A few weeks ago I was walking a footpath in Haiti inspecting our summer's work. It was peaceful and ordinary - people stopping to talk to neighbors on their way to their farms, a man handing a mango over a hedge to an old lady, a girl with a slotted spoon and a pan of hot oil frying up plantains for a smiling customer.
This was not the Haiti of headlines. This was human Haiti. People tucked into their communities, doing what needs to be done, working to put food on the table, worrying about somebody they love, feeling proud of something. It was ordinary stuff, the stuff we all do, the stuff that makes us human.
When I bent down to see a little boy's truck, what caught my attention was the string because it was tied to an imagination that could see what I could not - a noisy 'taptap' piled high with people and sacks. What I saw was a toy made out of junk. It made me think, what is it we don't see when we look at poverty in Haiti?
One thing our imagination has been tied to is a star over Haiti. We could see it helping us. Now you can see it too, because it is powering our entire operation from processing farmers' crops to irrigating our nursery and truck garden. Without the expense of a diesel generator, we are doing more to help people. Imagination pays off.
Solar batteries can run our whole operation for three days without sun.
Lastly, this summer we sustainably increased the food supply for more a community of six hundred people suffering hunger. It's the kind of stuff we do that is NOT ordinary.
Take care,
Rob
Rob Fisher, Exec. Director
PARTNER FOR PEOPLE AND PLACE, INC.
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