Education: Ideas for Colleges and Universities

Lots of schools have run short-term projects in Haiti, but these need to come to a halt for now; “disaster tourism” is grotesque (at least these trips should halt for the vast majority of undergraduate students, I can see some benefit to Haiti for some graduate and professional degree programs to have students go to Haiti as part of their education.)

Instead, schools should pull together and consider the following ideas. Granted, these ideas require more sophistication than the efforts many schools have put forth in the past, but there are more than a few schools in the US that could pull some of this off (in some places perhaps with the financial and organizational contributions of large dioceses, or in conjunction with major donors). Schools with fewer resources could then piggy-back on other schools' efforts (although I do not know if schools, in the US at least, are well known for running multi-institution programs).

Pair with some other universities in the US, Canada, France, etc. to help reopen and rebuild universities in Haiti. This would be a major commitment, of course, and require some staff in the US to keep things organized. But if the schools find a donor to support this as their way of helping Haiti, it could be very effective. The actual mission of the schools in Haiti should be based on the needs of Haiti (e.g., a two-year agriculture school or training center for rural health educators may not be as sexy as a building your own major hospital but it may be as important and address deeper problems).
Partnering with several other universities, again, a program should be set up to allow Haitian and Haitian-American graduate students to spend one or two year long fellowships in Haiti. Such efforts could be more flexible than the Peace Corps and more similar to the international fellowships run by the Congressional Hunger Center. Add to that some concurrent training in policy analysis, management, and professional writing, and this has the potential to develop future leaders for Haiti or US-Haiti relations.
Less grand but potentially very useful would be the establishment of a center that follows and tracks the evaluation of projects in Haiti. There is the possibility that this could be of great value around the world: a lot of innovative projects will be starting in Haiti and the need for South-South exchanges as well as rigorous evaluations of the programs could be very important and even make a lasting positive mark on the entire field of international assistance.