alain Menelas, founder of this website and president of the Haitian-American society at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. Along with other students, our group is geared up like never before to make a positive impact on this country that has been repeatedly been ravaged by disaster. We are organizing fundraisers and we will be visible on campus like never before so please come join us and get involved. Haiti needs as much aid as we can give. For more information please email Your browser may not support display of this image. , or feel free to join one of our meetings every Thursday in the Campus Center 3rd Floor, Room 3215 at 1:00pm. Sincerely,Dennery Alain Menelas (Alayn)
HAS UMass Boston President ‘09-10BLOG MISSION STATEMENT: Why create a website like this one? The answer lies in the titles of the project; we wanted to heal and rethink Haiti. It is pretty obvious that Haiti is on the wrong path and that it is necessary that we all work together in order to find the best formula for Haiti’s development. But how do we find a formula that has eluded us for two centuries? Whose task is it to find it? It is probably not the NGOs, the international consultants or even the religious institutions which have not evolved over the years. Unfortunately, some of those institutions still believe that some nations are made of babies to whom the right path needs to be shown.
This is to say that it is the task of Haitians but still the question remains; which Haitians? It is clear that all Haitians need to participate in the solution but we also need leaders, guides. We cannot ask a taxi driver to find a Haitian approach to globalization. In other words, we need an elite, people who are educated and fully aware of the problems that the country is facing. I believe that a country could be compared to a car which has two important components; the steering wheel and the engine. The engine is the masses, the great majority of Haitians who did not have access to proper schooling and opportunities, the indefatigable.
On the other hand there is the steering wheel, the elites, the Haitians that were properly schooled and had access to the opportunities offered by our country and the world. What doesn’t work in the “Haitian car” is the steering wheel, the elites. It is clear that we over the years, we have had many foreign enemies; however, to see Haiti’s woes as a purely foreign invention is to forget that we are an independent country, that we made choices. Sometimes those choices were difficult but we still had the choice and it is clear that most of the time, we did not make the best ones. No matter how reliable the engine can be, as long as the steering wheel is not going in the right direction, all the effort of the masses will be lost.