It is March 2011, and the A Ganar program sponsored by USAID and IDB has been launched in Haiti, by LADH, with Boby Duval as its program director.  Partners of the Americas manages the A Ganar program worldwide, and chose LADH to be its partnering implementor when Haiti was approved for funding.   The program helps youths ages 16 to 24 develop job skills, entrepreneur skills and life skills using sport and soccer as the teaching medium.  L’Athletique D’Haiti received the honor of launching the program in Haiti.  The birthing of this project met with many challenges, but everyone involved had faith and perseverance.

Paul Teeple, the director of Partners of the Americas, recaps the odyssey of A Ganar’s debut in Haiti:

Haiti

• We began the year hoping that Haiti would be able to be included in new MIF funding for A Ganar.  And then everything changed….
• On January, the devastating earthquake stuck Haiti.  The Haitian government estimates that over 200,000 people have died as a result.
• The leader of our proposed coordinating organization, Boby Duval, happened to be in Washington at the time of the earthquake.  He immediately found a way home and began recovery and relief efforts.  L’Athletique d’Haiti (LADH), the organization founded by Boby, quickly became home to over 30,000 sleeping on their soccer fields.  Gradually, Boby and his staff have found other places for people to live allowing the youth in his community to once again have a place to play.
• In March we received the approval from MIF enables us to expand A Ganar there.
• In July, a group from LADH was returning from a day of volunteer work where they were clearing grounds for more fields and dormitories.  The truck carrying 25 or more people was struck by another truck.  11 people were killed and 14 people were injured.
• In August, LADH hosted the first A Ganar training of trainers event.  Over 75 people attended the workshops.
• A cholera epidemic hit Haiti in September/October.  LADH has set up a choleric clinic at its center.
• Through all of this LADH has stayed focused on starting A Ganar.  A new training of trainers event is scheduled for late January 2011.

Boby Duval, is bemused and a little disbelieving that 2010 is over.  “Looking back, I cannot believe that a year has passed.  And what a year it was.” Duval is the founder of  L’Athletique D’Haiti, which is now officially Fondation L’Athletique D’Haiti, a not for profit organization that almost closed its doors after the earthquake of January 12th, 2010.  “I was very afraid that the program could not restart after the earthquake because of such devastation and grief among the population.  But the kids needed an outlet for their fears and sorrow, and they were the ones who came back on the fields and got this program going again.  We were running out of resources to feed all the displaced people who just camped on our fields.  But our friends and donors came through with donations and encouragement and we received what we needed to re-open” said Duval. “Our managers, teachers and coaches deserve all the credit for pushing and pushing the program forward, despite their personal set backs and hardships because of the earthquake. In the end, we forget the trials and just remember their accomplishments and the joy on the kids’ faces.”

In 2010, LADH rose from the ashes of the earthquake to accomplish much more than Duval could ever hope for.  Among its many accomplishments, LADH gives thanks for its sponsors, partners and staff for the following:

• A new recycling and composting center was built in December 2010,

• A 200 bed cholera hospital was built in November 2010

• In August 2010, the LADH women’s team came in third in Brazil in the Homeless World Cup,

• In July 2010, the under 16 LADH boys won the Schwan’s USA Cup championship in Minnesota.  The joy on the boys’ faces when they were playing in Minnesota could be only be truly understood by knowing that back in Haiti, they lived still in tents as refugees from the earthquake.

• A bigger school, still under construction to meet the needs of new displaced students who came after the earthquake,

• In December 2010, the  A Ganar vocational youth training program, was launched by LADH.  This program, in partnership with Partners of the Americas, USAID, and  IDB  will train 400 youths in Haiti for vocational paths, entrepreneurship, or preparation for further education, utilizing soccer as a training tool,

• In November 2010 LADH launched its rural agriculture programs with chicken farming, organic vegetable gardens, and composting,
• The sport stadium is getting closer to completion.  ( Duval met with Dutch investors and non profit organizations in Holland in October 2010 to talk about funding, which will result in a site visit  in March 2011 by the same group)

NEW! On Tuesday, March 16 at 10:00 PM (EST), HBO Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel will update its past coverage of Boby Duval and his work with L’Athletique d’Haiti in a third segment on the program. This segment covers LADH’s development over the past 15 years and Boby Duval’s work after the earthquake.

On the heels of one of the most destructive earthquakes in modern history, REAL SPORTS travels back to Haiti to update viewers on the inspiring efforts of Boby Duval. Profiled by REAL SPORTS in August, 2000, Duval is an upper-class Haitian educated in the US and Canada, who returned to his homeland to devote his life to help those mired in poverty. One of Duval.s projects involved transforming an industrial dumping ground into a soccer field where disadvantaged children could come to play the game, receive meals and get a basic education. Now, only two months removed from the earthquake that devastated Haiti, correspondent Frank Deford finds that amid the rubble, Duval.s will is unshaken and his dream for Haiti.s youth lives on.”

