Good morning. Good morning everyone, and welcome to the United States Institute of Peace and welcome to this meeting of the Haiti Working Group. This meeting will conclude our sixth year of providing public forums in Washington, DC on issues related to events in Haiti and U.S. Haitian relations. Today we're going to discuss the courageous role that Haitian women have played in the aftermath of the earthquake that occurred in January 2010 process of reconstructing Haiti, which has gone on since then. We have a group of distinguished speakers this morning, but before we get to our program, I want to first thank a number of organizations that have contributed to this program. First, I want to thank my colleague Kathleen Kunitz, the director of the Center for Gender and Peacebuilding at USIP, which along with the Haiti program is a co-sponsor of this event. And I think I forgot the most important thing, which is to introduce myself. My name is Bob Perito, and I direct the Haiti program here at USIP. Second, I want to thank Elise Nelson, who is president and CEO of Vital Voices for Global Partnership. Vital Voices calls attention to extraordinary women around the world, and consistent with its mission, Vital Voices is responsible for bringing to Washington this morning a group of dynamic Haitian women who are with us, and they're here in the front row. This morning we will hear from Danielle Saint-Laurent, minister, former minister of Commerce, Industry and Tourism at Haiti. But I also want to welcome her colleague, Senator Edmond Boziel, who is, I understand, the only woman, woman now serving in the Senate of Haiti. Third, I would like to thank someone who's not here this morning, unfortunately, and that's the actress Maria Bello. Most of us know her, if we watch TV, as the star of a program called Prime Suspect, but Maria Bello is also a co-founder of the organization We Advance, an organization dedicated to promoting the health, safety and well-being of women in Haiti. She was a motivating force behind the effort to bring our delegation of Haitian women to Washington. And I would like to welcome in this regard, Barbeau Guillaume, who is a co-founder of We Advance, and Adele Frischman, who is the organization's executive director and they're with us in the front row this morning. And finally, I want to thank Digital Democracy, an organization that uses technology to employ or to empower marginalized communities around the world. Digital Democracy has received funding from USIP, from our Haiti project, to instruct women in Haiti on the use of technology to prevent violence in their communities. And I want to thank Emily Jacoby, who is a co-founder and executive director of Digital Democracy for the beautiful photographs that you saw in the atrium as you were coming in and for the slideshow, which you saw running here as you were seated. The photographs in the slideshow were photographs of Digital Democracy's training program for women in Haiti. The photographs that were in the atrium were taken by Haitian women and as I understand it, the names of all of those photographs, the titles all came from the women themselves. So we have a very full program this morning, as you can see from our agenda. So I'd like to get started. You have a handout on the biographies of all of our speakers. So in the interest of time, we'll save time by making only really very short introductions. And so first, we'd like to begin. I'd like to introduce Kathleen Kunitz, the director of the Gender and Peace Building Center at USIP. Kathleen has a long and extremely distinguished history of service at international organizations like the World Bank. I'm concerned with issues related to women in development. And I'd like to invite her to take the podium and to introduce our topic this morning. Kathleen. Thank you very much. Thanks for your thoughtful introduction, Bob. And I too want to express my appreciation to the Haitian delegation and to acknowledge your efforts to be a part of this event today. Thank you for your voices to help us all on the way forward together. As Bob has noted, USIP has worked diligently over the years to maintain a focus on Haiti. Eight months after the earthquake, our centers co-hosted an event to highlight the urgent security needs as a result of the reports of rampant sexual and gender-based violence in the camps. The chilling reports of women, girls and babies being raped by gangs of young men and older boys left us feeling hopeless without power. But a year later, we are here today to expand our focus on women, not only as victims of violence, for this we understand they are the majority, but also to highlight and acknowledge the ways in which Haitian women are making change happen at both the grass level in the camps as well as in leadership roles in civil society and government. We embrace the assessment made by former Chilean president and now head of UN Women, Michelle Bachelet, during her visit to Haiti in February 2010, that Haiti's reconstruction will be faster if women are an intricate part of the process. We know that life in Haiti was devastating for a vast majority before the earthquake struck. We know that an estimated 80% of the Haitians lived in extreme poverty and more than half suffered from malnutrition. Unemployment was a staggering 70% and tens of thousands of people died each year from preventable illnesses, especially because of the lack of clean water. Average life expectancy was only 50 years and one in 16 women faced a lifetime of dying during childbirth. Today, nearly 700 days after the earthquake, we are looking into the face of our own global future, yet realized with potential climatic changes like what has occurred in Haiti that turns a city, a country, into a living nightmare overnight. The international community needs to continue a serious process of self-reflection. We must keep learning from our best practices and our worst mistakes. We know moving forward that holistic approaches to relief and sustainable reconstruction requires more than half the population. It requires a resilient effort that ensures that women are an integral part of the problem-solving and decision-making. At USIP, we're very committed to conflict prevention and to assist in developing alternative strategies to resolving conflicts by nonviolent means. Therefore, today we ask several questions to focus our efforts here. What can be done to prevent the violent and systematic use of sexual and gender-based violence in Haiti today? And how can we better assure that women are playing key roles in bringing innovative approaches to and putting an end to the violence and preventing future violence in generations to come? I am heartened and at moments even dismayed by the number of international commitments and mechanisms that we in Washington and New York work on every day to ensure that places and countries like Haiti gets the support so that they can help raise themselves. We have many policy tools in our toolbox. Just to name a few, we have the UN Security Council Resolution 1325, which seeks increased representation of women at decision-making levels in national, regional and international institutions for the prevention, management and resolution of conflict. We have Security Council Resolution 1820, which seeks through consultation with women and women-led organizations to develop effective mechanisms for providing protection and security from violence for women and girls in refugee and internally displaced persons camp, especially protection from sexual violence. We have, internationally speaking, CEDA, or the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. The Beijing Platform for Action, we have the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence Against Women. We have the Millennium Development Goals, including Goal 3 to promote gender equality to empower women and girls. And we have, most importantly, qualified Haitian women and Haitian women's organizations that must be a part of all of these international policies, deliberations and decision-making processes. In the economic and political recovery of Haiti. So now we must move from all of these aspirations to actions. As our own Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton has emphasized, the problems we face today are too big, too complex to be solved without the full participation of women. And so as we've turned this morning to focusing on a country in our backyard, as I continually say, if we can't get it right in Haiti, where are we going to get it right? And so today is a part of bringing this focus on Haitian women, looking at the roles that they are playing, innovative efforts to bring more imagination and reality to a life without violence and to a life that embraces hope and a generation to come. I want to now turn the podium back to Bob, who will introduce our first speaker. Thank you. It's my very great pleasure now to introduce Michelle Montaz. This is a difficult task. Looking over this extraordinarily distinguished resume, it's hard to pick out things to emphasize, but I will try to do my best just to name a few of her achievements. First of all, she is an award-winning Haitian journalist, and there is a long, long list of awards from organizations around the world for her distinguished work as a broadcast journalist. Then there is her service that most of us are familiar with as the spokesperson and senior communications advisor to the Secretary General of the United Nations from 2007 to 2009, in the fact that she played that role for the President of the United Nations General Assembly in the years before that. But also, there is the serious work that she's done in the last year as a special advisor to the senior, to the SRSG, the Special Representative of the Secretary General at the UN Mission in Haiti in Port-au-Prince. So I would like to invite Michelle to join us at the podium. We are very grateful that you're here this morning. It's a great honor for us here at USIP. Happy? I would like first to thank USIP and Robert Perito for associating me to this event on Haiti's reconstruction and the role of women. Thank you, Bob, for your introduction. Dr. Kathleen Kernes framed our topics in the larger UN and international framework, so I'll leave that part of it to our discussion later on. We are privileged to have in this room people who, since the quake, have worked in the camps of the displaced, have participated in the relief efforts here in Washington or in Haiti, or are members of Haiti's very vibrant women organizations. I hope we'll get a chance to share their experiences and perspectives this morning. In 44 days, we'll mark the second anniversary of the quake that killed more than 200,000 of the people we loved. That destroyed countless schools, hospitals, churches, bridges, and roads. That deeply maimed each one of us, and that will profoundly scar Haiti for years to come. The quake and its aftershocks, there was still one last Sunday in Petigouave, have brought together in the 10 cities of Port-au-Prince, Léoganne, Petigouave, or Jaquemelle, not only the victims of those 35 apocalyptic minutes, but also the slum dwellers of our capital cities who have come to find in the camps the basic services they were denied for decades. Today, the number of people living in 10 cities is down, from a million and a half to around 600,000. Half of them are women and girls. If the numbers have gone down, it's not because the needs are being met. In fact, more and more international NGOs who use to provide basic services, water distribution, sanitation, or health clinics to the camps are now packing up and leaving. Because Haiti has stopped being a priority, or because there is not enough funding to sustain the humanitarian effort. On the international level of the $300 million consolidated appeal, the United Nations system requested to cover humanitarian needs. Only 52% has been funded. If the numbers in the 10 cities have gone down, it is also because landowners and mayors have been legally and illegally evicting residents, or because the residents themselves gave up hope that aid might reach them. Many have settled for other makeshift solutions, passing up so-called yellow shacks in their old neighborhoods, which means getting back to the status quo and rebuilding homes that will inevitably collapse again. I returned to Haiti in January 2010, a week before the earthquake struck. And I was there until last June, a special advisor to the head of the United Nations mission in Haiti, as Bob mentioned. For 18 months, dealing with first the emergency aid and rescue operations, then the humanitarian assistance to the camps and displaced communities, and the rebuilding of temporary schools, clinics, and government offices. I became, as a Haitian, increasingly aware that the earthquake has essentially exacerbated a reality that has plagued Haiti for decades. The exclusion of its majority, the poor, the peasants, women. What role can Haitian women represent 52% of our population play? What role have they played since the tragedy? How can the tremendous energy and resilience that they have shown since the earthquake be harnessed for a different future? And what has become of the sense of urgency felt in the reconstruction efforts 18 months ago? What has become of the sense that we should and we could, as a nation and as a society, seize the time and the terrible opportunities of that quake to finally make the changes we had dreamed of collectively 25 years ago? We were then talking of drastically reforming the state structure. Change the state. And during that Haitian spring of 1986-87 of building a less unjust society. For a short period after the quake, the incredible outpour of solidarity from individuals or from government, the world over, seemed to create the condition for us to rebuild better. We build our destroyed infrastructure, but also we build a more inclusive nation. Before I came here, I reviewed a number of articles from the international media about Haitian women. Most were written after the quake. Most conveyed the image of the Haitian woman as victim. They overwhelmingly covered violence against women and girls in the 10 cities with statistics to prove the point. The World Bank indeed estimates that 70% of Haitian women have been affected by some form of violence, a great deal of it being domestic violence. Before discussing the role of women in rebuilding Haiti, I feel we should first address the issue of violence and the image of Haitian women as passive victims. The issue is real. