Archive for the ‘Events’ Category

Event: Haiti – The Plan for Reconstruction

Monday, April 5th, 2010

Speaker: Patrick Delatour, Chairman of the Presidential Commission for the Reconstruction of Haiti; Frantz Verella, former Minister of Public Works, Transport and Communication

Time: April 16th, 11:30a–1:00p

Location: 6-120

The MIT Committee for Race and Diversity & the MIT Haiti Coordinating Committee is pleased to invite you to join us for a presentation by Minister Patrick Delatour and Professor Frantz Verella from Haiti. Minister Delatour is the Chairman for the Presidential Commission for the Reconstruction in Haiti. He will present the government’s vision for reconstruction. Professor Verella, the former Minister of Public Works, Transport and Communication, will talk about the planning and development challenges in Haiti.

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Event: Reconstructing Haiti – Dr. Aseem Inam

Friday, April 2nd, 2010

Time: 6:00p–7:30p

Location: W79-MPR, Simmons Hall Multipurpose Room

Dr. Aseem Inam is a member of the team invited by the Government of Haiti to design a rebuilding strategy to house the thousands of families affected by the devastating january 2010 earthquake. He will share his unique experiences and rare insights from his work in Haiti and outline the approach adopted for rebuilding after such a catatrophic event. He is the author of the book, Planning for the Unplanned: Recovering from Crises in Megacities, and a Fellow at the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT.

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Pecha Kucha for Haiti Reconstruction

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

Pecha Kuchas are collections of short talks to quickly introduce the audience to a variety of subjects. The Center for Future Civic Media and Architecture for Humanity Boston are hosting a Pecha Kucha on Haiti relief and reconstruction. We’ll be there presenting the Haiti Fablab project, so we hope you can make it.

Saturday February 20th, 8pm, MIT Media Lab Extension
http://pechakuchaboston15.eventbrite.com/

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Round table with MA State Reps Marie St-Fleur & Linda Dorcena Forry, Dr. Marc Zissman, Paul Altidor, Dean Steve Lerman

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010


From left to right: MA State Reps Marie St-Fleur & Linda Dorcena Forry, Dean Steve Lerman, Dr. Marc Zissman, Paul Altidor

Marie St. Fleur: Haiti is in disarray, and its government is not functioning well. It is not only not functioning because of the massive earthquake that has just hit, but because before, funding aid in Haiti has categorically favoured NGOs, leaving the government as secondary in providing help to the citizens. NGOs cannot deal with large scale infrastructure problems the way governments can. The government is not functioning the way it should, and the Haitian government, the Haitian economy and Haitian education needs to start fortifying themselves if this is going to get any better.

http://krikkrak.media.mit.edu/lectureseries#feb17

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Haiti Relief Round Table Discussion with MA State Reps. Marie St. Fleur and Linda Dorcena Forry

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

The unprecedented challenges facing Haiti after the earthquake on January 12 invite us to analyze foundational aspects of Haitian society as rebuilding projects are being put in place to restore virtually every single component of the country’s infrastructure—physical, health-related educational, socio-economic, political, etc.

This round table, with Massachusetts State Representatives Marie P. St. Fleur and Linda Dorcena Forry (both of whom are Haitian-American), and Prof. Steven Lerman, Vice Chancellor and Dean of Graduate Education will explore the anticipated contributions of research universities in Haiti’s rebuilding efforts and how these contributions will bear on these universities’ traditional missions of research and teaching. Both state representatives represent districts in Boston and have been instrumental as leaders in working with the Haitian community and the Mayor’s office to support the local Haitian community in Boston.

The round table will be moderated by Dr. Dale Joachim and will take place at 2:00pm, Wednesday, February 17th in the Bartos Theatre at the Media Lab (E15-070). All are welcome.

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The Road to Fondwa

Friday, February 12th, 2010

The Students of Color Committee (SCC) of the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) at MIT:

We are hosting a screening of The Road to Fondwa, a documentary about positive self-help development movements in Haiti, followed by a question/comment segment with one of the film’s directors, brief presentations of faculty initiatives in Haiti, and ending with a a dialogue for participants to ask questions and speak of their work and experiences in Haiti. Dinner will be served (Haitian cuisine of course!)

