>>Alison Stewart: The last time you were in
Haiti, what was something that you saw, an
event, a person, an experience that gave you
great hope. And what was something that you
saw that made you realize that we have so
much work still to do?
>>Sean Penn:
If I have a strength in Haiti, it's knowing
that I'm never going to understand Haiti.
I'm never going to be Haitian, so every day
is kind of magic for me, because it is a very
magic place. But when I've looked at the way
that NGOs around the world -- and in particular
in the history in Haiti -- have dominantly
separated themselves from government and in
many cases -- throughout the years for many
legitimate reasons. I that think when an NGO
doesn't work hand-in-hand with the government,
as well as the people, that that is the way
that you are ultimately going to be on the
treadmill and you will certainly give yourself
job security and you will always have the
poor by your side.
Um ... countries need governance. And so we
got -- we came in at a very fortunate time
because even after the earthquake, there was
a status quo in place, there were all of the
-- all of the -- the legendary, you know,
political culture issues ongoing, and the
people said no. And they stood up and they
showed us, it was clear to us, that who they
wanted in leadership. So we didn't have to
make a political decision and it wasn't ours
to make. We knew this is the team that they
have chosen, this is the people, this is the
leader they chose, now we -- we know the team
to work with. And so with that clarity and
with this kind of new day, so you then had
a kind of -- I always want to, if I have the
opportunity, share the physics of what has
been the last almost three years.
>>Alison Stewart: Uh-huh.
>>Sean Penn: Where one who has been there
and is certainly quick to complain, and the
-- on the question of where did all of the
money go? Well, the answer is if you're there
every day, I think you have a legitimate reason
to complain. Because it's -- it's slow, people
are still suffering from one point some 8
million people -- 1.8 million people displaced
down to about 370,000 people, well, that's
where the money went.
Enormous -- miracles have happened. And in
particular, when you consider that the U.N.,
as well as the Haitian ministries, were in
complete collapse. The death toll was among
those most committed, those who -- the government
offices that generally close at 4:00, the
earthquake happened at about 5:00.
>>Alison Stewart: They lost a lot of human
capital.
>>Sean Penn: They lost an enormous amount
of human capital. So to be two and a half
years later and to have experienced that initial
flood of support and money that was devoted
to Haiti but devoted in circumstances where
you can't -- it's very difficult to get out
there and describe to people the nuance of
-- the ministry is without capacity to properly
spend it and so on. So now we're at this kind
of moment where you have two things working
towards the middle, which is the people of
Haiti have significantly recovered from the
most potent aspect of the trauma. And they're
ready to do it. And then you have a leadership
and now we have to somehow get projects -- you
know, move with them to see those projects
become visible, first to the people of Haiti
and then to the people of the world.
Because there's -- Haiti is this little half
island that is really by population only a
city. It's 9 million people. Approximately
9 million people.
And so this -- this country of 9 million people,
an hour and a half from Miami Beach, can be
an incredible model for development, you know,
for the whole world. And frankly I think that
we're -- we're just in this -- when you talk
about, you know, what's -- what gives me hope,
well, I feel -- selfishly I feel just excited
that those of us that are working in Haiti
now are -- are -- I think we all feel very
much like we're in the front row of this heroic
slave rebellion state's first chance, where
it's -- you know, it has -- its neighbor the
United States is considering much fairer trade
policy issues and so on. And so it's an exciting
time to be in Haiti.
And so with every day, there are, of course,
heartbreaks. And frustrations. But there are
also lights that you can't put out.
And so, you know, we're -- we're witnessing
history, I think.
>>Alison Stewart: There's been a change in
the political leadership in Haiti since the
earthquake. How has that affected your work,
how has that affected the rebuilding of the
country?
>>Sean Penn: Well, you had previously -- you
know, I was actually quite -- I have a lot
of respect for President Preval, the former
president, but I think that it was quite clear
that -- that he himself was rather traumatized
by the earthquake and it wasn't -- it didn't
feed into the strengths of his leadership
skills.
The -- the very decisive leadership that's
in there now is, I think, exciting and motivating
everyone.
But you have, you know, President Preval was
a lame-duck candidate when the earthquake
happened. So there were also concerns about
project commitments and donor project commitments,
whether or not those would be implemented
by the following administration. Once the
people chose a new leadership, it wasn't you
know, I wouldn't play apples and oranges between
the between president of the leadership and
the current leadership, except that the current
leadership now has a significant period of
time in which to begin implementation and
the design of those projects.
