Wanted, both Haitian and non-Haitian farmers, growers, food processors, venture capitalists, educators and government officials, non-profits, NGOs and Governments interested in the Haitian reconstruction: We have the solution to Haiti’s regrowth and it involves MORE than just an end to the marginalization of Haiti, the forgiveness of WTO debt and the disposal of ALL international trade embargoes, it involves teaching Haitians to work their country and it requires our help.
In the most recent years preceding Haiti’s earthquake, Haitian business leaders and entrepreneurs have been focusing on growing on Haiti’s greatest hope, agriculture and education. Prior to the quake, the average Haitian family could be described as duo-parental with 6-8 children. Such families were being fed on farm plots less than 2 acres in size by people untrained or unskilled at farming, and worse, their situation was regularly hampered by flashfloods and hurricanes, with no cash reserves for recovery. Rather than continuing attempts to scrape an existence out of the dirt, many farmers fled to the capital hoping to find work or opportunity unavailable to them on the farm. Some were successful, but many were not.
As such, the situation created severely dense concentrations of people in the capital city of Port-au-Prince on the day of the quake which helps explain why it was so devastating to so many. Over 1.5 million people in the quake zone find themselves altogether destitute. The United Nations Development Programme has begun by offering jobs to Haitians who are willing to work clearing rubble from the devasatated capital. This project alone is expected to provide a job to over 200,000 Haitians, which will in turn directly benefit 1,000,000. Once the rubble is cleared, these jobs will cease to be required, and 200,000 Haitians will once again be left wondering, what next?
Which brings the partners of Operation Ayiti back to the work they were doing pre-quake.
Organizations such as Bel Soley use a combination of entrepreneurs, investors and non-profit organizations, both Haitan and non-Haitian, working together to pave the way for non-profit organizations to do what they do best; provide education, training, infrastructure improvements and micro-credit loans while the entrepreneurs and investors buy, process and distribute the output. Because such projects combine the best of Haitian culture and North-American standards in harmony, it is difficult to argue that this new approach and business model isn’t best for giving Haiti hope and a future.
The business model helps set up small for profit businesses in decentralized (rural) areas by partnering them with local Haitian non-profits and their international supporters. Each stand-alone business creates jobs and a future for those in the local area and provides food crops for schools and orphanages.
Bel Soley, in particular, has a focus on building a local production center that will handle fresh produce, and provide the HACCP certified facilities for food processing. They help the small farmer and their co-operative organizations from seed to end product, actively helping procure purchasing contracts in the US, Canada and Europe. Essentially covering every aspect of commercial farming from seed to table.
Partnering allows schools and orphanages funded by non-profits and farmers to guarantee a give and take for the output of the food crops to be produced. Schools and orphanages benefit by having direct access to food without regard to the immense price fluctuations that occur on the common market and farmers have a guaranteed purchaser for their crops at a set price.
Noula Solidarity Coop purchase coffee grains from farmers, bringing them to Canada to be roasted, packaged and sold specifically to generate revenues for the Haitian farmers. Brooks Pepperfire Foods holds a mandate from Transfair Canada to create the market for Fair Trade certified chilli peppers purchases fresh chilli peppers, goatpeppers to be precise, processing them into mash to be sold to both institutional and domestic customers as pepper mashes, salsas and sauces. It is their desire to help open a Haitian-owned processing facility, creating even more jobs.
Noula Solidarity Coop and Brooks Pepperfire Foods are just two examples of companies that work with Transfair to help create the markets that are needed to provide purchase contracts for Haitian food products. One such project will see school children in Canada selling food products sourced from or processed from Haitian produce. Half of the proceeds raised on this project will be used by the Canadian school children to fund their projects while an equal amount will be sent to the schools supported through SOPUDEP.
We believe that projects like these offer the most hope for giving Haitians a real future and as such, Operation Ayiti is working to help facilitate even more such projects. As the Bible says; Give a man a fish and he will eat today, teach a man to fish and he will always eat. Ask yourself, how you can help us facilitate the rebuilding of Haiti.
