Trip Report: Port-au-Prince, Haiti

Earlier this month, I travelled to Haiti to meet with IT staff from several NGO members of NetHope—and there was consensus among them that a short supply of both IT skills and skilled professionals is keeping their field organizations from being able to operate at full efficiency. My primary goal for this trip was to figure out if Microsoft could help offer flexible blended learning solutions for their network admins and desktop support professionals to help them reach their full potential.

The good news is that we think we can—but we’re probably going to need your help. We’ve got a lot of content that we can offer NetHope, but we may need expertise from some of you to deliver the training and provide advice and guidance in our forums. We’re also exploring the idea of a sponsor-an-intern program, in which we’d raise money together to help prepare Haitian university students for entry-level IT opportunities.

From a NetHope trip briefing:

We know firsthand that the IT sector did not have enough skilled IT professionals when the earthquake hit. With the influx of humanitarian staff, there is an even greater need for skilled IT professionals. Flying in IT talent is really only a “band aid” solution on a bleeding artery. Longer term skills development programs are needed.

As currently conceived, this training program would be conducted over a one year time period and benefit the entire IT sector in Haiti (NGOs, UN, private sector). Two target groups would be addressed:

· IT pros currently employed – make those that are already in the sector more talented in the areas

· Entry level candidates – turn them into proficient IT pros with a clear path towards future development

Over the next several weeks, we’ll be working with NetHope on an assessment strategy so we can figure out an effective and efficient training plan. Once we know what we’re looking at, I’ll let you guys know what opportunities there might be to help.

Putting a training program in place is a complicated endeavor—for one thing, we don’t have any CPLSes or MCTs, or active IT Academy members in Haiti. We are basically starting from scratch. Facilities of any sort are rare because of the widespread destruction. On the positive side, thanks to the work of Inveneo and NetHope, wireless internet connectivity has been restored for the NGOs—it was amazing to witness the network of rooftop dish antennas splitting and relaying bandwidth around the city.

Additional Challenges

Complicating any effort to contribute to Haiti’s redevelopment are a number of factors—and it’s important to understand them in order to truly grasp the urgency:

· Weather: Hurricane season begins June 1^st. Right now there are hundreds of thousands of people living in tents, and it’s doubtful that the rubble will be cleared away by the start of hurricane season let alone new buildings constructed where old ones once stood. Relief workers are racing against time, hoping and praying that Haiti is spared a major hurricane this year (as it was last year… but in 2008, Haiti experienced four).

· Economy: Devastated, obviously. What’s not so obvious are the disguised long-term effects: much of Haiti’s economy was driven by a small subset of wealthy people, most of whom have now fled the country—and it’s unclear when or if they’ll return. Taking their place as spenders are the visiting aid workers—but their spending is temporary, and businesses fear the impact when they leave.

· Supplies: Anything construction-related is inflated to the point of unaffordability to most Haitians, ironically due to the competition of so many NGOs for so few available resources. While I was there, the country ran out of gasoline—for a day, it seemed as if we might not have enough to finish our trip, and new gas supplies weren’t expected until April 26^th; but money talks and for $100 a gas station attendant managed to find some fuel. Obviously Haitians are not going to be able to afford that.  Even water must be purchased now—the water in Haiti is undrinkable, and many no longer have the means to boil it.

· Staging: Most roads are passable if you have a truck or SUV, but few are in good condition, and many offer only the equivalent of one rocky lane, complicating and snarling traffic to the point where it took us an hour or more to get anywhere within the city. No part of the city that we saw was left untouched—which makes it very difficult to find a place to stage rebuilding. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami claimed more lives than the Haitian earthquake, but since the damage was limited to where the waters reached, there was adjacent land for staging, which aided recovery efforts;  in contrast, the Haitian earthquake leveled structures throughout the population center of Port-au-Prince and surrounding areas—there’s no place to work but from within ground zero.

Thankfully, Haiti does have a few things going for it right now, namely good and growing ICT connectivity, a tremendous influx of dedicated and tireless NGO relief workers, and the determination of those who remain in the country to rebuild.

How You Can Help

I know many of you want to know how you can help—and I’m sure there will be opportunities to do so over the coming months. Right now, our next step is a devising a formal assessment strategy for the NGO staff (although we know the job roles that need to be addressed, we expect to focus on specific topics based on where their IT Pros’ skills gaps are). We’ve invited MeasureUp, our Practice Test Provider partner, to help with that: MeasureUp graciously and immediately offered free licenses to their Microsoft, Cisco, and CompTIA assessment products once they heard of this project.

Once we’ve identified the most pressing skills shortages, we’ll know more about what the actual training engagement will look like—but we expect we’ll need at least a few instructors along with a community of advisors to support and guide the interns in particular in our community forums.

In the meantime, should you be so moved to contribute personally to NetHope, you can do so here.

There’s an urgent need for more IT skills and more IT Pros and Haiti, and we’re in a unique position to help.

Thanks for your interest and support. More to come, for sure.