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have recently released excellent investigation reports of violence in the major 10 cities in Port-au-Prince. Reporting sexual and gender-based violence remains problematic in Haiti according to Amnesty International. The lack of an appropriate and secure place to make a complaint, the lack of trust in the police and judicial system are major obstacles. The reporting in a society where the social stigma associated with sexual violence makes it difficult for women and girls to report or seek medical help. Fear of reprisal attacks is also a major obstacle to reporting, especially as women and girls have no option but to remain in the same inadequate shelters in the same camp where they were attacked and to large complaints in the streets where they could be seen or overheard speaking to the police. The limited prevention and response mechanism that existed before January 2010 have been further undermined by the earthquake. The Ministry of Women's Affairs and Women's Rights was destroyed, seriously reducing its ability to develop an adequate response to initial reports of sexual and gender-based violence after the quake. Three influential leaders of women's advocacy groups were in a major battle in 2005 in obtaining that rape be punished as a crime and who systematically pursued cases of violence against women in the court system were killed. On January 12, 2010, police stations and courthouses were destroyed or severely damaged, making it more difficult for survivors to report sexual and gender-based violence. In Port-au-Prince, for example, the earthquake completely flattened four national police stations where there was a special unit of police officers trained to respond to victims of sexual violence. This pilot project was the first of its kind in Haiti, note Amnesty International. If violence against women in Haiti is a major issue, this is only one of the many challenges women face. And portraying Haitian women as helpless victims ignores the work being done by women organizations and the survivors themselves to put an end to that violence.  They are the main contact point for many women living in the camps. One of their key objectives is to ensure access to justice and reparations for the survivors, a daunting task. Considering the difficult access to a largely dysfunctional judicial system and a very lengthy and ineffective legal process that prevailed. Women and girls in post-earthquake Haiti face additional challenges.  The crisis is reflected in pregnancy rates in displaced person camps that are three times higher than in urban areas before the earthquake and rates of maternal mortality that rang among the world's worst. The situation is not entirely new. Women and girls in Haiti die during pregnancy and childbirth at alarming high rates even before the quake. One in 16 women face the risk of dying during childbirth. Kathleen mentioned that statistic. They also face crushing poverty and a stark disparity in access to education compared to men. Almost 60% of women cannot read or write. Many can count them. And here we touch upon a non-gender specific issue, the gap that exists between urban and rural Haiti. That gap is worse for women, nearly 25% of the women in urban areas have finished secondary school compared with less than 2% in rural areas. These numbers should be seen in a larger context. The average life expectancy in Haiti is only 50 years and more than half of all Haitians depend on agriculture for their livelihood with women providing most of the labor for subsistence agriculture. Poor policies have made Haiti dependent on importing half of all its food, the highest percentage in this hemisphere. Here also, the richest 1% of the population control nearly half of the country's wealth, something that should not surprise my friends of the Occupy Wall Street movement. A coalition gender shadow report of the 2010 Haiti post disaster needs assessment issued by a group of women association among them equality now underlines a more crucial fact that the earthquake served to exacerbate existing inequalities, rendering it not just a natural disaster but also an example of massive injustice. Years of systemic gender discrimination have exposed the women of Haiti to higher rates of poverty and violence and the disaster too has proved anything but neutral, the report says. In spite of the dismal statistics in health or education, in spite of worrying economic indicators, in spite of these reports and articles describing Haitian women as victims or passive aid recipients, the reality I know is quite different. These are strong, resilient women who in spite of stubborn inequalities have developed amazing survival skills and who want to be key players. If we are to rebuild a different Haiti, it cannot be done without the increasing empowerment of women economically, politically, but so far the voices of women have to a large extent been excluded from the reconstruction process. And the women are such a vital part of the country's economy. Bob, I don't know how much time I have. Almost two years after the quake, real drug creation has not meaningfully placed the cash or food for work programs quickly conceived as a band-aid after the quake. Last year, these programs supported by the United Nations Development Programme, the World Food Programme, the UN Mission in Haiti Minister employed more than 300,000 people of which 40% were women. Similar temporary jobs were created by other programs like those of USAID or the Haitian government. Nearly 50% of Haitian women are economically active, a record number in our hemisphere. Even though women manage 42% of households and make up more than 75% of Haiti's informal economy, few women have access to credit even though some banks have reached out to the informal sector. Small micro-credit programs are available to rural women. Two lending organizations that some of you might know, the Lambie Fund of Haiti and Francoise, among others, have been providing such micro-credit funds. The Lambie Fund is supporting sustainable agriculture programs to meet growing demand for locally produced food and funding small ventures.  For nation, les épaules font causer, is Haiti's largest micro-finance institution with more than 55,000 borrowers, most of them women who live and work in the countryside of Haiti and more than 255,000 savers. The political empowerment of women and their increasing participation in all matters concerning Haiti has since the quake met some setback. Prime Minister Conny, in his inauguration speech, acknowledged that only 0.7% of women hold a decisional position in spite of their demographic weight. The remorse of the elimination of the Ministry of Women Affairs by the new government after the presidential election created an uproar in footprints as women would not accept to give up the hard-won access to one form of political participation. It turned out to be false and the ministry still stands. In the Haitian Senate, we have one woman out of the full membership of 30 senators. She's with us today, Senator Bozil, and she's also head of a political party, Fusion. I'm also sure that Daniel Saint-Lo, who has worked for many years in the political empowerment of women, will address the issue this morning, so I won't speak too much about it. I will simply say that in May 2011, the 49th legislature approved the proposed amendment of the 1987 constitution of a minimum quota of 30% of women in the Haitian legislature. It will remain wishful thinking if political empowerment does not reach the local and community level and if women candidates do not receive adequate support. In comparison in Rwanda, the 2003 constitution requires that at least 30% of parliamentary and cabinet seats go to women. And today, 56% of parliamentarians in that country are women. Beyond holding electoral positions, one key issue is increasing women's voices, certainly in political processes but also more broadly at the community level and in civil society and professional organizations. Haiti already has many strong, vibrant women's organizations that can lead the way. Following Haiti's devastating earthquake, Haiti's government supported by the World Bank led an ambitious post-disaster needs assessment, an operative blueprint for reconstruction. It exposed the significant cracks in Haiti's economy, infrastructure, governance system, environment and social services, and offered detailed, helpful recommendations on how to rebuild and even improve such systems. Still critical voices were noticeably absent from this assessment and its resulting reconstruction framework, those of Haitian civil society and especially the voices of women. Comprised of eight themes in total, the PDNA only addresses gender explicitly in one theme that of cross cutting issues. I will of course speak a little more later if you are interested about the project that we did, The Voice of the Voiceless, where we actually went to the countryside to listen to women's voices and what they said they wanted more participation. They wanted to have a say in their own affairs. Thank you. Thank you very much. My next task here is to introduce somebody who really doesn't need to be introduced to this group. If you've been coming to Haiti Working Group meetings over the years, you've already met Bob McGuire, who is the chairman of our Haiti Working Group and he has a day job in real life. He's the professor of the practice of international affairs at George Washington University. I understand that Bob also teaches at the Foreign Service Institute and we have in our audience a group of U.S. diplomats who are in training to go to Haiti. And as a former U.S. diplomat myself, it's very good to have you here with us this morning. I'd like to invite Bob to come up and take the podium. Bonjour tout le monde. Let me try something. As Bob mentioned, my students are here from the FSI. On air. Ah, good, good. I'm teaching them that. Yes. It's a great honor for me to be here today and to be among a group of distinguished women. It reminds me a little bit of my meandering career of having spent 10 years at Trinity Washington University in Northeast D.C., which is an entirely woman's college. In fact, as I'm the only male on the podium here reminds me of sometimes at Trinity when to participate in certain events, I was designated as an honorary woman. It was very different. I enjoyed the experiences. I'm struck by some of Michel's comments just make one or two of my own. One of my proudest moments as someone who's worked a lot on Haiti was when I was able to serve as the expert witness in a civil trial in New York City where three women identified as Jane Doe, one, two and three Haitian women launched a suit against a man named Emmanuel Constant. A better known as Toto Constant, the founder and leader of an organization called FRAP. That's FRAP. And in this trial, which was held in New York under several very interesting U.S. laws. I was serving as the witness for the women, trying to demonstrate that Mr. Constant should be punished because of his role as the founder and leader of this organization. It was a great honor for me to do that. The case was won by the women. The judge awarded them $19 million in damage, which unfortunately they will probably never collect, but they had the satisfaction of having justice served. What struck me is very interesting was that in the succeeding days, when news of this event reached Port-au-Prince, it was reported that many women went into the street and demonstrated for similar functions of justice to occur in Port-au-Prince. The Minister of Women's Affairs responded by lamenting that we would like to help, but we do not have the resources to do that. And as we know from what Michel also said, the judicial system does not function very strongly in this matter. But that's what I'm reminded of. But I'm also reminded of something else. As Michel mentioned, FONCOSÉ and the Lambie Fund. I'm reminded of my earlier work with the Inter-American Foundation in supporting women and their quest to bring themselves up by their bootstraps. One of my earlier experiences in that was representing or helping an organization called FAF. And this was in the early 1980s. I think FAF is actually still around. It was an organization founded by a group of Haitian women bankers. And many of them went on to serve in ministerial posts in subsequent government. But their mission was to assist market women to better manage their businesses. And in Haiti, of course, women are also known as the Poteau Métain, the center post. That's the weight-bearing post. It's also the post from which the spirits descend to give people strength and energy. And the women that FAF were working with, these market women, were truly Poteau Métain of Haitian society. Let me introduce our next two speakers. And then I'll join my colleagues here on the podium. We will hear in succession from