I'd like to read Haitian blogs but... (No more excuses!)

"How do I read Haitian Blogs?"
"What are blogs?"
"Who has the time to blog?"
"Are there any Haitian blogs out there?"
"How do you keep up with all this stuff?
"Are Haitians saying anything good on Twitter?"


No more excuses.


I spent the last two days aggregating all Haitian blogs known to me in this neat collection:
haitianbloggers.collected

We are far from that day in 2005 when Georgia Popplewell, then Caribbean Editor of Global Voices asked me "why are there no Haitian Blogs?". Haitians have caught on to web 2.0 in the era of Twitter so if many the blogs in the collection are written by diaspora Haitians, Haitians in Haiti are certainly twittering, as you will see in my "Friends in Haiti" Twitter list:
twitter.com/kiskeacity/friends-in-haiti

Haiti twitterers like Carel Pèdre used social and citizen media to break out some of the first images and news the world found out about the EQ. This has won him several awards.

Among the Haitian bloggers based in Haiti are: Alain "The Haitian" Armand, Amstyl Polycarpe, Nancy Leconte Chapoteau, Yael Talleyrand, Carel Pèdre, Régine Zamor, Nadine Mondestin, Richard Morse etc. (As most bloggers today most both tweet and blog. After all tweeting is none other than micro-blogging and it is only so as not to drawn out the bloggers that I did not put many twitter feeds in the aggregator. Thanks Marvin Chéry for pointing it out.) 

One unfortunate fact: Richard Morse's blog at the Huffington Post does not have a feed of its own. (Can you hear me cringe?)  As his 14,000 twitter followers may  make him be the best known Haitian blogger today, I thought of putting his twitter feed in the aggregator but backtracked when I realized that it drowned out the other blogs. (Most bloggers post once a week while tweeters can tweet 20-100 times a day.) But thankfully, you can catch him in the Friends in Haiti Twitter list. (Update: Richard Morse's HuffPo feed has been found and added to the aggregator.)


There is a ways to go in putting citizen and social media tools in the hands of Haitians who neither read, write (about 50% of the population) nor speak English and for influencers to begin viewing social and citizen media as part of literacy. Several experiments with this are being done in India and with migrant laborers in California, using video or the social media tool everyone possesses, even in Haiti: the dumbphone. We will get there and I have no doubt that the aggregator will reflect those voices within a reasonable time.


Please feel free to send any additions in the comment section of this blog, via twitter or in the "suggest a feed" section of the aggregator.

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Interesting numbers about Haitian-Americans

From World Bank economist Dilip Ratha's Blog about migrations, remittances and development:

"By the way, if you are wondering whether Haitian immigrants are too poor to invest, consider this fact from the Current Population Survey of the US: nearly one-third of Haitian immigrants in the US belong to households that earned more than $60,000 in 2009. In comparison, less than 15% of the immigrants from Mexico, Dominican Republic and El Salvador in the US had that level of household income. A quarter of Haitian immigrants, especially women, are reportedly in the relatively higher paying health care and education sectors; only a small number of them are in the construction sector."

(Thanks Carla Murphy, for highlighting this quote.)