Haiti

Haiti was the first disaster response mission that Leslie went on, after Hurricane Matthew in 2016. In western Haiti, households suffered 90-100% crop loss during the hurricane, roads became impassable, and roofs were torn off of homes. Leslie’s assignment was to focus on nutrition after the hurricane.

With such devastating crop loss, one of the most urgent needs was for food. Food distributions began right away, along with seed distributions so that families could begin replanting as quickly as possible. Leslie was part of two types of food distributions: general food distributions, and blanketed supplementary feeding programs.

General food distributions (GFDs) serve a widespread population and contain the most basic staples: a starch such as rice, a legume for protein, and cooking oil. While some GFDs may include other items, these three items are the basic requirements from the Sphere standards, or the shared humanitarian guidelines for food programming. Leslie supported GFDs for entire towns in western Haiti, with many distributions meeting the needs of 5,000-7,000 families each day. Such large distributions take massive coordination between drivers who need to load up trucks for food, to local authorities to make a space and inform the public about the distribution.

While GFDs typically include everyone in an affected area, blanketed supplementary feeding programs (BSFP) serve a smaller population. When there is a risk of malnutrition in a community, or when malnutrition rates are moderate, BSFPs are employed to help the most vulnerable: children under the age of 5, and pregnant and breastfeeding women. These populations are the most at risk of developing malnourishment, and are also critical times in a child’s life for proper nutrition. Leslie’s job was to identify households that needed BSFP in addition to their GFD ration and to make sure that these households understood how to use these additional supplements.

All of this information was meticulously reported back to the World Food Programme, which was funding the food and nutrition program. As UNICEF was reporting a prediction that severe malnutrition would be on the rise following the hurricane, it was imperative to have these programs in place to reduce and prevent severe cases of malnutrition amongst the population.

Leslie also trained some of the local staff on basic nutrition monitoring in preparation of programming that would include household assessments and referrals for children with severe malnourishment. Being her first assignment on a disaster response, it was an eye-opening experience to the world of humanitarian aid.