The Haitian Civil Society

We have the beginning of a functioning civil society, when a community unites and gathers around a common purpose. Occupying the same space without any useful agenda for the greater community cannot be considered a society. In Haiti, we must begin to build a strong society, if we are to achieve our full potential as a nation.
The bar must be elevated, and we ought to hold ourselves accountable to a higher standard. We are the descendants of great men, who believed there was no impossibility that we could not render possible if we join forces.
The Haiti of the near future is about the people getting engaged in the development and stability of the country. It is the place where prejudices between people of cities and rural communities will all but disappear. Early in the next decade, we must start to instill the idea of community building throughout the nation. We have to rethink the country through the prism of the weakest individual in our midst.
A typical community within Haiti would be able to run some of the basic chores needed by the citizens of that community. Let’s take the environment for example; usually it is not the people of a specific community who are destroying their own surroundings. It is often people from the outside who come and do most of the damage. There is a misconception that it is the peasants who are the cause of the deforestation taking place in the Haitian landscape; we fail to realize that most of those people don’t even live in the area in which they are sabotaging.
If the citizens of those communities were united for a common purpose, they could prevent most of the atrocities against their environment. We could use the same example for the lack of sanitation in most of the major cities of the country. We ought to hold ourselves responsible, and we must do better.
The challenge is how do we mobilize a nation to partake in actions that at the individual level might seem irrelevant, but which could have great implications for future generations. How do we get people to stop thinking of themselves, but instead to put the benefit of the community and the progress of a whole nation at the forefront.
Some of the ways we could go about solving some of these issues are to engage in a focus and action packed grassroots campaign. The understanding is that the Haitian people have been betrayed more too often by people who have said to have their best interest at heart, and now it makes it even more difficult to engage the people because of their mistrust for anyone who is making them any kind of promises. This time around, we have to be frank about what we can and cannot do , and at the same time make the case of what Haiti would look like if we let the pessimists amongst us control the agenda for the country.
A new path must be drawn, and the people’s involvement should be at the center of any real progress that we wish to accomplish. A coordinated effort of civic engagement with strong leadership characteristic is necessary to elevate the spirit of the average citizens form idleness to meaningful involvement. It ought to become a common trait for the average Haitian citizen to be more ethical and confident moving forward.
Our country has so much work that needs to be done that we cannot afford to not use our time in an efficient manner. We must equip the next generations with the tools that guarantee them a just and prosperous nation. We have to invest in the skills of civil servant in a civil society. We must reward those who are willing to do the most with limited resources. The brotherhood spirit, which is one of our creeds, must become a reality in the way we treat one another. The investment for a strong society will lead to a more peaceful and humane conditions for all.
The time has come to evoke the importance of our role in breaking the stereotype about the inferiority and inequalities of the human races. We did our part in not only abolishing slavery in Haiti, but also to demonstrate the human desire to be free. This feat would not have been possible, if our founding fathers did not come together and take matters into their own hands. Today, we are called upon once more to not be bystanders, but rather active participants.
The choice is ours. This is our chance to stir the ship in the right direction so that future generations could sail with no worry of encountering any iceberg. The simple decisions that we make today could have a profound impact on the quality of life that our children will have. We have to be methodical without being impatient in our pursuit of creating that strong civil society.
The Haiti of tomorrow is already starting to take shape. The people of Haiti are searching for an alternative to ameliorate their life for the better. It is our obligation to join them and be a part of this generational movement for transformation that is taking place. We can no longer expect others to do what we can for ourselves. It is our responsibility to build our communities, where the rule of laws and the code of ethics would reign supreme.