Danielle Saint-Lo, who is an associate and CEO of Caribbean Business Consulting, which has affirmed that promotes business development and investments in Haiti at the local level in competitive value chains. As has been mentioned earlier, she was a minister of commerce, industry and tourism in Haiti. And she's been the executive director of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Haiti. She's worked extensively, believe me, in private sector development, local governance, civic education, and women's political and economic empowerment. She is co-founder and president of FAM and Democracy, a Haitian nonprofit organization that is affiliated with the Vital Voices Partnership. And she is also a member of the Vital Voices International Consultative Board. Danielle will be followed by Emily Jacoby, who is the co-founder and executive director of Digital Democracy, a New York-based nonprofit that works globally to empower marginalized populations with digital tools. She has worked in marginalized communities, including migrant workers, women's group, refugee youth, and others in media and technology projects in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and the United States. Before she founded Digital Democracy in 2008, she worked as a journalist with News Network, allafrica.com and Y-Press. And today, the USIP and Digital Democracy have teamed up to train women activists in Haiti to monitor and report violence in their communities, especially by using cell phones and other forms of information technology to prevent conflict. So, Danielle, would you like to take my place up here? Honour. Respect. Honour. Respect. I would like to thank the US Institute of Peace, Vital Voices Global Partnership. We advance, and particularly actress Maria Bello, for associating us to this prestigious event. The theme of this event is the Haiti Reconstruction Process. As Asian women, we really want to talk about national building. That's what we are looking for. Throughout the history of Haiti, women have played an important role in shaping the country. From the creation of the Asian flag to campaign for the right to vote, labor rights, pro-poor economic policy, and the fight to end dictatorships, Asian women have successfully fought for equality and a just society. I'm not going to talk about all Michelle was saying, and I have to remove two pages from my presentation, because she has said everything about the whole situation and also the challenges. Today, nearly two years after the January 12 earthquake, Asian women voices have not so far been heard in the discussion for the reconstruction of Haiti. Asian women have been silent. They have been silent, but very active with limited resources, carrying out critical activities in underserved, disaster-affected communities, including reuniting families, conducting needs assessments, documenting rape cases, and channeling psychosocial and material support to vulnerable women and girls in devastated neighborhoods and camps. We have been silent. We are still silent, but busy under our tents in camps and our tent office with goats and chickens doing our best to get back on our feet. We have been too busy burying our death, supporting survivors, worrying about our traumatized children, our people under tents in rainy and hurricane seasons. We are busy living on a survival mode. Most earthquake victims are still living in tents or high-risk damaged houses. I'm well-dressed. I'm still in a broken house. Women are the greatest victims and are disproportionately affected by increased gender-based violence. By all indicators, even before the earthquake, Asian women were extremely vulnerable. A large number of Asian families are female-edited households with limited social safety nets or government protective services. While humanitarian relief initiative or targeting immediate basic needs, few reconstruction efforts are targeting long-term livelihood development. We are busy trying to resume businesses' operations. We have been so busy that we have not taken the time to cry and start the healing process. How can we talk about reconstruction if our minds, our souls, are still under rubbles? Women living in devastated pearl prints, Jack-Mail, Leogan, are still broken. Too vulnerable to be fully part of the so-called reproduction process. Throughout the country, there are thousands of women organizations, groups and capable women leaders, working in the shadow to address women's and communities' issues and advocating for gender equality, social and economic justice. They are also in the diaspora, working hard to provide a better life to their family and community in Haiti. These women, out of pearl prints and abroad, mostly in the U.S., are our strength. They are the backbone of our economy, of our country. They should be the Potomitan, as Bob was saying, the center pillar of the building of our nation on sound foundation. While doing our best to take some time to try and start our healing process, we should rely on these women to think and plan the new Haiti. Many of them are illiterate, but very knowledgeable of the needs and priorities of their community. They understand what social capital is. With limited resources, they are the default suppliers of many of the social protections and services that should normally be granted by the state. Others, more educated, are in key positions as health agents, consultants, managers, planners and programs coordinator for most international and local NGOs providing services to the population. Now it is important that these women be supported so that they can enhance their skills and confidence to integrate the business and public sector. So that they can better join forces to claim their rights and space in the reconstruction debates. They should stop acting in the shadow and have their voice heard at all levels and tables of what we should not be called reconstruction process, but national building effort. Through a public-private partnership, Family Democracy, as joint forces with other network and federation of women organizations, in bringing together women's association from throughout the country, including all municipalities and rural communities, to launch a concerted effort to support women's full participation in the national building process. This initiative is under the leadership of the Ministry of Women Affairs and the caucus of Asian women parliamentarians is articulated in the slogan from Se Potomita Reconstruction Haiti, woman of the Potomita of the constitution of Haiti. It is financed by the Norway government and supported by the minister. And we are really proud and happy to have our new minister of women affairs. She's a strong business woman, winning the largest business support association of Haiti, 12,000 micro and small entrepreneurs. And I can tell you that's what we're dreaming, leaving the private sector, leaving the NGO to enter the public sector to make change. Through this initiative, a process of consultation has been initiated at the national level through the convening of 350 focus groups that are bringing together over 5,000 women. These focus groups are carried out in November, December this year throughout the country in over 100 municipalities and rural communities. They will facilitate a dialogue around women's concern and priorities and concrete action that must be taken to address them. In the month of January and February of 2012, the result of this focus group will feed discussion and facilitate setting of women key priorities in a regional forum organized in the 10th geographic department. This regional forum will conduct to a national discussion in March 2012, bringing together about 40 delegates representing all departments. Results from the local and regional consultation will facilitate the drafting of key elements of Asian women platform for action for national building. With this earthquake, we have realized we are not by ourselves on our small island with the deer that there is a wall and we have to take account that we are living in a global world. So that's why to better refine the platform and extend consultation, the Ministry of Women Affairs and the caucus of Asian women parliamentarians will convene women leaders from countries who have experienced challenging situate conflicts and who have achieved peace and overseen difficult process of reconstruction. These leaders from countries such as Wanda, Northern Ireland, Guatemala, Benin and Liberia will share their experiences including best practice and lesson learns with Asian women leaders. This exercise linking the local to the global will facilitate the refinement and adoption of a national women platform for action with 10 key points that will serve as a compass for the participation of Asian women in the national building process. This platform will be translated into a legislative agenda by the caucus of Asian women parliamentarians. It will also serve as an advocacy tool in favor of a national budget that adequately responds to the needs of Asian women and those of their communities. This initiative is supported by international women leaders and celebrities like Maria Bello and by the organization Vital Voices Global Partnership. It stands beyond Haiti's borders and is becoming a global movement in favor of Asian women full participation in the national building process. We're inviting you to join this movement. Today, 22 months after the January 12 earthquake, there is a new disposition towards change. President Michel Martelly, a singer with no political background, has been elected with 67 of votes because of this new claim for change. Building the country is an enormous challenge which requires transformational leadership. The building of our nation is not about buildings, construction code, projects or money. It's about vision, unity of purpose and power to plan and control what the future Haiti will be and serve. Only women can be drivers of change and of this unity of purpose for the innocence of Haiti. It's time to have the voices of women on the ground heard and identify concrete strategies and ways to tap into their resourcefulness to address community needs throughout the nation building process. We women leaders from the NGO cannot be their voices. Their true voices is their elected representative in local governments and parliament. Their true voice is Senator Edmund Bosile, stand up Edmund. To introduce to the audience Senator Bosile, the first Asian woman democratically elected as president of a political party. She's not the daughter, she's not the wife, she's not the political leader, she's herself a strong leader and she's paving the way for many, many more women. The true voice of Haiti, the Haitian woman is the Haitian woman parliamentarian caucus which needs the full support of the US Institute of Peace, of vital voices of digital democracy and other US public and private institutions involved or interested in Haiti. The true voice is this caucus which will be reinforced by capable women from different departments running for senatorial election next spring. Their true voice will be women such as Barbara Guillaume, Barbara stand up. Who is also in this room, running for mayor next local election for the most challenging the borough of Haiti, Cité Soleil. She will win. This woman candidate for Senate and mayor will be one voice. They will campaign under the woman national platform for action or for national building. The investiture of more women in Senate and a critical mass of women in local government will allow the woman to collectively question the rules of the political game, to set new rules and more transparent procedures, to influence legislative and local agendas in favor of social and economic transformation responsive to women's children and community needs. People needs at urban and rural level will be addressed with more women in public decision making position. Women equal participation in public life will not only facilitate women direct engagement in public decision making but ensure that the needs of all segment of the population are taken into account through the implementation of equitable and just policies through the nation building. This is not a dream. It's a reality. And all of you in this room should participate to this initiative. Being elected in Haiti, it's a big, big challenge. And this woman, I know the challenge that they are going to face. We have been supporting women candidate for the last two election. It's tough. Women tend to be less corrupted. We don't know any woman in Haiti running for candidate that has been supported by drug money. We know until it's proved that many parliamentarians were involved in drug and drug money had held them being re-elected. And we know that the US knows more about this than us because we are not really sophisticated in terms of, you know, investigation and all those stuff. So we can't find again this money. But we have a strong diaspora. We have women all over the country. We have you NGOs working in Haiti, those going to Haiti soon. We will need not only your prayers, your moral support, but your money. Because this woman, if we want this country to change, and we have been talking to President Martelli about this, he understands that we need change in the country. And we should be the agents that those women should be elected. So we will be through digital democracy working to reach you because we don't know how to use those things, those tools. They are too sophisticated for us. So they will help us. So we are counting on all of you. And also we are counting on you from the US piece of justice that are going to meet with Congress today. And to talk about this effort that the women of Haiti are doing. We will be meeting this afternoon with Senator Nelson, Senator Landrieu. So we need to bring the world that women has to be in next Senate, in Parliament, and also in local governments.  