Family is Everything

Anthropologist Margaret Mead wrote of the family as the "continuing source of human life, the cradle, the teaching place for all future endeavor." Kirkus Reviews once noted that "she writes of mothers whose unconditional love is so essential, of fathers, representing the outside world into which children grow, families from atomic to tribal, brothers and sisters and grandparents, the child alone, friends, and that time when 'the old rules lose their meaning,' adolescence." In Haiti, too, family is everything.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, Jatrofa Projenou sends you a glimpse of the many families we work with every day to help them increase their farm yields, protect their land, and reduce their poverty. Families are Haiti's farmers and the backbone of how Haiti feeds itself. They are at the center of what Jatrofa Projenou does.

Everyone has a part to play farming the land in this three generation family.

Father, family and one cool dude.

Brother, sister and mango tree to plant.

Mother and daughter making fried plantains.

A group of farmers standing in a forest that was planted six years ago. All are the heads of farming households supporting 150-200 men, women, and children.

A loving father

Jatrofa Projenou is treated like family

Caught with a mouthful, Mother and son.

Brothers and best friends and both patriarchs of big families that dot the mountainsides.

One proud Grandmother and one ‘not so sure’ little grandson.

The love of a mother.

Maybe the kindest family you’d ever meet.

Young family with a serious Mom and a case of earring tug.

Brother and big sister at the start of the work day.

A widow and her two sons who have stepped into their father’s shoes.

Buckets of cousins hamming it up for the camera, but not Auntie, who seriously loves each of them.