Devastated in the January 12 earthquake, Grace Children's Hospital is one of Haiti's leading pediatric hospitals for the treatment of children with tuberculosis (TB) and other respiratory diseases.
Hockey for Haiti was started by Haitian-Canadian NHL veteran Georges Laraque. Proceeds will help rebuild the hospital, restoring hope, dignity and good health to the children and families of Haiti.
To encourage fan participation, the NHLPA launched an online auction of 140 Olympic hockey jerseys worn by NHLPA members from 12 countries in the 2010 Olympics, including jerseys from Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin, Jonathan Toews and Nick Lidstrom. For more information, visit http://www.nhlpa.com/Giving-Back/Hockey-For-Haiti/
But we were not here today to look at the outpatient clinic primarily. Georgianne had really come to interview this man, Handy Tilbert, about a new women's clinic half-hidden behind the outpatient clinic:
Meet Jean "Handy" Tilbert
Handy Tilbert is a celebrity in Haiti. Haitians know him for such artistic endeavors as this:
Yes, Handy was the male lead in Barikad, a tale of forbidden love crossing the often strict class and cultural lines in Haiti. This and other films have won him widespread popularity, not to mention adoration from his female fans. He was also assistant director of another Haitian film, I Love You Annie , so he has been expanding his skills in film-making to both sides of the camera, even establishing his own film studio.
He quickly thought about his options, figured out his next move, and told his family to follow him. After the earthquake everyone who wasn't digging out friends or family members was simply looking for a safe, open area to stay. The medians of streets were filled with people with nowhere to go, so an alternative had to be found. The golf course at the Petionville Club was the first thing that came to mind. It was open, safe, and clean, and let's be honest, there's no chance that a building can fall on you while sitting on one of the fairways of PAP's only golf destination.Ironically, this is the same camp that another actor, Sean Penn, became manager of under the auspices of the J/P Haitian Relief Organization sometime later.The family walked the short distance to the course, put down the possessions they carried with them, and relaxed for the first time all night. Handy looked around, and there was no one else around. They were the only ones on the golf course, but in just a few days more than 40,000 displaced Haitians would be calling this their home in what is now the largest tent city in Haiti. They slept through the night, and when they woke up, others had taken his cue and filtered in to spend a night filled with screams and sorrow on the lush grasses that have now been trampled to dirt and mud. (source)
Handy, with his own movie studio destroyed, found himself initially working for the ongoing NBC News crews covering Haiti as their "go-to guy" - driver, translator, "fixer", and a man who seems to know everyone in Haiti, rich or poor, important or everyday. Eventually, however, he became more and more involved in straight-out humanitarian relief work, until he is now the director of the new women's clinic we had come to investigate, and he was eager to show us around this new addition to the annex complex.
The first thing Handy did was show us around the outpatient clinic a bit on the way back to the women's clinic. Here is the waiting room:
And in the rear is actually a 40-foot shipping container that has converted to a small children's clinic. Amazing what you can do with shipping containers, as you will continue to see!
Here are two of the staff at work at the front deck:
Handy next led us back to the actual women's clinic in the rear, a bit small, but a needed addition to heathcare in Port-au-Prince. It has only been open since November, with an official inaugural ceremony following this past December:
If you look more closely at the side of the container directly in the rear, just beyond the awning, you can see the acronym C2C:
In front is one of the women's clinic staff. The acronym beyond him and to the right, C2C, actually stands for Containers to Clinics , and there is a story here, because Containers to Clinics is actually a Boston area-based (Dover) nonprofit whose mission is to transform used shipping containers into mobile medical clinics and then ship them off to areas of the world in dire need of such innovative services:
The ubiquitous shipping container--there are an estimated 20-plus million containers worldwide that are out of use--lends itself to sustainable, modular adaptive reuse. In 2009, C2C developed a prototype with the pro bono help of San Francisco--based architecture firm Anshen + Allen and modular builder Stack Design Build. The resulting L-shaped mobile clinic, made from two containers with footprints of 8 feet by 20 feet each, includes two exam rooms, a waiting room, diagnostic lab, and pharmacy."The clinics are designed as a kit of parts--so that they can be shipped in several different configurations" depending on end user needs, says Ryan Campbell, associate and senior project coordinator at Anshen + Allen who spearheaded the design effort. Sustainable features in the upcycled containers include operable doors and windows that provide natural ventilation, while solar-powered fans draw stale air through wall vents. An overarching fabric canopy shades an outdoor courtyard as well as the containers themselves, which are coated with highly reflective paint to further reduce heat gain. In each unit, an inverter stores energy for use during power outages--common in rural areas and disaster zones--and a backup generator ensures continuous operation of water pumps and lights.
While C2C relied on donated materials that were selected for their durability and cleanability in order to finish the first batch of interiors, Campbell hopes future versions will incorporate greener flooring and wallcoverings. In addition, future models may be modified to run on renewable energies such as solar or wind power. Every unit, however, will continue to have a backup generator for medical equipment and storage refrigerators. (source)
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