And I want to begin, of course, at going, my fellow panelists, by thanking USIP for their real vision and leadership and belief in Haitian women. It's been really powerful to be in partnership with USIP over the past year. It's really been an honor. I want to begin with a story. Hopefully most of you got to see the photos that were outside taken by some of the Haitian women that I've been blessed enough to work with over the past year. And we first did a photo training in April 2010. So just a few months after the earthquake and digital democracy had been doing other work in Haiti before the earthquake. But we really started working with women specifically in the spring, really in response to what has already been described, the lack of women's voices in the formal reconstruction process. And when we started the program, there were 13 women, and we started by asking them, how many of you have taken a picture before? Only two of them had ever taken a picture before, one of which only on their cell phone. So when you first encounter a new technology, it seems sophisticated, it seems difficult. You're not sure how to use it, but pretty quickly they learned, of course, and they were awesome. They took really powerful photos, some of the photos that are out there, the one of the women with the buckets around her. That was taken about five hours after that particular photographer had learned how to use a camera for the first time. It's a photo that's as strong as any that have come out of post-Earthquake Haiti by the professional journalists who came down. And one of the things we did is we asked the women, starting to get them warmed up, we asked them, can you describe, pick three words to describe Haitian women? And they went around. And almost all of the women we were working with are self-identified victims of sexual violence, either during political attacks before or some of them had even been attacked in the camps, you know, post-Earthquake. But the words that they said, and this is echoing themes that have already been said, they were not words of passive victims. They were strong, they said strong, fierce, proud, able to survive many sufferings, mothers, leaders. And it was just so affirming to hear all of that. And I think that's really reflected in the photos that, again, show a level of intimacy and show the reality on the ground in a way that no outsider ever can, no matter how good their camera is, no matter how many times they've spent, you know, no matter how many times they've spent time in camps and so on. It's really different when you see it actually from people who live in the community themselves. So, as I said, we know we've been working with USIP over the past year and it's really been such an honor. We first had a partnership last fall where we worked with some of the women's groups that we've been working with since the spring before that. And we looked at what was the prevalence of violence in their communities, the lead up to the elections. And we really focused on the ways that technology tools like mobile phones and also online reporting could enable them to tell the story of the reality that was happening in their camps.  They recorded the highest number of rapes last year in the six weeks leading up to the election. I don't know if that's correlation, causation, you know, we could probably have a much longer conversation about that, but it's very real that as, you know, the political situation was heating up, women were being incredibly targeted and their security really put them at risk. So when we talked about the elections and what that meant for them, they talked so much about fear of going to the polls, of leaving their children behind. Of what it would mean to actually wait in the polls all day to not knowing where their polling station was. So there's some, you know, very concrete challenges that women face just for the most basic level of political participation, which is voting itself. One of the impacts of that initial training was we found that they really had a lot they wanted to say. They had very specific and often diverse opinions about the political process around what was happening in their lives, around violence in their community. And one of the unattended consequences was that they really wanted to have their voice heard beyond our initial project. And we started a blog and it's called Fan Parley, which is Women Speak in Creole, the address is fanparley.blogspot.com. And they started writing about their experiences and starting posting photos that they were taking. And some of the most incredible post-election coverage that I read actually came from the women we work with. You know, they're very real, raw experiences. There's a very powerful blog post that came up during the post-election violence period that one of the women talked about just how women once again were bearing the brunt of the violence that was happening in their community. The women we work with are grassroots women. They are mostly uneducated, low levels of literacy. They are yet, despite that, incredible leaders in their community. They provide services, psychosocial support. They provide medical and legal accompaniment to women who have been raped or assaulted. And they also are really advocating for changes in their community. They're participating in various ways, organizing marches, organizing sit-ins. And the question we really asked ourselves along the process as we evolved from just working with photography was, okay, how are they using tools already? Because most of them do have mobile phones and they find ways to charge them. How can we use the tools that they're already using to take their work up a notch? The power of technology is manyfold, but it includes the power to amplify, the power to reach more people, to make workflows more efficient, to actually digitize information and therefore be able to analyze it better. And so one of the first things after the blog was we started looking at cell phones and started using, helping them use free open-source tools like Frontline SMS, which allows you to send multiple text messages to people. So our partners started using Frontline SMS to actually organize and to reach more women and to arrange for meetings and to remind women when there were going to be follow-up psychosocial support groups and so on. And then one of the major issues that has really been a challenge, I think, when it's come to the question of violence against women in Haiti, is a lack of fully representational data. And so we worked on a pilot project with KofaViv to take all the data that they've been recording and actually start to digitize it. So we built a digital database that's now become an information management system and really built their capacity to take the information they were already gathering about where victims had been attacked, about whether or not they were getting support, about kind of the nature of the incidents. And a lot of this information has now been used in all the international reports that have come out, including the one from Human Rights Watch that is on the table outside. And this database process has been really incredible because we've seen how they've taken information that they already had but when it's all on paper and it's all separate, you have all these ideas in your head but you're not able to see the patterns. Well digitizing the data, beginning to analyze it, creating graphs, beginning to share that with their domestic and international partners, they've been able to see trends, they've been able to figure out how to ask better questions and how to then better respond to the problems that they're seeing. One of the major issues is how many women who do get attacked and are experiencing violence, how little they know where to get support. There are many clinics, there are many women's centers, but they don't always know where they are, how to get to them. So another project that's come through our work that was really requested by our partners and we've worked with them to build is the first free rape response hotline in the country. The number is 572, it's a free code provided by the two major mobile providers, DigiSell and Voila, and any woman can call 572 and say what has happened to her and get connected to the nearest medical support that she can get. It shows in number 572 because I really wanted to highlight 72 hours. 72 hours, if a woman who has been attacked is able to seek medical help within those 72 hours can really be preventative, help prevent transmission of sexually transmitted diseases, help prevent unwanted pregnancy and really get her the medical support she needs if she does choose to pursue legal justice and so on. That call center was launched this August by our partner Kofa Vive and it started off by they were just sharing it amongst their partners and with an atresa network and as they've worked through what it's like to really be answering these calls and so on the past few weeks they've gone on national radio and television to really broadcast the call center and they've had a huge spike in the number of calls. Many of them are just people who are seeking information, they haven't necessarily been attacked or attacked recently but they want to know more about the support and what are the support networks they can tap into. I think for a country where there is no 911, where there is no really systemic infrastructure for dealing with this it provides a really inspiring example of how women when organized and when they have the right resources like access to the mobile providers to get their free code are able to really band together and provide services that are incredibly needed. So social media like the blog has also, we've really seen a huge impact just on the level of confidence and the ability to feel connected to others. It can be very lonely to feel like you're still living in a camp, you don't have many services, feels sometimes like the world has forgotten them. So seeing women post blogs or even actually use Twitter and get responses from an international community is incredibly empowering. I mean think about yourselves.  Think what that's like for women who have never been on a computer before, who have never been online before, who never had email before. All of a sudden take a leap, work really hard to write something, put it online even if it's just a paragraph and get positive response from an international community. It's been just the way their faces light up and the power they see in the ability for their photos and their words to touch other people. It's been really powerful. One story that I think is worth sharing. Last fall about three weeks after we've done the initial citizen reporting training pre-elections. One of the young women who we work with who herself had been a victim of rape a couple of years ago and therefore is part of these grassroots networks, she came into one of the women's center with her cousin's daughter who was five years old and that young child had been raped by the next door neighbor in the tent camp where they lived. She was devastated because she knew of course that this was happening but of course when it happens to a relative that you care about and somebody so young it's just very hard to deal with. So she brought her to Kofa Beef Space. They did the intake process to get all the information and find out whether or not the family wanted to pursue legal justice and so on. And this young woman, Elmita, she came to my colleague Emily Reiser and she said, I am just so sad, I don't know what to do but I think I want to write a blog post about it. So Emily sat down and helped her write a blog post about this young girl who had been raped and what that meant to her and how sad it was and put it up on the blog. It got a lot of positive response. Of course a lot of people were horrified. It encouraged actually Google to donate some mobile phones to the women that we work with and most of all it gave Elmita a lot of confidence and it made her feel it didn't, of course, how could it? It didn't take away the pain of what had happened but it helped her feel like she could do something positive. So Elmita is now one of the women who actually works on the database and is entering this information and is really trying to harness this information to advocate for change. As I said, the information from the database is being used and shared with a lot of really prominent influential organizations is being shared with the government, really trying to put in place systems. The government itself is working on updating their systems, updating the national database for records of gender-based violence and so on. Last Friday was International Day to End Violence Against Women and women all across Haiti were organized around that and many of our grassroots partners participated in marches and porta prints and there was a photo exhibit actually a little bit bigger than the one that you saw outside and that photo exhibit was visited by members of the international community. It was visited by members of Parliament, Haitian Parliament, by the UN Police, UNHCR, the National Police, representatives from the Ministry of Public Health, the Canadian Embassy, many, many grassroots women who live in the camps themselves as well as judges and national TV. You know, photos themselves are just a starting point for a conversation but again when we talk about voice and we think about whose reality is being seen, it's a really powerful first step. Another thing that I think has been really inspiring has been