HELP: Haitian emergency leadership project

Background

Evidence of the havoc climate change can cause arrives daily, especially in regions already vulnerable and ill prepared such as Haiti. In Kenya, a prolonged drought has meant that nearly ten million people, almost a third of the population, require food aid. Crops are failing and livestock, without water or food, are dying. Wildlife -the backbone of Kenya's tourist industry- is also dying as major rivers run dry and grasslands wither. And children and the elderly have begun to die of hunger and thirst. In Guatemala, insufficient rainfall and poor soils have devastated crops of corn and beans. Thousands of people now face a food emergency. At the other extreme, in India and Bangladesh, and Niger in West Africa, too much rain has led to cataclysmic flooding, and the loss of thousands of lives.

At its core, the climate challenge is a challenge of leadership: to find leadership that's honest and principled, visionary and practical; that communicates the urgency of the tasks and what's required of its people; that prepares them for the hard choices and inevitable sacrifices that global warming will bring; that puts in place policies for the benefit of this and future generations, not simply those that are expedient or lead to short-term political gain. This leadership would ask of the world's people the same allegiance to transparency, equity, and justice it ought to demand of itself." - Wangari Maathai. So, the African Youth Movement an international non-governmental organization and Action Secours Ambulance dedicated to empowering young Blacks to work toward a better world through local and global initiatives in poverty eradication, human rights, environmental conservation and management, and social development working together for Haiti to host HELP Festival - 2 day musical exposition to encourage and heal the people of Haiti.

The aim is to find original and creative ways to rise to this challenge and make an impact: encouraging civic responsibility and disaster risk reduction in the context of the Millennium Development Goals within society, and influencing political and social frameworks and decision makers locally and internationally, thus shaping our common future.

HELP 2010 is designed to provide the next generation of Haiti leaders an understanding of key sustainable development challenges, and to motivate them through music, drama and entertainment to realize their potentials as agents of change through channelling training with diverse international peers and inspiring interactions with experienced humanitarian and big screen leaders. It will also provide them with opportunities for growth and involvement by engaging participants and providing an enabling environment for them to deliver humanitarian aid to disadvantaged communities.

Specific Objectives

- To explore the essence of environmental management using Drama, Music and Arts
- To understand the phenomenon of climate change, its impacts, and its implications and study the appropriate disaster risk reduction strategy;
- To examine and understand the gender aspects in climate change and disaster risk reduction;
- To identify and define the action agenda for stakeholders to support global and national actions to adapt a responsive program related to inclusive climate change and disaster risk reduction awareness in Haiti.
- Present the findings of ‘Views from the Frontline’ to a broad range of stakeholders;
- Improve links between the community, civil society, local-level government officials and other key stakeholders on disaster risk reduction
- Create support and momentum for joint initiatives and advocacy activities to improve disaster-resilience

Proceedings

The festival will be organized around identifying the challenges to action as well as defining the appropriate responses to effectively address the impacts of climate change and disaster risk reduction.

Inputs
Festival will be collected and organized around:

1) geographic location and
2) types of actions: i.e. preparedness, risk reduction: building community resilience; adaptation; and mitigation.

Cross cutting, this festival will be the identification of methodologies in aid of responding to climate change and preparedness through disaster risk reduction. In all of these actions, special attention will be given to defining how youth and women could be main-streamed. In other words, the Festival should define how stakeholders can be given the social space to participate, influence, and benefit from global and local responses to climate change and disaster risk reduction.