RED DE CONFIANZA

Pueblos y Ciudades de Cuba en la Red de Confianza/ Cuban Towns and Cities in the Network of Trust

Emergency Reconstruction Aid Plan to Cuba after the dictatorship

The Cuba Corps: Humanitarian Aid Project for Cuba’s Civil Society

Abstract: The idea of choosing 25 to 35 towns to send groups of volunteers to help in the initial reconstructive efforts centers around the main thrust of Basic Community Development philosophy in creating teams of neighbors to solve their own problems. This is teaching-by-doing, with a bit of led brainstorming, prioritizing, and decision-making by the teams as we go. The project links up the efforts and the work of the volunteers with those of the citizens taking charge of decision-making about their towns. Physical emergency aid will be divided in 4 areas: 1) food distribution 2) public health issues, especially cleaning the water supplies 3) garbage clean-up and disposal and 4) rebuilding and fix-up of houses in a chosen block or two. Volunteer teams will go for a month, replaced by a new team each month, for 6 months. Leaders stay and are networked through phones and internet with Havana and Miami. 

This emergency reconstruction aid plan does not contemplate The Cuba Corps’ larger plan for Cuba’s civil society in the areas of:

• The rule of law— guarantee of individual rights; judicial and constitutional framework and operation.
• Economic development and function—free markets and support to small, medium and large businesses; the sugar industry and agriculture; currency and banking; capital formation; real properties; trade, etc.
• Public and private health delivery systems
• Elementary and secondary education—education for a democracy and a market economy, in a system of laws.
• Technology and infrastructure—telecommunications, roads, electricity, water systems, etc.

Other areas of knowledge transfer will be studied and implemented as needed.

Preliminaries

In the US:

The Cuba Corps’ Logistics Coordinating Team will have prepared the specific manuals needed for the working teams to carry out their jobs, as well as the materiel required for each. Distribution inside Cuba will have been worked out.

1. – Confirmation of final list from Network of Trust in Cuba:

• Have on hand one or two names, addresses and telephones of the Democracy Facilitators in a given town.
• Establish direct phone conversation with said persons, confirming that the Team Leader (speaker) will be arriving with supplies on specific date.
• Secure boarding arrangements for Team leaders and 5 volunteers. Confirm them.         

2. - Confirmation of logistics and supplies with Logistics Coordinator prior to arrival and with General Coordinating Team in Cuba.

3. - Design and set-up of telecommunications system to be functional upon travel to Cuba, Miami-Havana-25 towns. Include laptops, phones, cells, text messaging capabilities, video facilities, etc.

In Cuba:

1. Emergency food and drinking water distribution (EFDW).

• Create nutritional tables for the very young and the very old, lactating mothers, the sick, etc. (Prepare a Nutritionists’ Manual)
• Select 3 or 4 sites, such as a school, or church, to set up the EFDW centers. Assign one volunteer to man each, aided by 3 or 4 locals selected by DF.
• Set up rotation schedules

2. Cleaning water supply (CW)

With the instructions (“Manual on how to clean a town’s water supply”) from our Public Health specialists, immediately set to work cleaning the sources of drinkable water available.

• Set up a problem-solving grid
• Create a time-line until the problem is solved
• Diagnose problem with town’s water supply, sewers, septic tanks, etc. for infra-structure teams to work on later.

3. Sanitation/ Major garbage and trash pick-up (S/G)

• (Supplied with Glad Bags or whatever brand of very strong and large garbage and leaf bags, and gardening gloves or specialty gloves for workers).
• Identify local garbage dump—follow public health guidelines (Manual on sanitation)
• Create schedule and divide town by area until all street garbage and trash is picked up.
• Establish system of garbage pickup and dumping, 2/week, 3/week—whatever schedule is indicated and doable.

4. Select two or three houses in a block for model housing refurbishing, cleaning and painting, utilizing Manual from Habitat for Humanity and the expertise of (Miami) local builders and contractors.

• House by house, roofs will be mended, walls buttressed, faulty bathrooms fixed, decent kitchens made-up, even with portable stoves.
• At that point, boards, spackle and paint will be applied, and even a small garden if at all possible or appropriate.
• Streets surrounding this block should be spotless, with public garbage bins, lights fixed if possible, pavement repaired.

5. Start-up of Community Education for a civil democratic society at the local level

The joints teams of neighbors and volunteers involved in a given town will follow an exactly learned model of Basic Community Education. One person not the team leader from The Cuba Corps will moderate and facilitate this model’s application, assuming responsibility for its application

 The BCE includes learning to brainstorm, writing the ideas in a board, selecting by vote the top 5/10/12 priorities, listing them separately to quantify them in cost of resources (manpower, materials, time), and creating a functional timetable, objectives and responsible persons in charge of seeing to the completion of the listed tasks. This cycle of problem-solving repeats itself for each major problem the teams encounter, making sure that they learn as they do. [Joint work with Creative Associates]

This is not a class or a lesson, but an organically taught way to do things; a local facilitator should be chosen after a month of this joint work to continue the community education programs.

Some of the short-term expected outcomes of the emergency aid project:

• To actually work; to take away the fear of repercussions for mistakes, to create true teamwork, to share responsibility for the fate of one’s town, to speak up and be respected, and to have leaders and non-leaders roll up their sleeves and work together. It is simply preparatory work, laying the foundation, for helping build civil society in Cuba (To think about: a small, fixed payment for hours of work, to begin to link work=income).
• To show, by doing, American values at work, especially showcase the American tradition of voluntarism and its underlying generosity.
• To build a solid experience of sharing and working together in tasks involving physical labor, as well as broad community goals, destroying the stereotypes about Cuban exiles and other Americans created by 50 years of political indoctrination..

Contact:

Mercy Cubas 306-766-0900 / mcubas@siboneyusa.com
Olga Nodarse 305-799-5855/ olganodarse@aol.com