>>Alison Stewart: Let me roll back a little
bit. When you first got to Haiti after the
earthquake, when did you realize this was
going to be more for you than someone who
cares, rushing in, spending a significant
amount of time, just being extremely long-term,
and I'm suspecting life-long commitment for
you?
>>Sean Penn: Well, it's funny, because I look
past you, I see Kate Stohr with Architecture
for Humanity. If I say Architecture for Humanity,
I can finish on this hand the organizations
I'm aware of in Haiti, now or historically,
that have done it and have not done it -- done
damage and have helped it.
We were early on, in fact, had someone from
that organization embedded with us, which
was a great help, because they had such a
great understanding of development, you know,
early on and things that we learned from.
But really the moment that I decided I wasn't
going anywhere, we had originally gone in
there to bring IV pain medication. I had seen
on the news -- my son had an accident where
I became very grateful for the existence of
medically managed morphine to relieve pain
and so I had seen that amputations were ongoing,
there were no IV pain medications and I had
access to 350,000 vials of morphine. And that
was delivered to the Venezuelan embassy, where
we got our pickup trucks. And so it was a
group of doctors that we brought in because
we had some room for them. And then we had
people willing to run around in pickup trucks
and deliver medications and our plan was to
be there for two weeks.
Very quickly we got involved with -- we got
embedded in a camp, which was the -- at the
time the largest internally displaced camp,
which later we came to manage.
And so it became known, because I wanted it
known to organizations that had medical infrastructure
and so on, we got it out there that we had
this big supply. So while we were trucking
stuff out every night, we didn't know everywhere
to go. We were new in town.
And in the management of the camp, we had
a big rain and so the commanding officer of
the United States military and some of his
people were up in our tent camp meeting with
us in the back room. We had a back tent, like
a staff tent.
And in the middle of this rainstorm, one of
my staff came back and interrupted us. And
said that there was an organization, one that
I had actually contributed to in the past,
a medical organization that needed morphine.
I said, "Give them all they want."
I mean, I had morphine like this in my tent.
[ Laughter ]
>>Alison Stewart: That's an odd image.
>>Sean Penn: Yeah, it's called temptation.
[ Laughter ]
>>Sean Penn: So I said that -- I was involved
in the meeting with the soldiers and I said,
"Just give it to 'em, give them all they need."
And our meeting went on for another hour and
a half. In the pouring rain. I had staff down
in the camp because at the time we had no
lighting in the camp and it was mayhem down
there, so they were down there with flashlights
and I had to get back down into the camp.
So finally, as we walked the general and his
people out, that organization was just driving
off. And there wasn't that much on the back
of their truck. I saw it as they drove off
in the rain. And I asked the fellow who had
originally come and interrupted us, "What
are they doing? I thought the point was that
people were suffering, and we're getting this
stuff to them."
And he rolled his eyes, he said, "They were
labeling it," which means they were taking
the stamp of their organization and putting
it on it so that --
>>Alison Stewart: Get the credit.
>>Sean Penn: And you know, coming in brand
new, homicide is a consideration.
[ Laughter ]
>>Sean Penn: You just can't get -- make the
connection. Now, of course, NGOs are dependent
on funding. This was the emergency phase of
things.
And so what it reminded me of was my day job.
I said, "This is very much like what happens
in the movies, but the stakes are much higher.
And I think that I know how to do it."
>>Alison Stewart: You mean all of the bullshit.
>>Sean Penn: All of the bullshit, yeah.
[ Laughter ]
>>Sean Penn: And so -- so we decided to stay
and out of that we, you know, we very quickly
had people like Dominique coming -- Haitians
coming and wanting to work for their country
and we were able to give them support and
then figure out ways to build more support.
And as you watched them build the organization,
and as I increasingly felt like a -- a very,
you know, I do feel valuable to it, but like
a valuable bystander in a Haitian organization.
You are also looking at kind of -- you get
on a railroad track in a tunnel and the train
is coming, you've got to keep running until
the job is done. So -- so now it's a constant
process of finding, in the octopus that is
J/P HRO and the several things that we're
involved in, when will we -- for example,
with rubble removal and engineering, we are
currently demolishing the presidential palace.
There are many buildings still to be demolished
that are dangerous to be retrofit. There are
still things to be built to get people out
of camps. But once the job is done, earthquake-related,
because that's why we were there in the first
place, well, then we have all of these trained
engineers now. And these teams. And you can
just cut that arm off, give some financing
to them to make these engineering companies,
and get into wherever the next gap is. And
that's kind of the -- the, you know -- you
are looking for where you can be, where you
can get out of the way.
