Actor Sean Penn seeks new spotlight for Haiti

Oscar-winning actor Sean Penn appealed in Vienna, for the world’s attention to turn back to Haiti, over a year after a devastating earthquake, as he sought donations for his relief organisation.

“For everyone working there, they are very long days and weeks and there are years and years and years ahead,” the co-founder of the Haitian Relief Organisation said ahead of a gala dinner to raise funds.

“I think we have an opportunity to keep Haiti from being the old kind of headline and give it the opportunity to be the new kind, of really encouraging triumph, Haitian resilience and the potential success of international relief,” he added.

At the same time, Mr Penn lashed out, however, at the red-tape and hurdles in the way of relief work.

“There are competing cultures in the international relief world: one is the culture of emergency relief and the other one is the culture of sustainable development and these have to work with each other against the problem of poverty and against each other in competition for donors.”

“It’s one of the basic embarrassments and failures in the aid community.”

The famously outspoken actor also slammed false wisdom instead of action on the ground.

“The idea is to... support them (Haitians), and not to rely on cliches like the one that always drives me crazy: ‘Don’t give them fish, teach them to fish’. If there’s no fish in the fucking pond, you can teach them all you want.”

Mr Penn was invited to Vienna by the Austrian platform Power of Hope as part of a donation drive for Haiti Tuesday evening with political and business leaders from Austria.

“This is not a celebrity issue, it’s about getting Haiti back in the media and also using Sean Penn’s popularity to do so,” Karl Pumper, one of the founders of Power of Hope, told journalists.

Mr Penn also met Agriculture and Environment Minister Niki Berlakovich and Finance State Secretary Reinhold Lopatka over lunch to discuss Austrian projects in Haiti.