Make sure to tune in!

My name is Gideon Metrikin, I am 12 years old, and I play on a soccer team called MSC Barcelona and I love the game very much. My soccer coach, Wilson Egidio, is a very nice Brazilian man who took our team to the poorest parts of Brazil, where we played games against the children there. Most of the children have broken soccer cleats that are too small so my coach started a project called the Favela Project.

The Favela Project is a project where children from many different teams give their old cleats, shirts, socks, and other soccer gear to the kids in the Favelas. I enjoyed the experience of playing a game against the children in the Favelas and now I realize that there are children who love soccer as much as I do but they don’t have the opportunity to play it as easily as I do. When I found out about how the children in Haiti were suffering from the earthquake, I really wanted to help. I would be devastated if my soccer field was taken from me.

At home I have an older brother who also plays and loves soccer. My Dad taught both of us how to play when we were little kids. In a normal week, I have the opportunity to play soccer 4 times if not more for more than an hour each time. My goal is to help give the Haiti children the same opportunity that I have.
Please let the children know that there are lots of people who are sad about the earthquake and to keep up their love of soccer.

If you want to support me in helping LADH by sponsoring a mile on my run this weekend, please contact me at: gidmet (at ) gmail.com. Thank yo

LADH Karate Program Resumes in March

The Karate Program, sponsored by the Haitian Sports Foundation will resume on March 1. The program’s goal is to help the children of LADH develop martial arts discipline and become good practitioners under the tutelage of trained martial arts professionals.

The HSF is currently raising funds in the US to help LADH increase its food supplies and basic necessity needs. For more info visit: http://www.haitiansportsfoundation.com/

Boys at training, L’Athlétique d’Haïti, Port-au-Prince. 

The Global Game interviewed Laura Anduze, international liaison for L’Athlétique d’Haïti, the youth soccer club and NGO founded in Cité Soleil, Port-au-Prince, in 1996 by Robert Duval. A native of Puerto Rico, Anduze was in San Juan securing assistance for L’Athlétique as well as longer-term sponsorship from Puerto Rico Islanders. Duval was in Washington, DC, when the earthquake hit Jan 12, meeting with the Inter-American Development Bank about regional sport development.

Interview with Laura Anduze, 22 January 2010

GG: What happened at the training center on the day of the earthquake and shortly after?

LA: [Duval] made sure his nuclear family was fine, then obviously he went looking for the children.  The children had not been in the program since the day of the earthquake.  They were there when the earthquake struck.  It was at the end of the practice.  The practice is an after-school program, so it’s from 2 to 5. The majority of them were still on the site in Port-au-Prince.  They were with their coaches who tried to retain them, and they couldn’t.  So as much as the coaches pleaded with them to stay, the kids just wanted to go find their parents. So they left.  Maybe a few of them stayed but the vast majority went back to their homes or wherever they live.  Some sleep in the little slum houses, some live in the street, but they went back.

Then it took Boby a couple of days to figure out where the kids were.  It wasn’t until [Jan 21] that 150 of them started coming back.  They came with their families.  There are currently 50 families living in the soccer field in tents.  Also we will have the kids who lost their parents or whose parents are displaced somewhere else in the country that cannot make it back.  Some of the parents work in the countryside during the week and come back during the weekends. Maybe now they’re separated from their kids and have no means of communicating or of coming back.  So it’s a very big responsibility because now we have to take care of the families.

GG: These families are located in Cité Soleil?

LA: They are in the training facility in Port-au-Prince where we have a big soccer field that accommodates on a regular day 700 kids playing in little groups.  So imagine how big it is.  It’s huge. You could build a stadium there.  It’s one of the few flat, open spaces in Port-au-Prince.  It’s two miles from the airport, which is ideal for when they reopened the airport to get donations.  Boby can just hop on a truck and go pick them up.  It’s also an ideal site for an enormous number of people to be in a refugee camp, because there’s a lot of space.

The soccer program is going to be back on track when this situation subsides. The priority is to have families sheltered from this terrible circumstance.

GG: You are anticipating a long-term process of recovery.

LA: The country went back to zero.  Whatever had been built until this point has been destroyed.  So they’re back to square one.  For L’Athlétique, for every organization, for every family in Haiti it has to be long-term.  This is not going to be fixed in the next couple of weeks or years.  It’s going to take a long time.

