Obviously, Haitians in the country and the Haitian Diaspora must play the leading roles in rebuilding the nation. Therefore, it is not surprising that there was a flurry of meetings and conferences leading up to the major UN Donor's Conference where Haiti presented its Development Plan. The OAS convened a major meeting in Washington March 21-23 to secure the input of the Haitian Diaspora and Haiti experts. March 26-27, I was privileged to attend the conference convened by the Trotter Institute, the National Haitian American Elected Officials Network (NHAEON) and the Haitian Studies Project at the University of Massachusetts/ Boston. Organized ground the theme: Haitians Building Haiti: Towards Transparent and Accountable Development, it was an incredibly well designed and facilitated conference. I was very impressed by the genuine effort to create an environment where views of the community and the conferees could be heard on the critical issues of the principles and strategies which should guide the reconstruction process. In that regard, the sessions were profoundly enriched by the participation of leading organizations from civil society who traveled to the conference from Haiti. A recurrent refrain from these organizations was deep concern that their voices and those of grassroots organizations on the ground were not part of the process when the Government formulated the Plan that was presented at the Donor's conference. There was a sense of anger and frustration that the Plan appears to be a fait accompli without widespread engagement of the Haitian people. To his credit President [Preval] has shown a remarkable capacity to bring people from divergent political parties into his Government; indeed it is one of the unheralded achievements of his second tenure in office. Now his Government has the opportunity to utilize that attitude and posture of inclusion to conduct a National Dialogue that could become the hallmark of his presidency. The Donor Conference concluded with a pledge of $10 billion over the next four years to rebuild Haiti. If there is to be a new Haiti, however, no dollar amount will be sufficient to achieve that goal. What is required is a new way of tapping the energy of Haiti's greatest resource, its people. A National Dialogue on Building the New Haiti could give new meaning to L'Union Fait La Force in the 21st Century!
