Any updates to this thread?
Mr. HE
I've been home 30 days today, gained back half of the weight I lost in the thirty days I was in Haiti.
The UN is contributing some start up money for training and I am here in the States fund raising to go back and do a pilot project. I left two working machines in Haiti. Grass Roots United gives demonstrations daily on making the blocks.
One of the things that I promised myself was that I would try to do something for the street welders in Haiti that do their welding/tacking wearing only sunglasses.
What we are doing is purchasing shade ten lenses and carrying them in our luggage. If we buy the cheapest hoods available it will cost us about $20.00 each after freight. Then there is the customs issues, six months isn't unheard of. We can carry hundreds of lenses in our luggage and give them out along with instructions for making their own hoods using common materials. Doing this we can provide three hundred street welders eye protection for the same amount that it will cost us to give ten of them the cheapest hoods we can buy here in the States.
Keep in mind the street welders aren't doing the kinds of welding we do here in shops etc. They are basically tacking everything together. They aren't laying down multiple passes using lots of amps. Regular welding shops have the hoods etc. It's the street welders that we are seeking to help.
I can buy the shade ten lenses for less than a dollar each. We have a volunteer that is interested in walking the streets of Haiti giving out lenses and instructions for making a hood out of cardboard and duct tape. This is less than ideal but we have to weigh the amount of good this can do versus the cost of just helping a select few. The life expectancy of a Haitian male is around fifty years. The last twenty of those can be blind or not experienced if they don't have a family to support them.
My position on aid is we are obligated to help with knowledge at a minimum. I personally believe that teaching them to build their own hoods and encouraging them to be responsible for their own protection is better than handing them a hood and walking away. Then there's the welder thing, you know it, prideful buggers, welders. I believe that if they get the chance to make their own hoods they will individualize it. It doesn't take much imagination to see welding hoods as art in no time at all.
This is in the forming stages right now. We hope to have something on the ground by the end of October.
