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News — 18 June, 2010

Haiti mission 3 - Training Day with Haitian partners of the project WINNER

Today, Guensmork and myself made our way to Petionville where the office of the Watershed Initiative For National Natural Environmental Resources (WINNER) project is located. We had been cooperating with the GIS unit of WINNER headed by Cj Hendrix and composed of Emmanuel Pierre and Daphne Boulin since the first HOT deploy delivering training on the techniques of the OSM project adapted to the specifics of their work.

This session was directed to their Haitian partners mostly GIS experts, architects, urban planners working in the Maieries of Kenscoff and Petionville Port Au Prince.  For WINNER, this activity was part of a capacity building component inherent to this project, for HOT, it is a step towards grounding the OSM project in Haiti within PAP municipalities with the view of facilitating convergence between the IOM-lead baseline survey work in PAP neighborhoods and the GIS activities of those municipalities with ad hoc support of WINNER staffs and facilities. This would be the best way to offer operational grounded follow-up work for our trainees to strengthen  their newly acquired skills. This is a key component of our overarching strategy to strengthen the growth of the OSM project rolling out its techniques in operational procedures of Haitin organizations and facilitating the engagement of individuals and groups in an Haitian OSM Community.

The training went well, the two of us succeeding in passing to the participants the set of OSM techniques packaged up by HOT for use in Haiti (surveying with GPS, Questionnaires, Walking Papers and editing on Java OSM with Humanitarian Data Model-aligned presets) and generating interest for joining the community and enrolling in the above outlined follow-up activities. It was good seeing Guensmork playing a key role in transmitting this skillset to  this audience of high level civil servant specifically when  one thinks of Guensmork's itinerary which is illustrative of the functionality of the HOT training scheme. Community leader, social worker and representative of one of the rural blocks of Cite Soleil in the Forum Communautaire of Cite Soleil (FOCS), he had never used a GPS prior to meeting up with HOT in the end of the first mission by early April and made its way to the fluency in surveying and editing with techniques which he is applying with talent in both baseline surveys (Cite Soleil, Tabarre and Carrefour) and in training.

Kate and Nicolas for HOT