Granville group helps Haiti through its issues
Healing Art Missions provides support to quake-stricken areas
For more than 20 years, a Granville couple has quietly provided humanitarian support for struggling communities in Haiti, where earthquakes, violence and political turmoil have become an unnatural way of life.
Dr. Tracee Laing and her husband, Paul B. Hammond, have coordinated teams of doctors and brought aid through their nonprofit Healing Art Missions.
Haiti has faced a trio of tragedies in recent months: the July assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, a major earthquake on Aug. 14 and tropical storm days later. All of this has been added to persistent poverty, poor infrastructure and government corruption.
And while events in Afghanistan, the ongoing battle against COVID-19, and flooding in Louisiana and surrounding states may have taken attention away from the Caribbean nation, the mission of Laing and Hammond – helping the country's 11 million residents – remains a top priority.
The organization, run from the couple's small
Granville home, focuses on community-based healthcare, education, clean water and employment, along with hiring Haitians to run their own support operations.
It has been a busy time for the operation, whose website is healingartmissions.org. On Wednesday, for example, Laing, a long-time family practice doctor, shipped a box of orthopedic hardware that Nationwide Children's Hospital donated.
Valued at about $100,000, it easily fit into a box 15 inches wide. It's equipment badly needed in the impoverished country but unaffordable on the open market.
While many relief efforts provide volunteers and workers who visit and then leave the country, Healing Art Missions' goal is to provide lasting assistance.
“They need to be paid and need to have the supplies to fill the task,” Laing said.
Political unrest, crime and corruption have been rampant in Haiti, with bandits frequently abducting and holding for ransom children or relatives of well-off residents, Laing said. Online school is often the norm for reasons of personal safety.
Dr. Jean Fritz Jacques, who is paid and supported by Healing Arts Mission, is the organization's medical director. He was visiting the United States when Moïse was shot by gunmen and killed in his home July 7.
With unrest worsening after the assassination, Jacques and his wife decided to leave their youngest children, 10 and 13, with their godparents in Florida. Their 17-year-old daughter, Nia, stayed with Laing and Hammond in Granville.
Laing said she considered getting the girl an education visa but learned that she already has temporary protection status for 18 months, enough time for her to acclimate to the U.S. and consider what's next.
“We thought maybe we could shepherd her through high school and then apply for college,” Laing said.
Nia is in her senior year at Granville High School, where she has made friends and is doing well, despite the separation from family..
“She is thrilled to be safely able to go to school,” Laing said.
Her father is thrilled, too. The family has never been apart until now, Jacques said in an email to The Dispatch.
“We always wanted to be part, physically, of our children's education and strong character building,” he wrote. “But with the insecurity burden situation in Haiti right now we are confident they will continue their education in a safer environment. And I will not need to take a daily risk to bring them to school early in the morning.”
Meanwhile, the nonprofit organization that Laing founded in 1998, a year after she first visited on a medical mission, presses on. As it did then, the country faces myriad social and economic challenges that are helped by outside aid.
The group has raised money by selling Haitian art at festivals and fundraisers in the U.S., proceeds from which fund medical facilities, a school and clean drinking water.
Aid to developing countries often takes the form of dropping off vast amounts of food, often rice in places such as Africa, Laing said.
“It feeds people immediately, but if that's your long-term policy, it puts the local farmers out of business,” she said.
The same can be said when it comes to medical workers, she said. Paying locals, such as Jacques, provides financial stability, helps the local economy and creates a more culturally aware team that can help with medical, housing and emotional needs.
“We need to be supportive of the Haitian people finding their own solutions,” Laing said. “We need to pay the people to do the work, rather than imposing our solutions on them.”
A major cultural difference is Haiti's connection to Vodou practices. The religion's priests are popular in Haiti, accepted leaders who also treat patients but who can't treat complex injuries or perform surgery, Laing said.
Jacques recently visited a popular Vodou practitioner who was charging more than $70 for a patient visit. By contrast, in the Healing Art Missions clinic in Dumay, a small town on the eastern edge of Port-au-prince, patients pay only about $1.
Laing and her husband, who has a theater background, are now looking to pass the work on to a a professional administrator, someone who can carry on the mission as they enjoy full retirement.
Even in these challenging times, they are convinced they've played an important role.
“Of course it's made a difference,” Laing said. “The health and economic stability have greatly improved. Our communities are definitely much better off.”
dnarciso@dispatch.com