>>Alison Stewart: Uh-huh. Hey, Scott, do we
have some of the photos loaded? Is that a
yes? All right. Can you do a little show and
tell and tell us about --
>>Sean Penn: Okay. This is what our camp looked
like --
>>Alison Stewart: Right there, too, if you
want to --
>>Sean Penn: Oh, yeah, all right. Okay. Yeah,
it's easier for me to see here.
[ Laughter ]
>>Alison Stewart: Okay.
>>Sean Penn: Okay. Yeah. So this was once
a golf -- a golf course, the only golf course
in Port-au-Prince. If the walls -- the wall
is about 16-feet high surrounding the golf
course. Half of it is in a neighborhood from
what you would call Haitian middle class to
slum. The other half moves up into -- outside
of the walls as it goes uphill moves into
the areas of the bourgeoisie. And probably
most people in the neighborhood had never
seen this before, this -- this empty space
surrounded by a very congested city. Until
the earthquake happened, the wall came down,
and within days, 35,000 people were there.
These are now tarp shelters. Initially it
would have been sheets, bed sheets, cardboard
shacks, thing like that. All of these have
dirt floors. And this was on a hill, at about
this incline, so this was initially determined
as the most dangerous subject of flood and
mudslide of all of the camps.
And so -- so what was needed was to get some
flood and drainage mitigations in initially
and that was why there was an emergency relocation
in the beginning. But this had represented
about 35,000 and then when food distributions
happened, within about 10 days, it blew up
to 60,000 people.
So one of the things that we and other organizations
now are most concerned about are the remaining
370,000 people in camps. This camp is down
-- we've been able to relocate over 40,000
people. So we're down to about 14,000 now.
But you're also in a situation where you had
an overpopulated city to begin with, living
in multi-level structures on very small plots.
You have a lot of complicated land tenure
issues. So if you're coming back to get -- to
get people back into those places, about 97%
of the population here were renters. So now
to try to get people who were renters back
and approved by landlords, back into those
properties with livelihood programs and some
kind of way that, you know, they're going
to be able to stay and find a way to ultimately
pay their way and so on, is the -- is the
big complication now. Because the people remaining
in the camps are really the most needy, the
ones that had the fewest options in the first
place.
>>Alison Stewart: This makes me wonder when
you talked about the renters, Haiti had problems
before the earthquake, a hideously obvious
statement.
Is there opportunity out of this tragedy for
people who had difficult circumstances that
with the rebuilding that there can be an infrastructure
and a future that includes them in a way that
perhaps they weren't included before the earthquake?
>>Sean Penn: Yeah, yeah. Yes, I think that
there's an enormous opportunity and I think
it's one, you know, that the world is obligated
to pay attention to because, you know, so
many resources have been pulled out of Haiti.
And Haiti has become import dependent where
it has enormous sectors of export potential.
Everything finally in Haiti is going to come
-- in my opinion is going to come down to
jobs.
I'll give you an example. When you look at
education as an emergency intervention, while,
of course, every young brain that is not being
exercised and encouraged is going to suffer
permanent damage for that.
>>Alison Stewart: Deprivation, yeah.
>>Sean Penn: So you have to provide education.
At the same time in the long-term any good
education you're providing is only to educate
them out of the country because there's no
job for them to apply that education to. So
it's always looking for some way to integrate.
And this is where technology is so important.
Where -- in all the conversations that I've
had with the people that I've talked to from
Google and so on is getting information chains
integrated, access integrated so that the
parts of this puzzle can work together and
where you can develop an agricultural sector
that can bring the peasant class up while
you're educating their children. And that
those -- you know, it's not rocket science
and it's particularly not rocket science with
a country of nine million people where you
can really model a success and learn a lot
of lessons.
>>Alison Stewart: Can we look at the next
slide?
You talk about your organization has a lot
of local folks who work in it, yeah? Why is
that important?
>>Sean Penn: Why is it important that it's
local?
Well --
>>Alison Stewart: Important to you.
>>Sean Penn: Well, they're just going to do
it better. It's their country, it's their
culture.
You know, even in medical, when we go in there
as a first response team, you know, you're
constantly having to reschool doctors from
abroad. Okay. You're going to give this person
an antibiotic, which is going to complete
their immune system long-term, might get them
over this current thing, but where are you
going to be with antibiotic the next time
they get it, so how do you apply medicine
in that circumstance? What adjustments do
you make?
The Haitians know. And then if you're working
with the Ministry of Health and you can establish
programs where those kinds of things will
be sustainable and available as they should
be, then you can start working with them to
improve upon it. But if you don't know what
it is to begin with and why it's the way it
is, we can't know that; they know it.