Venue : 9-450
Time : 6pm

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Critical Issues of the Haiti Humanitarian Response at Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

Chaired by Prof. Jacqueline Bhabha and
introduced by Dr. Gregg Greenough

Discussants:
“Immediate Health and Public Health Needs of the Haitian Population–the View from a Field Hospital”
Stephanie Rosborough, MD, MPH
Affiliate Faculty,
Harvard Humanitarian Initiative
Instructor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School

“The Vulnerable Population — Findings of the FXB-HHI Child Protection Assessment”
Brett Nelson, MD, MPH
Affiliate Faculty, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative
Co-Director, Program on Children in Conflict and Crisis

“The Evolution of Crowd-sourced Data and Open Platforms for Response”
Patrick Meier, PhD (candidate)
Fellow, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative
Director, Program on Crisis Mapping

Wednesday 10 February at 4:00pm, at

Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
Harvard Kennedy School
79 JFK Street
Rubenstein Building
2nd floor – Room 219

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MIT Media Arts and Sciences Class: New Media Projects For Haiti

Saturday, February 6th, 2010

Dale Joachim and Barry Vercoe are teaching a class on New Media Projects for Haiti as an extension of their IAP class on new media projects for Haiti.


A project-based class to develop new technologies and educational tools that will contribute to progressive social changes in Haiti. We will explore viable contexts for promoting self-expression, communication, literacy and numeracy, and digital governance, given current challenges and strengths within the society. Topics will include sensors, language, music, computational methods for teaching and learning, civic engagement and social media.

Participants will choose a societal problem and devise a solution, with the goal of spending the last week of April in Haiti field testing and documenting their solution.

Guest lecturers will include Joe Paradiso, Michel DeGraff, Henry Lieberman, Judith Donath, Claudia Urrea, Chris Csikszentmihalyi and Charles Kane.

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Haiti after the earthquake: A FORUM event at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010


Haiti after the earthquake, a FORUM event, Feb 1st, 2010. From left to right: Mary Jo Bane, Prof. Ricardo Hausmann, the Hon. Marie St. Fleur, Dr. Allen S. Counter, the Hon. Linda Dorcena Forry. photo by Nadya Peek.

A forum at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government invited prominent Harvard faculty and Massachusetts State representatives involved with Haiti, aid and reform to discuss Haiti after the earthquake. A brief summary:

Dr. Allen S. Counter is the director of the Harvard Foundation, works as a neurophysiologist at Mass General Hospital and has travelled to Haiti twice since the earthquake. With a team of Harvard Medical School faculty, he brought basic medical supplies to Haiti to try to help in any way he can. He represents the amazing help Haiti is getting right now- help with figuring out how to deal with the disaster.

State representatives Marie St. Fleur and Linda Dorcena Forry are Haitian-Americans in the Massachusetts House. They are less involved with the immediate aid, but question how Haiti, a troubled country to start with, is going to be able to rebuild itself now that its infrastructure has been destroyed. Marie St. Fleur hopes that 200 thousand Haitians will not have died in vain, but that we can use this momentum to fundamentally rebuild Haiti. The Haitian government itself needs to function to be able to create a sustainable future for Haiti, and they need to start reform now. How this is going to be done in the short term is still a bit of a chicken and egg problem.

Finally, Ricardo Hausmann, director of Harvard’s Center of International Development, started wondering about the economic future for Haiti, and where jobs can come from in the short term. He stressed that Haiti was only part of the island of Hispaniola, and that the more well-faring Dominican Republic was going to have to be studied closer to figure out how to deal with Haiti. He pointed to short term opportunities in garment manufacturing– perhaps how to kickstart the Haitian economy. The idea of sweatshop jobs saving Haiti was not met with a particularly enthusiastic response.

Watch the full event online here: http://www.iop.harvard.edu/Multimedia-Center/All-Videos/Haiti-After-the-Earthquake

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Haiti After the Earthquake

Monday, February 1st, 2010

Feb 1st, 2010, 6:00pm FORUM event: Haiti After the Earthquake

A conversation with: Dr. S. Allen Counter, Director, The Harvard Foundation; The Hon. Linda Dorcena Forry, Member, Massachusetts House of Representatives; Prof. Ricardo Hausmann, Director, Center for International Development at Harvard University; The Hon. Marie St. Fleur, Member, Massachusetts House of Representatives. Moderated by Mary Jo Bane, Thornton Bradshaw Professor of Public Policy and Management and Academic Dean, Harvard Kennedy School

John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum, Harvard Kennedy School

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