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One thing is clear. Haiti has suffered an unprecedented blow to all sectors of society. Only a few short days ago, positive stories were emerging from Haiti. People were talking about political stability, nascent economic growth and a long-deserved and hard-earned sense of optimism about the future. Businesses were reinvesting in the nation, bringing new jobs; and elections were scheduled for the end of February. The timing of this tragedy could not have been worse. Despite the recent gains, the earthquake and its deadly impact pose the greatest threat yet to the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation.

The sheer scale of physical destruction, economic devastation, and human suffering is enormous, and carries with it not only the obvious immediate challenges, but more serious long-term implications for the country's future. Haiti will need a major realignment of its infrastructure as well as its strategies to ensure more effective implementation of policies that can eventually mitigate the impact of natural disasters.

The solidarity and support from sister countries throughout the Americas will also be instrumental in fostering a climate of peace and security. This support will be even more important in the months and years ahead as Haiti works to simply return to its condition prior to the earthquake. Haiti's private sector and civil society, as well as its diaspora communities, will have to assume a major role in the country's reconstruction through an injection of human, social and financial capital.

We need to start not throwing money at the problem but starting investing more in the solutions and try to create a social business where people don't feel they're entitled to free things but try to create a system - very difficult, it's easier to say than to do - but trying to create a social business where people don't expect everything for free, that they have to start working and creating a system where they will feed people by making sure that the economy is helped by buying locally. Let's not send more food. Let's send food the first week, but after, let's work with the local farmers to make sure that those farmers become part of the solution of creating jobs, of making sure that the economy is self-sustaining. And this is - this should be the beginning of, hopefully, a long but beautiful recovery.

Mr. ANDRES: Very conflicted. What the last caller mentioned, it's what's happening, but you know, it's - as he said, it's part of the economy of rebuilding. Unfortunately, this is part of our world - is people that have everything, and these people that have nothing. I mean, a place like Haiti, you see everyone working side by side. You're in a hotel having a perfect meal, and right across from your hotel, literally two meters, three, five meters away from the door, you have a camp. And that makes you think. That makes you think. And this is why I came back and I incorporated these organizations that right now we are only three, four people, all central kitchen, with the intention of feeding the world in a clean sustainable way.

What I realize is that the people feel as if they're not getting involved in the solution to the problem. They're just waiting around, not knowing what's going on. Until, as the chef just said, until we get them involved, until we show them the solution have to come from within, no matter what we do, we will not bring about the solution to that situation. As he said, we - the people will feel a sense of entitlement, as if everything is owed(ph) to them, or we're going to bring everything free to them. If you give me every day, I'm going to hope to get something from you every day. If you do not show me how to fish, when you're not around, how am I going to survive? If my economy is not sustainable, doable, how I'm going to survive when you're not around to bring me food?

ut as tenacious as oppression and deprivation have been throughout Haitian history, the country’s highly organized grassroots movement has never given up the battle its enslaved ancestors began. The movement is composed of women, peasants, street vendors, human rights advocates, clergy and laity, workers, and others. The mobilizations, protests, and advocacy have brought down dictators, staved off some of the worst of economic policies aimed at others’ profit, and kept the population from ever fitting quietly into anyone else’s plans for them.

“We’ve shared our pain and our suffering,” said Mesita Attis of the market women’s support group Martyred Women of Brave Ayibobo. “If you heard your baby in the ruins crying ‘Mommy, Mommy, Mommy,’ 14 people would run help you. If you don’t have a piece of bread, someone will give you theirs.”

“The tremendous chain of solidarity of the people we saw from the day of the earthquake on: That is our capacity. That is our victory. That is our heart. From the first hour Haitians engaged in every type of solidarity imaginable—one supporting the other, one helping the other, one saving the other. If any of us is alive today, we can say that it’s thanks to this solidarity.”