HAITI: WHERE DID THE MONEY GO? Debuts on OPB TV on January 10

Updated: December 28, 2011

Millions of People Gave Billions of Dollars; Why Are at Least 600,000 Haitians Still Living in Squalor?

Debuting on OPB on January 10 at 10pm, the documentary HAITI: WHERE DID THE MONEY GO? examines the relief effort in Haiti after the devastating earthquake on January 12, 2010.

In the United States alone, half of all households gave a total of $1.4 billion to charities, yet almost two years later more than half a million people still live in squalid camps. Only a few have access to drinking water. Sanitation is woefully inadequate. Malnutrition and cholera are on the rise. What happened?

Public television stations across the U.S. will begin airing the documentary HAITI: WHERE DID THE MONEY GO? this January to coincide with the two-year anniversary of the earthquake of 2010.

HAITI: WHERE DID THE MONEY GO? asks the pivotal questions, "Why did so much money buy so little relief? And why are so many still living in squalor?" Click here for a brief preview.

Cameras take viewers to crowded camps where thousands of families live under tattered tarps beside overflowing latrines, and then into the board rooms of relief organizations, where journalist Michele Mitchell asks the American Red Cross and others about why conditions in Haiti continue to deteriorate when people have donated billions of dollars for aid.

Mitchell visited camps in Haiti in the fall of 2010 and again 10 months later in the fall of 2011. “I was shocked to see how much worse things had gotten.” While in the spring of 2011, half of the camps had access to drinking water, by fall that number had dropped to only seven percent.

Although the UN estimates a need for 12,000 latrines, far fewer were built and most of those aren’t working, leaving the camps with one working latrine for every 300 people.

Mitchell travels with relief workers who had high hopes for a coordinated effort to rebuild Haiti, but are now frustrated to see that conditions fall far short of recognized standards for relief housing. Relief workers and journalists on the ground tell her this is business as usual in the aid world.

Michele Mitchell worked as an investigative correspondent to NOW with Bill Moyers. Her story about slavery in Nepal for NOW with David Brancaccio won an honorary citation at the Overseas Press Awards in 2009. Currently she is executive editor of Film at 11, an independent media company that distributes digital news programming.

HAITI: WHERE DID THE MONEY GO? is presented to the public television system by Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) and distributed by the National Educational Telecommunications Association (NETA).