Our efforts to celebrate Haiti's cultural heritage made a big splash this year. Check out the amazing coverage of Green Family Foundation in SunPost Weekly's "Miami 2010: A Look Back" article which showcases the coolest and most noteworthy happenings in Miami last year.

Here's an excerpt that mentions GFF:

"If you checked the list of this year's Grammy nominations you'll have seen two entries for Alan Lomax in Haiti: Recordings for the Library of Congress, 1936-1937, which received nods for both Best Historical Album and Best Album Notes. Captured by a then 21-year-old Lomax and featuring a plethora of song styles, the 10-disc box set was execuitive produced by Kimberly Green of the Green Family Foundation (GFF) and it has helped pave the way for Haiti to again be considered for its culture rather than its tragedies. Right after the earthquake, GFF and actor Fisher Stevens (whose documentary War Against War covers the country's UN peacekeeping mission) launched "This is Haiti," a series of PSAs culled from Lomax's recordings and narrated by the likes of Naomi Watts, Ben Stiller and Sting. Since then the music has been used as a backdrop and focus point to the GFF-backed tour Sinema anba Zetwal" (Cinema Under the Stars(, which produced concerts and film screenings all along the fault-line and gave Haitians a chance to see and hear the sounds of their forebears, in many cases for the first time. And more recently the revered New Orleans Jazz Festival invited GFF and its partners, among them Anna Lomax Wood, the ethnomusicologist's daughter, to curate the Haiti Pavilion in 2011. As the adage says: "perception is everything." And until Haiti is perceived to be a country filled with people of instead of victims, there can be no true change."

Read the entire article.

December 29, 2010
The Special Representative for the Organisation of American States (OAS) Ricardo Seitenfus was fired 24 hours after he gave a candid interview to the Swiss newspaper Le Temps on Monday December 20, 2010. "Imposed" UN troops, NGOs that exist only because of Haiti's misfortune and the role international capitalism plays in Haiti's ills were among the topics he spoke about.

Was he relieved of his duties because of his comments? Investigative journalist, author and Haiti relief worker Georgianne Nienaber weighs in via the The Huffington Post.

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December 26, 2010
"Do YOU for Haiti," is the call to action spoken by political punk band Cipher on the 100 Shows for Haiti website. This coming January, activists, artists, and regular people from around the world are working together to put on simultaneous events on and around January 12th, the day of last year's devastating Haiti earthquake, to raise money for two Haitian relief organizations: Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees and One Hundred for Haiti.

We invite you to visit their website and find out how it works. Perhaps you can create an event of your own to help in the cause. Or maybe you can attend an event; there is a list by state and country of participating shows.

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Journalism is supposedly the first draft of history, but when it comes to the Haiti earthquake of 2010, Assistant Professor of Romance Languages and Literature Regine Jean-Charles only hopes the subsequent drafts are better than what she’s seen thus far.

The American-born daughter of Haitian immigrants who returned to their native country, Jean-Charles says media coverage in the aftermath of the devastating Jan. 12 earthquake — which killed an estimated 230,000 people and left at least a million others homeless — has, however well-intentioned, helped reinforce longstanding negative stereotypes about Haiti.

Check out this great article from the Boston College Chronicle.

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