Boby commented that of the people working on the ground, the people that have been most available in helping at L’Athlétique are Doctors without Borders.  They donated the tents. They have donated a lot of medications, foot supplies.  So [Duval] is already set to accommodate a few more families, but we still need more donations.  Right now I’m in Puerto Rico asking my fellow countrymen to help Haiti, because we are used to helping Haiti.  We are both Caribbean nations, and people here have a culture of giving.  We are sending things on boats that left today to the Dominican Republic.

Cité Soleil residents set up camp, Jan 18, on the grounds of L’Athlétique d’Haïti. (Photo courtesy L’Athlétique d’Haïti)

GG: How has the existence of L’Athlétique helped you organize in the aftermath of a disaster?

LA: Boby’s program is extremely structured.  The children know they can come back.  They know they will get food. Boby is a person who — just like he trains kids to be great players — he has a mind that works quickly. So when he realized the kids weren’t on the site he went to the airport.  He said, I need to help somebody.  He started helping international organizations.  He was helping people move around [Port-au-Prince] because all the streets are blocked.  He knows the back roads, he knows the side roads, so he became instrumental for a lot of outsiders who came to help.

GG: Have these connections facilitated aid for L’Athlétique and Cité Soleil that might have been more difficult otherwise?

LA: I guess it’s the club connection and [Duval’s] personal connections.  He builds relations with anybody that he needs.  I am basically the face of L’Athlétique right now because Boby is unreachable, people in Haiti are unreachable.  I’m the contact in the US.  I’m getting e-mails and calls from people all over the world — people that met Boby in a tournament, who met him at the airport, who met him in school.  In Puerto Rico, he lived here three years when his family was in exile because of the Duvalier dictatorship.  The people who went to high school with him 30 years ago who have never seen him again are giving me $40,000, just for him, for L’Athlétique.

GG: How will the psychological needs of people at L’Athlétique be assessed?

LA: As soon as the kids come in, they will assess their state of well-being psychologically.  Obviously these are children.  It has affected everybody’s psyche. Definitely the kids will need some psychological support.

GG: When requesting support, how do you balance the needs of L’Athlétique against those of Cité Soleil and Haiti as a whole?

LA: I think people are giving, and people are saturated now with everybody asking for donations.  Most people gave right away when this happened.  But some people don’t even know where their funds went.  What is the Red Cross doing with the five dollars I gave?  Is it for overhead or will this translate to the children or to the people affected right away?

What I say is this man has been doing this for 15 years.  There is a system that works, and this will translate directly to the children.  In my case it’s a one-on-one effort and convincing [donors] that the money is going straight to the people, that Boby doesn’t have a salary, that I don’t have a salary, that we only pay the coaches and that the rest is for food, structure and institutional support.

GG: What was the extent of the damage to L’Athlétique and surroundings?

LA: The wall that’s around the field, that’s the main thing.  We need to rebuild the wall because the field is exposed right now.  For safety reasons, especially inside feeding people, [people] are going to come in and out, because they’re hungry.  What Boby was doing yesterday was asking the kids and coaches to pick up cement blocks that were in good condition so they can make a little fort around the kitchen.  We can make sure that we feed one person at a time, so they have to make a line and not storm into the kitchen.  So they’re reusing the broken-down wall to re-create the structure and protect the kitchen and be able to feed people without any trouble.

GG: What is the situation with supplies: food, water, medicine?

LA: They have enough for a couple of days for the amount of people there right now.  If the amount of people increases  — we’re going to need more food and more medical supplies and more tents.

Seth Stammler and his fellow Maryland alumnus and teammate, Jeremy Hall, visited LADH during a philanthropic tour in Haiti, which included a spirited game at L’Athlétique d’Haïti. The game draw 1,000 people to the side lines of the soccer field of LADH in Drouillard on a beautiful December evening. Stammler and Hall played in opposing teams composed of the amateur B17 team that won the Dana Cup in July of this year.

Inter American Development Bank President Luis Alberto Moreno visited L’Athletique d’ Haiti in December 2009.

Accompanied by various staff members from Washington DC and the IADB Country Office, and his son and daughter, Moreno made an assesment of LADH and demonstrated an interest in including LADH among a Regional Youth Development initiative financed by the IADB.

Caribbean elegance met German thoroughness when the two best teams in class B17 summoned each other at Hjøg stadium. Even if Stadtlohn SuS undoubtedly did their best then the players from L’Athlétique d’Haïti were, first and foremost, much faster but also more skilled and creative than the Germans; thus, nobody could object to Haiti.s 3-0 win over Stadtlohn SuS.