So -- and then like anywhere else, people
take the greatest pride in their own -- in
their home. So you've got to -- you know,
if I'm casting a movie I want the people that
are going to take the greatest pride in that
movie. So the automatic casting in this movie
is Haitians.
>>Alison Stewart: In a lot of yesterday's
sessions we talked about breaking down your
assumptions as a way to move forward and a
way to innovate and create.
What assumptions do you think well-meaning
people have about Haiti post-earthquake?
>>Sean Penn: About Haiti what?
>>Alison Stewart: Haiti post-earthquake. Assumptions
that are getting in the way of actually helping
in way that would make a long-term difference.
>>Sean Penn: Well, investment is a huge issue.
And so investment suffers from security concerns.
The security concerns -- the travel advisory
for Haiti is not based on security as, you
know, criminal issues. It's principally based
on medical care access, which is a real issue,
you know?
We have -- Haiti -- Port-au-Prince, let's
say, that's -- Port-au-Prince at night is
Detroit at night, exactly that. It's not more
dangerous, it's not less colorful. It's not
-- it's Detroit at night.
So this is a very visitable place. This is
a place where those foreign investors who
have had some cojones have come in and they're
making money. And where there's incredibly
exploitable, and I mean this in the best way,
sectors where you've got an incredible -- a
workforce that is -- this is the other thing.
That you have a dependency culture is as true
as -- they're one job away from it not being.
Because what we've found is that when you
-- people will often say to me, you know,
they'll give me development 1-A and I'll run
into somebody at a fund-raiser for Haiti.
"Sean, you know what you've really got to
do, I see you're with the President of Haiti
and all that. You've got to talk to the people."
Everyday I talk to the people, but they'll
come over and say, you know -- "I know Sean's
organization does this, but what do you need?"
You've got to ask three times because they've
had 30 years of practice of somebody asking
them that who is going to give something to
them once and walk away, and they're in a
survival mode and they're going to take what
they need today.
So you say, "No, no, no, but what do you need?"
And on the third time you say what do you
need, you've got a game plan because then
they'll tell you what you need. And then when
you work with them to get that you don't have
to be around anymore because they just take
off and do it.
And the biggest dependency culture in Haiti
is the two percent that represents the importers.
They are dependent on Haiti staying exactly
like it is to keep their import structure
and security sound.
And they will be the ones first to complain
about how dependency -- you're building dependency
in the Haitian people.
So when you figure out that myth and then
you take one other element of it, corruption,
how much corruption -- we can't apply -- it's
nine million people, they make one to two
dollars a day, and you've got three people
who are, you know -- do better than an actor
in Hollywood.
And then somebody who does, you know, a couple
of million dollars a year, runs -- they run
the town.
How much real corruption is going on? The
corruption is in -- it's a systemic thing
that has to do with how do you get people
to trust each other that they're not taking
$10 away versus $10 million away?
How do you get -- build the institutions that
are accused of corruption where really largely
what you're dealing with is the incompetency
because just to get an MBA to stay and work
in Haiti is difficult. And the only way that's
going to happen is if you have -- if people
look at the models of the businesses that
have come there that are making money.
Look at for example, Digicel, the telecom,
doing very well. And to talk, to engage with
those people and to see how it plays out,
again, it's like the three-question mode.
You can make -- things can work.
I think the biggest myth of Haiti is that
Haiti is on a treadmill of its own destruction
and what we're seeing now is we want to scream
out and say get in on it because now is the
time. This is the time it's going to work.
>>Alison Stewart: We're a little bit over,
but take a minute to address -- you have a
high wattage audience here. Take a minute
and tell them what you want them to know about
Haiti, about your project and what you need.
>>Sean Penn: Well --
[ Laughter ]
>>Sean Penn: No. I mean, the fact of the matter
is it's this or those who -- of course, we
have a website and all of this that you can
go to, but I think that I can talk shorthand
to this crowd.
I think there are plenty of people in this
room who know instinctually and know with
the resources that they have that the only
thing is missing is a visit to Haiti. And
I'm here to invite you down and be your host
and, you know, connect you with that area
or organization that can be the tour guide
to making that work.
I would just say that the -- rather than getting
into a lot of details that I've talked to
journalists who have been in all the conflict
areas of the world, people that we watch on
television every night, to NGO workers who
have been all over the world, and everyone
will tell you there's something about Haiti.
There's just something special about this
place.
So rather than me giving you a speech, I'd
just say, "Come on down, I'll pick you up
at the airport and we'll show you what it
is." And then you'll know better than me what's
going to turn you on and keep you interested
there.
>>Alison Stewart: Thank you, Sean.
>>Sean Penn: Thank you.
[ Applause ]
