Background Materials
HAITI EXCHANGE
In November 2008 Panos Canada, in collaboration with Panos Caribbean and the Panos Global AIDS Programme (GAP), hosted a ground-breaking visit of 10 Haitian AIDS experts to Vancouver.
Haitian team members visited Vancouver AIDS organisations to explore commonalities between HIV/AIDS impacts and responses in the two cities; to identify and follow up new insights and synergies; and through these to extend and reinforce community organizations and their activities.
The high-powered Haitian team included people living with HIV/AIDS, directors of NGOs, two doctors, a nurse, a psychiatric counsellor, a journalist and three members of a youth theatre troupe.
THE BACKGROUND: In summer 2006, Panos Canada and AIDS Vancouver started an ambitious HIV/AIDS project in Vancouver and Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The traditional “North-South lens” has created a stereotype of developing countries as impoverished, helpless and lacking expertise. We wondered if a “commonalities lens” would be more useful, focusing not on our differences but on what we have in common?
To test out this concept, we went to one of the richest cities in the world and to one of the poorest, and produced 15 matched pairs of photos showing community responses to HIV/AIDS (See AIDS in Two Cities).
THE PROJECT: For years, teams of foreign “experts” have descended on Haiti, to explain where Haitians are going wrong. In the process, they often undermine and devalue Haitian experience.
The Haiti Exchange deliberately challenged this process. It was rooted in equality and mutual respect. It was based on the conviction that powerful transformations occur when people have opportunities to:
•Tell stories of mutual struggles and triumphs.
•Share knowledge and expertise.
•Reflect on their insights and experiences.
•Imagine new possibilities for action.
THE PEOPLE: The three Panos Canada principals for the Haiti Exchange project were William Booth (former executive director of AIDS Vancouver), Pieter de Vos (public health and inner cities specialist from Edmonton, Alberta), and Jon Tinker (executive director, Panos Canada).
