Seven months after the devastating 7.0 magnitude earthquake, Dr. Ami Ben-Artzi witnessed firsthand the needs of the Haitian community at a community center on the island nation.

As part of a trip to find a community in need of UC aid, the assistant clinical professor of medicine at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, spoke with women who were praying at the center.

Instead of asking for charity, the women urged members of the UC Haiti Initiative to find a way to bring jobs to Haiti so they could earn money to improve the lives of the people.

Ben-Artzi’s trip was part of a visit to Haiti which included 20 UC students and faculty members from Aug. 14 to 21. The faculty paid for its plane tickets, while the rest of the cost was paid for by UCLA, Ben-Artzi said.

Through the trip, the initiative hoped to find a community in Haiti that could use the university’s expertise in education and research in its recovery efforts, from improving local infrastructure to training medical personnel, he said.

The initiative hopes to distinguish itself as an educational organization, instead of just another nonprofit, said Anna Alexandroni, the initiative’s co-director of economics and law and director of the UCLA branch.

In Haiti, the representatives were divided into six sectors, including engineering and technology, economics and law, arts and culture and education.

These individuals attended about five to six meetings a day, and met with various community and government leaders, visiting six different towns, Ben-Artzi said.

During his visit to a university hospital, Ben-Artzi was told that there was a lack of community health workers in Haiti.

Adding to this deficit, there was only one doctor specializing in rheumatology, a subspecialty of internal medicine and pediatrics, and no programs to train doctors in subspecialities such as neurology.

Now, he is applying for a grant to develop a rheumatology training program for Haiti’s University and Educational Hospital.

The money would cover travel expenses and teaching supplies.

According to Ben-Artzi, Haitians have mixed feelings about non-governmental organizations, as some feel these groups can take away jobs and promote a culture of dependency.

For instance, after charities distributed free medicine to many survivors, local pharmacies struggled to compete. By focusing on education, the initiative will avoid this, he said.

UC Berkeley student leaders Tu Tran and Will Smelko started the UC Haiti Initiative when they found there was no system-wide UC response to the earthquake, said Nicolas Pascal, the student executive director of the UC Haiti Initiative.

The initiative officially began on April 24 with the UC Haiti Summit at UC San Francisco, Pascal said.

The representatives came back from the trip with a short list of potential partners and greater understanding of the plight of the Haitian survivors, Ben-Artzi said. Whatever capacity the community has, the initiative hopes to augment and improve.

In the coming months, the initiative will decide on a final partner city, discuss which projects to undertake, and apply for grants, Alexandroni said.

Currently, Cayes-Jacmel, a suburb of Jacmel, is the most likely candidate, said Josh Morrison, a fourth-year global studies student and the initiative’s student director of education.

The initiative found the suburb’s fishing and tourism industries had growth potential, which it can help develop, as well a number of contacts that were willing to work with it.

Since the earthquake struck the country’s capital of Port-au-Prince, which is home to a large percentage of Haitians, the President of Haiti has been calling for decentralization by urging Haitians to immigrate to other parts of the country, such as Cayes-Jacmel.

The next step for the initiative is to raise money, begin a campaign to promote the concept across the UC system, and invite students and faculty to propose projects to the initiative, Ben-Artzi said.

He said he hopes that the initiative will serve as a model for helping communities both in the U.S. and abroad recover from disasters.

“Even if only one out of a hundred members of the UC community contributes a little to the education of one community, taken together, many projects done simultaneously will have a large impact on development.” Ben-Artzi said.