news
GROUPS SEEK FUNDING
FOR HAITI RELIEF
10 JANUARY 21, 2010 EUGENE WEEKLY
briefs
LYLLIAN BREITENSTEIN
Eugeneans can do their part to
help victims of the recent earth-
quake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, at
a fundraiser at Pizza Research
Institute on Saturday, Jan. 23.
Eugene’s Haitian Sustainable
Development
Foundation
(HSDF) has been working to
help Haitian communities since
founder and president Michael
Schapiro returned from his Peace
Corps work in Haiti in 2001.
Schapiro says in one way the
recent earthquake is “almost like
weird blessing in disguise” in
Haitian children
that the disaster “is finally get-
helped by HSDF
ting Haiti the help that it has
needed.”
Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and critics of U.S.
foreign policy have questioned why the government has spent billions on
“nation building” in the Middle East but not on a country less than 700 miles
from Florida. Haiti’s 7.0 earthquake is currently estimated to have killed
70,000 people, and many thousands more are missing. By contrast a 7.1 quake
in California in 1989 killed 63 people. One factor in the disparity in deaths,
experts say, is Haiti’s poverty and weak infrastructure.
Schapiro says the local based HSDF as a sustainable development organization
has been working with Haitian community groups on projects like education,
libraries, biodiesel and permaculture. Now the group is working with their contacts
in Haiti to provide on the ground relief to areas of Haiti that have not received help
from larger NGOs. After the quake HSDF will work on infrastructure, rebuilding
and technical assistance and training in Haitian communities.
One of the group’s board members, Amber Munger is in Haiti right now,
and keeping them appraised of developments. “We’re gathering and sharing
information and coordinating with on the ground response teams,” Schapiro
says. “A lot of things change every minute,” he says. The group is working to
provide water, food, medical supplies and fuel, he says.
One of HSDF’s volunteers, Alicia Swaringen, is focusing her efforts on
Saturday’s fundraiser to distract her from worrying about Sthainder, the 4-year-
old boy she has been in the process of adopting from Haiti through Eugene-
based Holt International.
She says the paperwork is almost complete, and she had planned to bring
her adopted son home to Eugene in May. She needs one signature, a passport
and a visa, but she says now she doesn’t know if the Haitian officials working
on the paperwork are still alive or if the buildings are still standing, though
Holt International has copies of all the paperwork.
Swaringen says she knows that Sthainder is safe. Holt’s Fontana Village,
where the 21 children in the process of being adopted are housed, 30 miles
outside Port-au-Prince, is relatively unscathed, though according to a press
release from Holt at least three staff members were killed.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told CNN she was “personally directing
that we do everything we can to try to find and identify those children who are
already adoptable … and to try to expedite all the paperwork.” Swaringen says
Holt’s adoption process is extremely thorough, “Any family that is adopting
through Holt has jumped through all the hoops before the Haitian government
even sees the application.”
“I think the kids should be expedited,” she says, “and free up the beds for
other children.”
She says she was inspired to adopt from Haiti after meeting and talking to
Schapiro about the country.
Schapiro and other members of the HSDF will be at the fundraiser on Jan.
23 to answer questions. He hopes that board member Kathy McCallister will
come down from Seattle with her husband Bidex Desruisseau, who was in
Haiti and survived the quake in a building where everyone else was killed.
McCallister is hoping to bring her husband home from Haiti as soon as possi-
ble, but Schapiro says communication with the island is still sporadic.
For those who have been worried about various scams that have arisen
around the recent Haitian disaster, Schapiro says he and others will be avail-
able to answer questions about where the money is going. He says he hopes
this will also lead to ongoing fundraising for sustainable projects in Haiti.
The fundraiser, Ayiti! Benefit for Haiti, starts at 5:30 pm Saturday, and will
have a silent auction, music by The Beat Crunchers and Won Tan Nara and an
information table. PRI is donating the space and a percentage of the proceeds
from food sales. The event is free from 5:30-9:30 pm. At 9:30 when the music
starts, tickets are $10 - $1000, sliding scale. For more information, go to www.
sustainablehaiti.org or call (541) 915-5541. See more Haiti events and web-
sites on next page. — Camilla Mortensen
NUTRIA KILLS
NECESSARY?
EWEB’s eradication program for nutria
is still raising hackles among Eugeneans
concerned not only about the affect of the
lethal trapping on the water-living rodents,
but upon the possible damage to native
species as well as people and pets.
According to Lyllian Breitenstein who
first drew attention to the lethal traps at
Walterville pond, “There is no way to
ensure that the only thing that is caught in
these traps are nutria.”
She says not only are the traps “inhu-
mane and cruel,” but she is troubled by the
fact that they are indiscriminate in what
they catch and she is “concerned about
people, especially kids, as well as pets and
wildlife including otter, fox, bobcat, deer,
happening people
coot, geese and other wildlife who fre-
quent the pond.”
Joe Harwood, external communica-
tions coordinator for EWEB, says the
nutria eradication, which has been through
archery as well as lethal and live trapping,
is necessary because the utility was ordered
by the Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission to repair damage done by the
rodents and prevent future damage after an
inspection noted burrowing tunnels in the
banks of the power canals.
Rodent burrows were blamed for the
2008 failure of an irrigation canal in
Fernley, Nev., which flooded 600 homes.
Harwood says water enters into the bur-
rows and tunnels and weakens the earthen
walls. There has been speculation that
nutria burrows contributed to the weaken-
ing of the levees that failed around New
Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
Harwood says, “I can’t emphasize
enough how much we struggled with this
idea.” He says rather than close off the
popular dogwalking spot along Walterville
Pond and the Leaburg canal, EWEB chose
to let it remain open for public use, and
“post the heck” out of the area with signs
warning of the lethal traps and asking that
dogs be kept on leash.
The traps are in the Leaburg canal,
behind blackberry vines and brambles.
Breaks in the thorny vines are posted with
signs and red tape. Breitenstein says,
“Maybe adults can read the signs, but chil-
dren and other animals can’t.” She adds,
“The signs are only in English. The traps
are lethal. You would think they should be
in Spanish as well.”
The non-brushy side of Leaburg canal,
across from the traps, is not lined with
traps or signed, and Breitenstein says
many people play fetch with their dogs in
that area. Harwood says owners would
have to let their dogs swim through fast
moving water in cold January weather to
BY PAUL NEEVEL
DEBORAH SADOWSKY
Growing up on Long Island, N.Y.,
Deborah Sadowsky couldn’t relate to
suburban life. As soon as she finished
a degree in English at the University
of Buffalo, she headed west to San
Francisco. “I took a painting class at
the Art Institute,” she says. “It was an
‘aha’ for me. It felt right in a deep
way.” She moved to Eugene in 1973,
took art classes at LCC, then started
an independent-study master’s pro-
gram in art therapy at the UO. “I got
training at a Pratt Institute summer
program in New Hampshire and did
an internship here,” says Sadowsky,
who finished her degree in 1978, then
worked as an art therapist in Albany,
N.Y., and at a number of psychiatric
hospitals in the San Francisco Bay
Area before returning to Eugene in
1992. She developed and ran a pro-
gram for at-risk youth at the Cottage
Grove Counseling Clinic, then moved
to Options Counseling in Eugene, where she was trained in chronic pain work.
For the past decade she’s been a counselor in the Johnson Unit at Sacred
Heart Hospital. A member of the Pain Society of Oregon, she received a grant
in 2006 to develop an art therapy program for chronic pain. “It’s a way for
people to express what they can’t talk about, to explore their experience,” she
says. “It’s intense work, but really rewarding.”
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