the role of women peace builders to actually create work with male allies. So I want to end with this story. So Kofa Beef has actually worked with men's groups and found male allies in the camps, brothers, husbands, nephews, just neighbors who care about women, who love the women in their lives and who are really horrified by all of the violence that has been happening. And so they've actually organized these groups of male allies who have been armed with mobile phones and flashlights and they go around in two different camps and they spend time actually talking to the women and men in the camps trying to do education for other men, try to get other men onto the cause of we're here, you know, we're going to help, like we're going to work in tandem with women to protect them. They actually wear the name of the logo of the women's group on their shirts and then they also do accompaniment at night. So if women want to go to the bathroom it's something that has unfortunately become really dangerous. They'll do that. And they've actually seen the number of rapes go down in the two specific camps that they work. And I think that's really powerful and I think, you know, this event is so important in highlighting the role of women. But of course part of that question is how do men and women actually work together in an equal way to address these challenges. So I'll end my remarks there and really thank you again for the opportunity to speak. I'd like to thank our last two speakers. Our next speaker is Congresswoman Donna Edwards, who actually is Bob Aguayo's Congresswoman from Maryland. The Congresswoman is en route. She had an earlier event this morning. And so when she gets here she'll come in, we'll introduce her and she'll speak to us. In the interim we have a few minutes and so I'm going to turn the program over to Kathleen and we'll invite your questions. Thank you very much, Bob. And I also want to thank each of our speakers. Each of you offered a different perspective and very inspirational in the midst of very difficult times. I am actually going to take the initiative here and ask the first question and then we will open it up if you don't mind. The U.S. Institute of Peace has been running a working group on lessons learned on women's programming in Afghanistan and Iraq. We have about seven years now of lessons learned. And four of the lessons learned I wanted to ask your comments on. One is to, of course, understand the diversity of women. And I think, Michelle, you brought out this rural, urban tension. And I'd like it if you could just speak to what that is and if you could give us some more concrete examples. The second lesson learned is about the youth voice that we've talked about women and young women. Is there a youth voice here, a united youth voice? Emily brought forward the issue of man. This has become a number one lesson learned out of Afghanistan and Iraq that it is going to be very difficult to make these changes without men. How do you bring men into being champions of these issues? And finally, Danielle, the voice of the religious leaders. What role do they play in one, helping to end gender-based violence and two, the empowerment of women? So I'm going to ask Michelle first. About the gap between urban and rural women. I think that gap reflects a larger gap between urban communities and rural communities in Haiti, men and women. And I think it has plagued us for our 200-year history. Rural women being at the bottom of the ladder and having more than any other group the ability to express themselves, the ability to actually participate in the community's life. Most of them are market women. They play a role in agriculture. But that role is undervalued and they still have the responsibilities that go with being a woman, motherhood, taking care of children. And we have been dealing with that issue of inequality between the rural world and the urban world for decades. And right now, I think women suffer the brunt of it. And I don't know if I can make a long story short. I think that's what I would say. Thank you. Emily? I think the question of youth voice is a really powerful and important one. And I really am not an expert, but I will say that through our work we've had the chance, including working with many, many young women who are part of the grassroots groups and who often take to the technology first and are really the most excited about it and really embrace it. And we've also had the opportunity to work with many other groups of young people who are working on changing their community from mapping the camps to producing citizen journalism. And at an event that happened this spring, a bar camp, which is kind of a technology conference, there were many young men and the young women that we brought to the table. And it was very cool to see them operating together. I'm not sure that there's a unified youth voice yet, but I think it would be powerful if there were one. In terms of bringing men into it, absolutely. And I think I've just been so inspired. The most recent time I was in Haiti, thanks to U.S. Institute of Peace and Support, as we were leaving, there were two older women leaders of, you know, grassroots leaders, and they were talking to 25 or so members of this men's allies group. And how often in any setting, anywhere in the world, do you see young men kind of between the ages of 18 and 25, kind of tough, you know, like, they're very tough. And just listening in total rapture to a 50-some-year-old woman who's speaking so powerfully, and they're just like totally, like, everywhere they're hanging out, everywhere they could have repeated back exactly what she said. And that was powerful to see. And I think that subverts our ideas about hierarchy and gender dynamics and so on. So that power exists, but how do you tap into it? I think it's really encouraging that further. Thank you. I'm curious to hear what you would say. For the talk about the role of women's and female senator. So we have a real actor there. So I will turn the microphone to Edmund and tell about the role. And we'll have our ambassador to translate for us. You can translate for Edmund. Edmund is the role of the female senator. And especially on the issue of violence, it's about women. That's it, right? That's it. Hello. Richard, can you translate for me? Richard, can you translate for me? I thank you. You take another microphone. I thank you. Thank you, Daniel, for giving me the opportunity to at least take the floor. And the question that was asked about the role of the senator, the role that was chosen in relation to violence, in terms of form or in terms of violence in the court, it led me to address some people in two minutes to answer me. I would like to ask a question in another context. This is all informal. She's going to put the question into context, in a larger context. She didn't expect to speak this morning. She said, If I'm going to speak of peace and violence, I have to look at the context, the economic context of the country and take all that into consideration. If I'm going to look at Brazil, the United States and Mexico and look at the violence there, then I also have to look at the violence in Haiti. If we're looking at one policeman for every thousand people, is violence really the problem? To speak of violence in Haiti, you have to speak of poverty. What role can I play as a parliamentarian when we're talking about violence? In that case, we're not special. I can play the same role as any parliamentarian around the world. If you're a parliamentarian like me, you're asked to say that we need the help given in Haiti to be given with the heart. The support that comes in Haiti. We should all be implicated in the problems that are being faced in Haiti. I can give many examples. I'm trying. We have to put the parliamentarians in the budget so that we can address these problems. It has to be addressed by us, but we have to take an official approach to it where there's a budget allotted for it and then we can deal with it. We have to put the budget in the budget so that we can address these problems. It has to be addressed by us, but we have to take an official approach to it where there's a budget allotted for it and then we can therefore address these problems. If we fight poverty, we can fight violence. If we fight the exclusion of women, then we can fight violence. For the population, for the communities, and for the people to work for the king, it will also help to fight violence. When we are in a country where you take the word to denounce things and we ask you for help, when you take the voice, when you speak as a parliamentarian, you're speaking for a country, when they tell you you speak too much, sometimes the internationals can tell you that you speak too much also. It's not easy. Senator and also thank you Richard Morse, special assistant to President Martelli. Thank you. I think on that note, Bob, did you want to weigh in here on any of these most recent comments before I open it up to the audience? Okay, something I wanted to mention was this issue of the youth voice, which I think is incredibly important. Obviously Haiti has a very young population. I think it's something like 70% of the population's 29 years are younger and that population has grown up in a time of instability and disappointment and unfulfilled expectations. But yet I think there's tremendous hope in that segment of the population. And I'll harken back to something I know Richard didn't know a lot about this as a musician about three years ago when there was a terrible automobile accident, three or four members of Haiti's most popular, kind of if we could say rap group, the barricade crew were killed in that. And one of the things that I've been turned on to increasingly in Haiti by cab drivers and porters and anybody else I can talk to is the importance of listening to that music and it gives you some sense and understanding of the pathos and frustration and aspirations of young people. And when that, when those musicians died, there was a almost spontaneous memorial service that was occurred on the Chambars. And as I recall something like 100,000 or so people assembled in peace and in quiet to not just to rever their fallen heroes but to kind of show their presence and to feel that they were being neglected, they were being neglected by the rest of the population. So it's incredibly important I think to focus on the youth issue it encompasses both men and women of course but also to realize that young people need to dream, young people need to have aspirations and in Haiti these days that's something that is a very difficult commodity and is something that needs a tremendous amount of attention. Thank you Bob. I think Barbara you have something to say on this as well. If you want to take the microphone right there. Participation of the youth. Good morning. I'm going to express myself by a song. I'm going to express myself. I'm going to express myself. I'm going to express myself. I don't know how to introduce myself but I will do that. If you want to do a line by line I will help you with it but we are women who have resistance and who have courage. I think that's basically what she's saying in spite of it all. Thank you Barbara. On that note, we're going to open it up. Questions, comments from the audience. If you could please, there are microphones on both sides. And if you could find a microphone and very briefly introduce yourself. And even more briefly, your comment or question. I know we have a lot of people here who have stories as well. Thank you so much. Yes, thank you so much. My name is Elise Young and I work with Action Aid. And we have an office in Haiti for 14 years and are supporting a land and housing rights movement with a platform called Génangé that works with among other women's groups, Conafap, the largest national group of women producers, Peasant Movement and Fondacité. And I had a question for Madame Saint-Lôte. So this national women's platform for action. Of course, Madame Montas had mentioned this divide between rural and urban populations in the country. And we've definitely seen that working on land and housing rights with some of the women's peasant movements throughout the country who I think are very eager to be involved with some of the national decision making. Some plans coming out of the Ministry of Women's Affairs and they're having trouble finding the access points like for the entire development process. So I just wanted to see if you have advice for women's movements who are interested in getting involved with the national women's platform for action, how they might go about that, especially if perhaps they're more rurally associated. Thank you. And I'm going to just take one more question and then give you a moment to think and again your question. