grassroots movements need access to funding

I don't want these open letters to be like the news that rolls into my inbox everyday: "reconstruction stalling" "disease widespread" "orphan dead after failed surgery". I recognize that so far I have tended to focus on the more depressing aspects of Haiti, is a material condition, but it is not a state of mind (corruption, however, might be a different matter). Joy can poverty can inhabit the same moment. So can generosity and poverty. What is amazing about Haiti is that in spite of the state, life goes on. Some people might call Haiti a "non-functioning society" but how can that be possible when society keeps functioning despite the state? Yes, the state might be absent, or even predatory, but that doesn't prevent people from waking up, chatting with friends, cooking, making love, watching TV, visiting family. There is no state sponsored public transportation system, so people have created on for themselves. What I am most impressed by, and which I do not see being talked about elsewhere, are the Haitians that are taking the initiative to address their the problems Haiti faces without the support of the government, the UN, or any of the 4,000 NGOs that work here. I've had conversations with a woman, Gerola, who tells me about her fifteen-year old daughter who organized a school shortly after the earthquake, teaching reading, writing, math, and dance to the local kids in her neighborhood. She was doing it everyday until her classes resumed, now she does it once a week on the weekend. Gerola also, even before the earthquake, was writing a play about sexuality to educated adolescents about safe sex, abstinence, birth control and fidelity. The project got postphoned with the quake, but now with so many kids living homeless in the streets she sees an even more pressing need for that kind of information. Two days ago I met Franz, a young psychologist who had created a mental health program that operates in nine different camps around Port-au-Prince. He trains people in the camp to be able to respond to the emotional needs of people still dealing with trauma, and once a week they go around to the camps doing workshops and therapy groups. Unfortunately, Franz has being paying for his program out of pocket and next week is the last week he can afford to do it. Gerola too worries about how long they can keep the school up without some funding, since they try to provide some kind of food or snacks for the kids, all sixty of them. There are thousands of international organizations represented in Haiti, that are here trying to help. Yet Haitians themselves who have brilliant projects in mind don't have any idea how to access international support or funding. Well-meaning people come here from abroad with ideas about what Haiti needs, impose these projects, and then they may or may not stay around to see if it worked, to be responsible for its upkeep. Yet while there is a certain good in that, it would be much more productive for society if funding was made available for Haitian organized and Haitian run projects. Haitians and foreigners alike accuses Haitians of not being capable of leading themselves (and maybe the political class is corrupted to the point where this has truth) but who is giving grassroots Haitians a chance? The whitewashed wall of NGOs and UN soldiers seems impenetrable. And people like Franz and Gerola don't feel like they would be taken seriously even if they tried to approach them. Gerola told me I would have more luck getting funding for my project than she would have for hers, just because the color of my skin would give me access to circles she could never go.