My old friend (and for almost thirty years my family's doctor) Dan Johnson has a charity he started in memory of his son, Alec, who was drowned in 2014. One of the projects they are supporting is helping a couple who work in Haiti with abandoned children (and aren't part of the Haitian "orphanage industry"). The couple are raising funds to buy the compound they and the children are in, and I'm helping Dan by linking to https://cultivating-community.org/
Watch the video and share the post...
Alec was my younger brother. He was a brilliant applied mathematician, changing how we use computers to understand magnetic reconnection. This work helped us to understanding better how the earth's magnetosphere interacts with solar wind, something that sounds esoteric until you realize that the stability of our power grid and satellite navigation depend on an accurate understanding. It will also be essential if we ever achieve power generation by nuclear fusion.
He wasn't just brilliant, though. He cared deeply about others, and always in meaningful and concrete ways. Shortly before he died, he was telling me excitedly about his plans to visit his friends Pierre and Natalie in Haiti, whom he had helped financially for years in their work, rescuing and rehabilitating so-called "orphans" who were mostly abandoned. Pierre knew about this intimately, because he himself was abandoned by his living mother, disowned by his living father, and abused as a restavek (literally, "stay-with") child-slave.
If this makes you more curious about the backstory for this project, the long version with more details is here:
@CoastalCoasting@neilhimself There's a lot of horror. If you want more horror, read the LUMOS report itself. It's a hard read. ☹
There has been a lot of "missions tourism" to Haiti, with good intentions. Many individuals have built relationships and helped others. But also many relationships have been abused. There is a difference between visiting and working to help and investigating to identify wrongdoing. Most of the "orphanages" are local facilities, locally staffed, receiving western aid money. Not "under the care of missionaries" typically. Not all the orphanages maltreat the children. But even the best orphanage is not the same as being placed in a family, and this is true around the world, not just in Haiti.
I am not an expert on Haitian law or law enforcement, so I can't go into detail on what legal remedies and resources might theoretically be available. However, if you've been following recent news about Haiti, you will have seen there is a lot of lawlessness. The US Department of State has Haiti on its most restrictive level, "Do Not Travel," as a result. You can read about it here:
"Do not travel to Haiti due to kidnapping, crime, civil unrest, and poor health care infrastructure. On July 27, 2023, the Department of State ordered the departure of family members of U.S. government employees and non-emergency U.S. government employees. U.S. citizens in Haiti should depart Haiti as soon as possible by commercial or other privately available transportation options, in light of the current security situation and infrastructure challenges. U.S. citizens wishing to depart Port-au-Prince should monitor local news and only do so when considered safe..."
It's a sad and hard situation. One Gift, One Child isn't fixing it all, but it's showing a different way to care for abandoned children than institutionalization of any sort, regardless of whether it is abusive.
Interesting! I view it almost completely oppositely (the RSS feeds I read are separate from social media on purpose, even though I often use RSS to glue things together); I'm glad there's options.
@StevenSaus@thunderbird@Inoreader@samsantaella@resol@feditips I used to keep them in Feedly but found with Lists (called Circles in Friendica but same thing) that I could separate by topics or feeds or whatever and eliminate one more service. A side benefit is that Feedly has limited client platform support whereas Fedi has good support everywhere I want to be. The only thing I miss from my RSS reader is the mark as read functionality. For me that isn't a deal breaker though.
#introduction post? Hi, I'm Dan.
I don't generally do social media. And yet here I am. Trying out this Fedi thing,
excited to have a space where I can just be myself.
I'm recently self diagnosed #ActuallyAutistic, #PDA, #Aphantasia, #Anauralia & officially #ADHD (39yo, better late than never!)
It's been so enlightening to finally start learning and embracing who I really am.
Meeting other autistic people has been amazing and is helping me feel less alone.
I just wish the newly announced animated vignettes with 90s legacy characters were actually going to be done in the Filmation style. I wasn’t at all impressed with the main character designs that were released at SDCC.
@elonjet To add further context, the average carbon footprint of a single person, per year, is ~5 tonnes. So Elon Nazi Musk there is putting out as much in one trip, as your average family of 4 does in an entire year, if they have two cars.
If my dental insurance has 100% coinsurance on preventative and basic care, 70% coinsurance on major care, a deductible of $50, and a maximum payout of $2000, does that mean I can only spend the insurance $ on major services and pay out of pocket for everything else?
Of course! Hopefully they can look into a different future plan. I do know a lot of people who just don’t bother with dental insurance due to the poor coverage overall.
It’s a shame most of the world doesn’t treat dental as medical considering the health risks of not treating those conditions.