How will the economy of Northeast Haiti improve if farmers can’t find good markets to sell their crops? How will land be vouchsafed for families fifty years from now, if farmers today don’t learn how to protect it? How will families succeed with their little enterprises if they don’t know the rudiments of business? How can students become interested in their environment if no one has awakened their curiosity? How will things ever get better in Haiti’s countryside if its young people continue to abandon it for the city? What will change their minds?
Reforestation, erosion terraces, and deep-planted yams are the tangible parts of what we do, but they are not everything. Just as important are the intangible parts of our work. In fact, maybe more important because without them, positive change will not endure. More than half of our days are spent connecting to the intangible needs and dreams of the people we serve.
Our green shirts can be spotted throughout Northeast Haiti - igniting children’s curiosity in little wooden schoolhouses, hammering out solutions to farmers’ problems, and coaching families who are staking out terraces with a plumb bob. You’ll see our green-shirted staff with a generator, a boom box, and a pot of gumbo in the middle of villages, celebrating successes like a good harvest, a new mill, or a thousand trees planted.
You’ll see our staff deep in conversation with elders and surrounded like rock stars by teens wanting to talk about “stuff.” Our agronomists are young, cool, and successful, and good parents, too. In other words, inspiring role models in a place where there aren’t many.
At JP, we are investing the time to make sure people succeed and change endures. That is the ‘more’ part of ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND TREES AND MORE, and it’s what it takes to break generational poverty in rural Haiti. Thank you for your help in making it happen.
Rob
Rob Fisher, Executive Director
Partner For People And Place/JP Haiti
WE NEED YOUR HELP TO FINISH STRONG!
The dry season started early in Haiti this year. Knowing that it is not how many trees are planted, but how many survive that counts, the nimble JP team switched gears to other critical tasks. Terraces, featuring pineapple plants, were carved into steep hillsides to prevent soil erosion when the rains return. African yams were buried three feet deep in the ground, where they will wait until they feel moisture around them before sprouting and pushing their shoots up through the soil to find the sun.
The seasonal cooler weather and rain WILL come, and we need to be ready to plant! More funds are needed in order to complete the 100,000 Trees AND MORE project. Please consider donating to support this project.