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for your presentations. My name is Rosemary Seguero. I'm the president of Hope for Tomorrow, our organization focused on job creation through entrepreneurship. And I just want to say thank to God for seeing all Ahiti women, most of the Ahiti and women. When Ahiti earthquake happened in Ahiti, we worked day and night at the embassy, food shop, doing packing things to go to Ahiti. What I want to say that women all over the world, I come from Kenya, women all over the world are the same and you don't have to be a professional to know women issues and women needs. So if all women here in the United States, Africa, everywhere, they are the same. If we unite, women are strong, especially African black women and everybody. We can do a lot. And I think what you are doing in Ahiti is so great. We used our organization with other organizations to create funds to help Ahiti. So what you have done and bringing us together here is very, very important thanks to the Institute of Peace. I have always attended the event here, especially also the young lady with the democracy, thank you for all that you are doing. And through today and maybe from today, we still want to collaborate. I'm also an entrepreneur, a woman business so and an unprofit. Women can develop their own countries through business and what we are doing. Thank you so much and God bless you all. Much as well. And we'll take one more question before we bring it back to the panel and then we'll take the other two. Hi, my name is Yunkyung Shin. I'm from South Korea, the master's student in Iwa Women's University. And I learned from Daniel that having we learned that financing development program is very critical and important to do all this very important gender based initiatives. So I was just wondering, have you ever seen, to open to all the panels, have you ever seen the non-traditional donors, how they sort of provide a gender focused aid in their programs or profiles and especially the donors that are not inside of OECD development system committees. So how they integrate their aid policies for gender equality. So that was my question, especially in the context of the Haiti. Thank you. Thank you. And I think we have one more question. So I'm going to. My name is Pat McCartle. I'm a retired Foreign Service Officer and a volunteer with Solar Cookers International. One thing that hasn't been discussed this morning is cooking, which is something very important to Haitian women. And I know that charcoal is the main fuel right now. But Haiti has abundant sunshine, a lot of sunshine. My organization and others have introduced solar cooking into Haiti in a small way, but it's all private funding. I understand the US government's about to fund a large introduction of LPG gas into Haiti. And I'm just wondering how you see Haitian families affording over the long-term bottle gas every month. And if you have any comments on why we shouldn't exploit more Haiti's most abundant resource, which is sunshine. Thank you. Okay. I'm going to bring it back to the panel. And then I see some other Q&A, possibly opportunities. So Daniel, would you like to take the lead? Yes. I want to answer to Action Ed. For this platform, we have a specific methodology that we are following so that we can have some results. As I said, we're going to have... We are... The focus group are happening right now. We're going to have 350 focus groups with like 12 to 15 women in each focus group. And there will be a lot of women, mostly from the rural areas and let's say underserved community. But at the end of December, and that's where we need you, we will be really using SMS just to confirm what has been discussed in the focus group. You know, reflect the whole population. Not only women, men, women and children and the youth, but focusing on women issues and community issues. And for the National Forum, we will have a broad coverage of community ratios, ratios with big coverage. So that's why we're not talking about a project. It's an initiative which will tend to be like a movement. And having the parliamentarians involved, it's really the best way to be able to touch the rural remote communities because they are the real voices of the people, because they are elected. We are not talking about the one that are funded by drugs money. We are talking about women like in one. We are talking about women like Barbara. So that's why we really think that we should build institutions. NGO can't build this country. They can't help. We have to work with political parties. We have to go with parliament. We have to go with the women affairs ministry so that we can really reach the communities all over the countries. And using the media, it's the really, really important tool that we have. That's the only way, you know, 90% of Asian population have a radio at home. Michelle or Emily, would you like to weigh in on that? Or on non-traditional donors? I don't have enough information on the issue. Non-traditional donors, how much impact do they have? And who do they really reach? There is one big problem about everything we have been talking about this morning. It's a lack of data, of reliable data about women participation, about violence. You know, I think something was said earlier. I mean, violence is not when they talk about Haiti, they see violence. But when we take Haiti in the context of the continent, Haiti is certainly not the most violent country in the whole area. So I think the lack of data is one of the main problems we have in dealing with whether it is international aid, whether it is the problems that women are confronting. How are we going to get that data is difficult. In the case of Haiti, it's not just about women. We just are lacking data on a number of issues and problems. And we cannot really pick up the challenges and face them if we don't have that data. Maybe Daniel has some more on this. As you said, there is no data. But talking about non-traditional donors, I would like to talk about the experience that we had after the earthquake. Our organization is 10 years old. We have been supported by the IDB, the UACID, European Community, and different donors in the private sector. But after the earthquake, we are almost closing our doors because we couldn't pay our staff. And Actress Maria Bello, a friend from before the earthquake, so she had a designer make a pendant and raise money for us. It was nothing. It was like $40,000, $45,000, but I can tell you it was like $450,000 at this moment. And I see what her team and her are realizing at Cité Soleil in what Jérémie, where no NGO want to be because of the violence. Now, Alida, you may talk about what you're doing. It's non-traditional donors' money. Tell about what you... You can talk better than I. Yeah, there's a microphone there. She doesn't need translation. She's Haitian. Yeah, I'm the white Haitian down in Cité Soleil. That's what my girls always say. I'm Alida Frischman. I'm the executive director of We Advance. We did start this organization after the earthquake. It is 100% Haitian, except for me. We have four co-founders and a board of executives that are all Haitian women. We run our clinic on less than well under $20,000 a month. We employ about 20 Haitians. We see about 150 people a day in our medical clinic. We have over 125 local community people that are in our English class. We see about 100 to 150 kids a day in our activities and also in our safe spaces. And we have a number of outreach organizations and grassroots movements from women's organizations and teaching them how to organize and what a grassroots is to the empowerment programs where we are teaching kids, women and children about first aid techniques all the way through to human rights. So we're out there and teaching these programs and I'm sorry I'm shivering. It's freezing. I used to hate it so much. And I think we might just get only one more question in. And I believe you are here and then you and then we'll go that way. But I do believe the Congresswoman is arriving shortly. So we might not get to the answers at this part of the program, but we will reconvene the panel after the Congresswoman speaks. Please, briefly. Hello, my name is Alexandra Niesle and I work for the Inter-American Development Bank. We've addressed the issue of data a little bit, but I think we need to go a little bit beyond looking at monitoring and evaluation, which is often lacking. I mean there are reports, there is things coming out, but I would like to know from all of you and particularly obviously Emily is taking monitoring evaluation probably to a different level, to a digital level, how can we make it better and how can we involve the local actors in the monitoring evaluation to show, to showcase what we're doing, but also to address the issues of lessons learned, to see how can we make it better in the future. That would be my question. Thank you. Next question. Okay. This is sort of related for Ms. Jacobi. Your name, please, sir. Oh, Ken Meyer-Cord. Your story about how few ladies had ever taken a picture suggests access to digital technology and Haiti is very limited. Doesn't that make digital democracy inherently elitist? Okay. Next question. We're going to keep moving the questions and then open it up to the panel. Bonjour. If there are any previews, my question is two and I really would like a direct answer on this instead of it being piled up, because sometimes in piling up the questions we don't get a real detailed response from the panelists. One is what with regard to the hello, the women legislators and Madame Senlo, Madame Montas and others, have any of you been specifically contacted and inquired and provided in detail what you would recommend to international donors who disproportionately support Haiti? What exactly you would recommend for the improved governance of all of Haiti? And I would really like it if you could share that with us, because part of the challenge is that people say we should talk to the women, we should involve them, but we never really have any evidence that people are actually taking your suggestions and incorporating them into their plans. So if the senator and the women in authority in Haiti could answer that, that would be great. And in answering, can you please give some recommendations to frustrated members of the Haitian diaspora who want to see how they can be helpful but are feeling frustrated both by actors here as well as actors in Haiti. Thank you. Thank you very much. And we welcome back to your question. We have our congresswoman who has arrived and we are going to shift the program and then we will come back together as a panel. Thank you all for the very good questions and we have them here in front of us. Bob, I'm going to turn it back over to you. Thanks very much. I have a weather report for you. I hope you all brought your umbrellas. It's raining very heavily outside and we're very grateful to Congresswoman Edwards for having swam through the rain to get here this morning to be with us. I'd like to introduce to you the President of the United States Institute of Peace, Dr. Richard Solomon. Not sure I deserve any particular clap but thank you for your welcome, but it's my honor to say a few words about the work of the Institute on Haiti and to welcome our honored guest. We're one of the few institutions and in fact Bob Perito tells me just about the only one that has a continuing, if you like, watching brief and range of activities on the Haiti situation. The powerful images we saw on television after the earthquake, of course, helped to mobilize everybody's concern and we were fortunate that Bob, given his expertise and his constant involvement on issues related to Haiti, was able to help the U.S. Navy as it mobilized relief supplies and otherwise tried to help deal with the aftermath. Of the earthquake. And of course the other aspect of our work is reflected in the panel discussion and the work here today. Kathleen Keynes, who leads our work on gender issues and peace building, has I think helped to keep everyone focused on this set of issues. Indeed, she met with Congresswoman Edwards up on the Hill not too long ago. They were talking about issues of how we could help the women in Afghanistan contribute to stabilizing that very difficult situation. But let me say a few words about Congresswoman Edwards. She's been long a real activist on issues of gender issues, on peace building activities. Before joining Congress, she was the Executive Director of the ARCA Foundation, which is a grant-making institution that supports issues related to social activism, human rights development. And in Congress, she has been particularly active on women's issues. She was a leader in the effort to get the 1994 act on violence against women passed by President Clinton and is active with the Tom Lantros Human Rights Caucus. So she brings a lot of expertise and activism to her work on this range of issues that we'll be talking about today. So on behalf of the Institute and our partner Vital Voices, I'm really very pleased that Congresswoman Edwards could be with us today. Please. Thank you very much, Ambassador Solomon. And it's actually really wonderful to be here at the U.S. Institute for Peace and, of course, the work that I've known that the Institute has done for many years in my days at ARCA and before. And it's a really delight to be able to celebrate that with you here today. And I'm particularly grateful to be here also with my good friends from Vital Voices. When I was at the ARCA Foundation, I think we made one of the first Foundation grants to Vital Voices as it was starting up, supporting the investment in women that I think is really important all over the world.  They invest in their families. They build nations. But very often, we haven't done that in a way that makes sense and that proves the words of what that investment can mean.  