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/
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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.
Friends, sorry (my English is still beginner-level) but, I'm trying. Well, what's the persistent trouble that hinders you the most in your daily life? In my case, it's problems with sensory stimuli. For example, sounds. It causes me a lot of anxiety too and makes my case of high blood sugar worse (I have type 2 diabetes). Medicines don't help me..only physical exercises
I've had good luck with walking. Granted, my pace is faster than most people walk (4 miles per hour), but that's just how I walk. At the end of an hour I've worked up a good sweat, and I'm totally relaxed. A couple of those a day does it for me.
Find the right shoes. When I started walking I wore my regular shoes, and they hurt me, especially my joints. I started getting good shoes, with very cushiony soles, and it was immediately better.
N628TS (Elon’s main jet the Gulfstream G650) appears to be in maintenance. This is the reason for lack of updates. It appears he is currently using SpaceX’s other jet N272BG.
Hello everyone, how is the law structured for individuals with autism in your country? Are there specific rights or provisions? Please, can you discuss them? And, where are you from? #it#autism#adhd
Final stages before submitting a manuscript and getting angry with the journal's citation style that's APA7-but-not-quite-in-a-number-of-small-petty-ways. Checked the #Zotero stylesheet repository and found that a kind soul has already uploaded a stylesheet for that journal! 🙏 Unfortunately, it was created when the journal had their specially petty version of APA6 so I need to edit it. Okay, fine. And that's how I found that "the kind soul" happens to have exactly the same name as me! 😅 🙈
Maybe one of the dirtiest groups of people on the planet, the #GOP. And there's well over a dozen of em. They deserved to be clowned on. Y'all got jokes?
#ttrpg#worldbuiding tip: If you want to get some inspiration, get "The Dictionary of Imaginary Places" - a guidebook to fantastic locations from world literature. You'll be sure to find something interesting to put into your own settings!
@juergen_hubert Deutsche Ausgabe "Von Atlantis bis Utopia" 3Bde, beim Ullstein-Verlag. Steht bei mir im Regal. Hardcover beim Christian Verlag (siehe Bild) #Bookstodon@buchstodon