Not to be disparaging, but I do think that we give a lot of lip service. I could hear some of that from the comments as I came in about the importance of investing in women and the importance of women in Haiti, but we haven't really put the meat to that bone. We haven't made certain that those investments are done in a kind of way that really will help the... help Haitian women to be a real part of rebuilding Haiti so that it thrives and survives in the 21st century. I had the privilege of being able to travel to Haiti when I first came into the Congress after Haiti had been hit by four horrific hurricanes and devastated that devastation on top of prior devastation. And then the earthquake came and I visited Haiti again and stood in the Congress to argue and to discuss with our colleagues of the importance of making a real investment in Haiti because unlike Afghanistan and other places around the world, which, you know, I certainly agree that we need to invest in peacebuilding, Haiti is in this hemisphere. And I think that we prove something to ourselves and to the rest of the world when we have a thriving Haiti that survives in our own hemisphere. And I think women are so much a part of that. I mean, you have only to travel as many of you have as I have to Haiti and you talk to women and the women of Haiti know the kinds of investments that need to be made in health, in education and the general welfare in the economy. Women understand that but we have to come together both here in the United States and I think as leaders with our international partners to make those investments come to life. Also investing in the political life of women in Haiti and most especially the political life of the women of Haiti. When I think about the devastation that occurred after the earthquake I think for so many of us it meant also an opportunity tragedy but an opportunity to rethink how it is that we can help Haiti recover and build in this new century. And unfortunately as has happened in the past our attention on Haiti has waxed and waned and this has been the story of the United States relationship with Haiti for so long. I think that we have to change that story. We have to change that story by making sure that when we're paying attention to what happens in individual communities in Haiti that both in terms of investing in women's ability to participate in the political process that they also have to be able to do that safely. To participate in their communities they have to be able to do that safely. In part of my interest it isn't just a foreign interest to me but my interest in the women of Haiti actually comes from women who live in the fourth congressional district in Maryland the women who form the Haitian diaspora who live in Silver Spring and Gaithersburg and all throughout Prince George's County and their voices have been heard by members of Congress like me who ordinarily on the face of it would not have to take an interest in what happens with the women in Haiti. I think about the women who are members of a church in downtown Silver Spring who came to me and said please what is it that you can do? What is it that you how is it that you can get your colleagues in the Congress to understand what it is that we need to do from a development and economic development perspective to assist women in thriving and thriving in our home country and they weren't talking about what it is that we could give they were talking about an investment that could be made in the women of Haiti that would allow them to determine for themselves their political economic and health future and so that's what I'd like to share with you today I think that for certain when women are armed with both information and resources they can figure out the things to do for themselves I mean I look I when I visited Haiti this last this last time I met with women who are doing they're doing work on anti-violence against women they're doing work to help surviving children in in orphanages they're doing work to help build their economic future that work is not foreign to them but they can't do it all by them all by themselves and they have to know that we're all prepared to invest in in the kinds of democratic institutions that will allow them to survive and to and to thrive and we know that you know these that the emergencies that occur sometimes are really rooted in in gender-based violence in Haiti but also around the world and so we can't separate those things that are such a presence in women's lives from what it takes to invest in what will help them help them to survive in the the wake of the the earthquake we know that women in faith faced really difficult circumstances that have been in existence for a long time but have been exacerbated by the tragedy by the disaster and by a lack of aid that comes in the most useful way when I visited one encampment outside just outside of Port-au-Prince and when I talked to I remember speaking with a young mother and she had two of her children but she had been separated from one of her children she had skills that she could use perhaps to earn a living but had nowhere to get to and to buy equipment in order to in order to do that and when when we asked and I was with our with congressman Hoyer with our then majority whip at the at the time and when we asked her what it is that she needed she didn't say to us that what she needed was for us to just give her something what she said is that she knows how to take care of her children she knows how to take care of her family she wants to work to do that and she wants to know that there are people in government in her own government who understand who are there and who understand her needs but she needed us to know that as well because and it was amazing because it was a pride about her that all of us understand in our own in our own lives and not because we wanted somebody just to give us something but because we knew we had the capacity within ourselves to make our lives better for our our children very recently the UN special rapporteur on violence against women said if we were to secure women's rights and their freedom for violence it's imperative that we adopt an integrated human rights perspective perspective that stresses the equal importance of sibling political rights and economic and social rights and unless women can develop their capabilities and achieve economic independence the human rights they are promised will not be realized this is especially true in Haiti given its violence and violence plagued history we also know that violence in some ways is might be thought of as inevitable we have to ensure that the institutions on the ground have the capacity to deal with that violence and as the government continues to deal with overwhelming challenges of rebuilding an economy and cholera outbreak and other kinds of horrific health outcomes it's really important for us to look at this transition opportunity that we have to rethink the lives of women and girls in Haiti it is perhaps a moment that we could not have predicted several years ago but it really is an opportunity I often think though and especially in these times in the congress when we are almost every day arguing to gut every bit of foreign aid that we that we provide that we have a real challenge in this country of helping people to understand the value of that aid but we also have an obligation to make sure that that assistance goes out in a way that there is in fact value for it and we need people on the ground and especially in Haiti we need women on the ground validating that the way in which they've received assistance actually has value in their lives I'm not always certain that we can can point to that I think one of the concerns that I expressed when I last visited Haiti is that we as we've taken in so many other countries have taken this sort of programmatic or project-based approach rather than a programmatic based approach and so we fund a project here and we fund a project there and then we hope that somehow those projects all knit together to make a difference when in fact we have to take a much longer view making investments that may not actually pay off this year or next year but down the line because you've made those kinds of kinds of investments will I think with respect to to Haiti that is very often what we've done not just over a year or two it's what we've done over decades a hit or miss project here or there that doesn't quite knit into a fabric of a program that's going to make a difference in people's lives I think it is fundamentally a different way that you approach foreign assistance and obviously the constrained fiscal environment in which we are you know what is a in effect you know sort of a small country in Haiti becomes a much larger issue from a funding perspective but it's in our our our unique national interest and not just security interest but our national interest in this hemisphere to make those kinds of investments in communities and on on the ground that will pay off over the long over the long term I I think you know one of the other challenges that that we have is also hearing from the voices of women in communities too often and this this actually happened more most recently in some of our discussions some members of the Congressional Black Caucus who have long had an interest in Haiti in which we hear from an elite group but we don't really hear from people who are working in communities and our challenge if we really are to make people's lives help people enable people to to make their lives better then that communication has to go from what is it an elite level to what's on the ground and so I I want to just close by by sharing with you that I I believe that in this hemisphere Haiti and the circumstance of Haitian women in their political and economic participation cannot any longer be an afterthought it actually should be rather embarrassing for us here in the United States to have this you know this country that is so much a part of the fabric of who we are as Americans unable to survive in the way that it needs to in our own backyard and and it isn't just about the Fourth Congressional District of Maryland of which I am more day to day and deeply concerned and can hear from the voices of the Haitian diaspora a plea for us not to wax and wane anymore and I don't think that the women of Haiti can afford that I think that there's a lot that we can do in in building successful democratic institutions that embrace embrace all of the people of Haiti including its women I think that we can help build economic institutions and investments that don't continue to rape a country and leave it unholy I think that we can also invest in the future of the Haitian children who will be able to grow up in peace and without violence and disease and all of the things that have afflicted past generations and that we have to do that in a way that both meets community needs but also listens and responds to the voices on the ground and so I know that you're going to get back to your panel discussion but I want to thank you very much for welcoming me here and I say in some way I mean I suppose I should ask are any of you do any of you happen to live in the fourth congressional district in Maryland thank you and the reason I say that is because I think the final challenge for me as a member of Congress and I know that other members of Congress feel this too is that when we we require ourselves to think outside of our own worlds to think outside of our own borders of the counties in which we live that we are challenged by people who only want us to think about what is uniquely right at home and right in our neighborhoods that's not a world that we can afford it's actually not a world that Haiti can afford and and so I would ask all of us to go back to wherever it is from which we hail to ask us to think outside of our own borders and that will be the greatest success for the people of Haiti it will be a greater success for the women of Haiti thank you very much you have a few minutes I know that there are trying to get a signal we would love you to stay for a few minutes and join our discussion I actually would like to open up to the panelists in case they might have a comment or question to you Congresswoman and then open it up to the audience we have until 12 noon today yes Bob Congresswoman Edwards I'm actually one of your constituents so I thought you said something very important when you said that if people and women and specific have information and resources they can figure out what to do for themselves and I think sometimes there's a certain paternalism that is enacted in foreign aid as well I've been doing a lot of work lately on looking at cash transfer and conditional cash transfer programs they're very successful in Mexico Brazil and other countries in the world and I just wonder what you as a someone who holds the purse strings of the U.S. government in a sense what would you think of the idea of support of some sort of a cash transfer or conditional cash transfer program in Haiti which of course would benefit many many women and their families I think that you know part of the challenge of Haiti being so close and yet so far is that our history of experience with Haiti and with with various elements of various Haitian governments has not I think it would be a stretch to say that it's been a great success and I think as a result there's been a tremendous amount of skepticism about whether programs like that actually would work in Haiti I don't know that I share that skepticism I also believe in small I think that sometimes and this is particularly true in our foreign assistance that we think in you know such huge terms in terms of the amount of money that's needed just to get something going that it actually constrains our ability to do things that are small and meaningful and that can make a difference and and so you know it's been so for example investing in things like micro lending or even cash transfer is so far beyond the way that we traditionally think of our foreign assistance because we deal at some levels that are unimaginable for someone who lives in a small community in a small village but I think it's worth experimenting I think that we have to do some profoundly different things with the way that we deliver foreign assistance and the way that we think about it I don't I mean I think that we can always point to areas where there have been successes obviously in our delivery of foreign assistance but we can also point to a lot of places where the the success has been at the top but it hasn't been matched by success on the ground and I think cash transfer programs are those kind of things that actually could make a real difference in a community in a life in a village that that aren't you know sort of a big you know some mega government project thank you congresswoman I'm going to start now with our audience and uh questions for my questions for for uh all right then let's let's continue with questions for the congresswoman or I'd love to hear the questions for the panel so I know you have a very limited time I have one question here thank you congresswoman Edwards thank you for being here today my name is Marjorie Brennan and I direct a foundation the JDT foundation which is related to education in Haiti and we've talked a lot today about many things with women and I keep coming back to the idea of our youth and education that to a large extent so much of the issues that are going on can be eventually addressed if you're taking a long-term view with educating particularly women in Haiti and you discussed some programmatic things that you would like to see happen in Haiti is education one of those things oh education definitely is but I also think that it's true whether it's here in the United States and all of the world I mean I've seen this you know at work right now in Afghanistan that when you begin to make investment in women's education that they transfer that investment to their children and they think about their children's prospects differently and so again I think this goes to the question of how we rethink our assistance whether that is private philanthropy or it's or it's government assistance that making I just don't even think we need any more research to know that when you invest in women you invest in communities we don't we have studied it and whether that is about education or it's about economic development or it's about building democracy or I mean you just go down the list and and I don't know why we keep trying to think that there's another solution here and you know the people of vital voices and so many of our you know really great humanitarian organizations know this because it's their experience but when I was in philanthropy we knew it as well but we haven't transferred that knowledge in the way that we need to to to our governments and I think that Secretary Clinton I have to give her amazing enormous credit because I think for the really for the first time we have a Department of State a Secretary of State who actually understands that and maybe it was vital voices that helped her understand that too but who really does understand that and who's made a greater effort than we've seen in probably ever in trying to inject this is a this kind of assessment as a practice in assistance when we think of foreign assistance so we just need to do it more thank you so much Congresswoman and I understand that you are on to your next meeting we appreciate your really candid and cogent comments today it's I think really you walked into a process already in motion and you totally re-emphasize the things that we were in discussion so I really appreciate it on behalf of the institute thank you so much for taking time today well thank you very much I appreciate it and I have to tell you I mean part of the reason I could do that you know it's because my mother taught me well so up from where we left off and we have our first question in this part of the session go ahead Rusty that's you so hi my name is Rusty Barber and first of all thanks again to my colleagues Dr. actually building on the congressman's comment about the importance of investing in women to help a society in crisis stabilize itself we're hoping to do something to do exactly that in car coal on the north coast of Haiti and I have a question specifically for Danielle Sanlo and to set up the question Let me first state that I'm here today on behalf of a of a public private partnership that is establishing hopes to establish a candle manufacturing facility at Caracol at the industrial park under construction with the assistance of the U.S. government. And we hope that we'll employ quite a lot of Haitian women. One concern we have, however, is that it not be an enclaved activity. And so my specific question for you, by the way, the public partner is Prosperity Candle, which is an organization that enables women's entrepreneurship in conflict affected zones. The private sector partner is the largest manufacturer of candles in North America. So that's right, candles. That's what I said. So actually just candles. But my question specifically for you is what is the best conduit with the Haitian government today now to gain support for this initiative? So as I said, it does not remain an effort that's enclaved in the North. All right. Thank you so much. And I'm going to loop around now that we've just brought our audience back in and I'm going to open the panel up to answering the questions just before the congresswoman arrived. So those questions are on the table as well. And who would like to take the lead? Well, I would answer the question that was asked from the young woman from the Haitian diaspora who expressed the frustration of the diaspora of not knowing how to help. And the question was very direct. She asked us whether we had made any recommendations and whether we had felt that we were heard to international donors for instance, improve governance. You know, she was very direct. She wanted a direct answer. And I think it has been, for me to give a direct answer, I have to say that it has not been easy to really get the international donors to understand the Haitian point of view. I found myself being an international civil servant, being Haitian and being the special advisor at Minusta, I faced that dilemma over and over again when for instance you talk about what to do about the displaced in the camps, the response we had from the international community was what they wanted to do is build camps like Coraisesless, which were camps where you had rows of tents, one next to the other, and because this is the way they had done in Ache, this is the way they had done in other places. And I have to say that I share her frustration on this. I have often felt that the point of view of Haitians, that the displaced preferred to go back to their old neighborhood whenever that was possible and be given the means to actually themselves rebuild their houses of course under certain conditions. This was not heard. So those parallel viewpoints about how the issue of the tents, of the displaced would be handled, I think until now it plagues Haiti. Now the frustration about how the differences in point of view and whether we felt that our recommendations have gone forward, I do feel at times I personally feel I have made a difference. However, very often I felt the same frustration that was expressed earlier of not being able to convey the point of view of the people were the recipients of the aid and to the people were actually the donors. Thank you. Yes, Daniel. I think it's for all of us in Haiti the same frustration and most international donors they speak English, we do not speak Creole. So they can hear us. And what is very frustrating, it's surely people like me that are we sure that speak English is the pressure on us to be in meetings, to be in clusters while we know that we are not going to be heard. And I remember just after the earthquake I came here, I went to different meetings saying hey let's split into groups telling that our government, telling that here we need to have a group in relief and start the reconstruction process right away. Because we had 500,000 people that has moved in the rural areas back home. So now they are back in the province because there were no service for them and there were enough money to have them to reorganize, reorganize them in their community. Still we are still in the relief. Like our organization, we are we are projecting the South East and while we wanted to plant yam they wanted to give us money for our cash for work, food for work. When we ask some UNICEF to provide them with mandarins to give to the children in the camps so that they can have vitamin C and have fruits. And it's you know they thought oh for security reason we can't you know use mandarins. You know this kind of thing are very frustrating. So that's why we really think that we have to have women in power. Women in parliament where they can plan, where they can control not only our government but also international donors having agreement with our government. So it's really important that the only way that we will be heard and that Haiti will be really revealed as a nation. Emily? I think there are so many good points that have been made and some really great questions and you know obviously the point that we really bring to it is looking at how can we better hear the voices on the ground and the role that technology does in deep play I guess to the question of is digital democracy actually elitist because of how little access there might be. That was about cameras specifically. Yeah most people don't use cameras, they don't have cameras floating around. The grassroots groups that we work with have chosen to invest their very small amount of money in cameras now that they've seen the power of them. But cameras are one thing. Mobile phones are another. Basic mobile phones cost about 12 US dollars in Haiti and people have them and they might not have electricity but they go to the charging station outside the camp and they charge them. They might not always have credit which is why having a free hotline is so important but they do have phones and they do use them. A study right after the earthquake showed that more than 70% of men and 67% of women in the Port-au-Prince area had mobile phones themselves which means that pretty much everybody has access to one because they live with somebody who has one or their next door neighbor does so in emergency situations and that's what we're really excited by is the opportunities that low-cost technologies provide to actually reach so many more people than before and it gets into that question of monitoring and evaluation and it gets into the question of even non-traditional donors and how can you really understand whether or not your work is impacting people on the ground? Well you get in communication with them and you ask. We've facilitated Skype conversations between Creole speaking Haitian women with live translation and folks in the United States at universities, at corporations, at halls of power and every time that you know real live Haitian women come and speak to a room it's so wonderful and so glorious but the thing is Haitians who are based in Haiti they don't really like to travel to the United States that much. It's cold here, they miss their food, they miss their culture. I'm not speaking necessarily for you but I'm speaking for the women we've worked with and they would much prefer to be able to speak to somebody on video and talk to them than always have to go someplace and so I think it's really about using a variety of tools to really try to hear from people directly and not put all the pressure on one or two voices and the voices that speak English but really to try to use lots of different tools so one thing I didn't mention is that the blog that the women we work with it's in Creole but we translate it and we're working with volunteers in Haitian diaspora to translate it into English so it can reach that wider audience. The tweets that they post on Twitter are in Creole and then they get translated into English and by doing that we're actually they're expressing themselves in their own vision you know you may have noticed all of the photographs are titled with their Creole title but then also in English so that we the international audience can understand it so just one kind of two quick things on the issue of monitoring and evaluation I think there's a lot of opportunities for more real-time monitoring and evaluation rather than just you know asking generic questions at the end of something to find out and real-time can happen by checking in by sitting SMS by you know by really following up with people and then you know the question about the solar cook stoves I don't think any of us are really experts on that but what I'll say and I think it really echoes what's already been said is that Haitian women are very entrepreneurial so if you want to make anything work whether it's a cook stove or anything else like it needs to really be driven by I think market-based solutions which again goes back to the mobile phones it was a market the market actually brought mobile phones to Haiti people bought them and are using them and making their lives better so so we really need to look at what are the tools that people can have giving to people access to tools and skills and then they will make their own reality with them thank you I am being given the time signal here and I hate to cut off such a vital and interesting conversation which says to me I think we have to make a promise to the future here be a part of your March program because there are people here who want to engage in dialogue and if we can figure out a way that we can continue this conversation in the way forward with Bob and Bob's help and others here today I'm going to turn the panel back over to Bob Rito but thank you all and if we could have a round of applause for what I think I've said I'd like to thank everyone in the audience for coming this morning and for staying with us I'd like to thank our visitors from Haiti round of applause for them as well.