10 posts categorized "Haiti"

Got any questions about poverty-focused foreign assistance? You're not alone. To help answer your most frequently asked questions, we've put together a nice little questions and answers sheet. Here's an excerpt, but visit our Offering of Letters website for the full document.

I keep hearing that poverty-focused foreign assistance programs address the root causes of poverty. What does that mean?

Addressing the root causes of poverty involves more than simply building a road so farmers can transport their goods to market. It involves teaching a community how to build and maintain that road so it can provide transportation for the harvest of future generations. Building sustainable development takes time, but by investing in programs that serve and partner with communities, we begin to win the battle against hunger and poverty. 

Times are tough in the United States. Is now the time to keep investing in poverty-focused foreign assistance?

U.S. investments in developing countries are an important component of our national security and foreign policy. U.S. poverty-focused foreign assistance supports political stability in developing countries and fights the hopelessness that can lead to instability and conflict. 

Research shows that economically stable countries are less likely to pose a threat to their neighbors or to the United States. For example, for every 5 percent drop in income growth in a developing country, the likelihood of violent conflict or war within the next year increases by 10 percent.2 In addition, investments in poverty-focused foreign assistance save us from costly interventions later on.

What’s the difference between international food aid and poverty-focused foreign assistance?

Poverty-focused foreign assistance includes a variety of programs that address hunger and poverty, including international food aid programs. International food aid is often an emergency or humanitarian response, while poverty-focused foreign assistance programs seek to address the long-term causes of hunger and poverty.

+Click here for more questions and answers about poverty-focused foreign assistance.

+Learn more about the mini-campaign on poverty-focused foreign assistance for the 2012 Offering of Letters.

Photo by Flickr user alexanderdrachmann

Photo by Flickr user VinothChandar

Earlier this month Bread for the World hosted more than 50 religious leaders from around the country to help strengthen the advocacy voice of the church in the 1,000 Days Movement. Representing a variety of national church partners including Catholic, evangelical, mainline Protestant and traditionally African-American denominations, participants included bishops, leaders from religious women’s organizations, and advocacy and development experts. The participants attended meetings with high-level U.S. government officials including USAID Administrator Raj Shah and Lois Quam, executive director of the Global Health Initiative. The group also met with two members of Congress, Reps. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and Nita Lowey (D-NY). Claudette Reid, coordinator for women’s ministries, Reformed Church in America, has these reflections on her visit to Rep. Lowey’s office:

This was my first visit to Capitol Hill, so I didn't know what to expect. One thing was for certain: I was a bit apprehensive. I can’t explain why exactly -- perhaps it was because I knew visiting Rep. Nita Lowey was an important visit. We only had a few minutes to persuade one of our key leaders that protecting funding for proper nutrition is the key to saving lives and could also assist her in being an effective steward of her budget.

We arrived at the Capitol a bit early so it gave us time to huddle in the cafeteria and review our talking points, which was extremely helpful, especially since the others decided that I should lead off the discussion. Me? Were they crazy? Did this stellar group of advocates---veteran lobbyists--- temporarily lose their collective minds in asking this neophyte to frame this discussion?

Our short walk from the cafeteria to the congresswoman's office was a blur. All I can recall is being nervous and worried that I was going to make a fool of myself. We arrived at the congresswoman’s office and after the usual pleasantries and introductions, my colleagues all looked at me with the non-verbal command to "go ahead." 

I can't remember everything I said, but I know I began by sharing our collective thanks/gratitude for everything that the congresswoman was already doing on behalf of women and girls and marginalized peoples both locally and globally. Then our group launched into our presentation on the importance of reinforcing our commitment as people of faith to bring awareness and sensitivity to the plight of those who cannot speak for themselves. 

Our presence at this meeting was a continuing response to the exhortation to take care of the "least of these" -- a moral and religious responsibility and privilege -- as we partner with Christ. Staff representative Erin Kolodjeski was quite gracious and engaging. She entertained our comments and questions and emphasized that faith communities like ours are key to the work that they are trying to accomplish. We bring life to the data and statistics they already have in abundance. 

By the time our time had come to a close, I realized that I had just completed my first 'lobbying' experience, and the earth did not fall in, and my nervousness had disappeared. I’m ready for my next round!

Claudette Reid is coordinator for women’s ministries at the Reformed Church in America.

Author Neil Gaiman says, "Google can bring you back 100,000 answers. A librarian can bring you back the right one." That's why we at Bread for the World appreciate our librarian, Chris Matthews, who gives us the right answers to all of our random queries.

Now, in this regularly appearing blog series called "Hunger Resources," Chris Matthews will curate resources for you on hunger, poverty, and justice. Here is this week's list:

• Special Report: Crisis Grips North Korean Rice Bowl, (Reuters): 
  "In a pediatric hospital in North Korea's most productive farming province, children lay two to a bed. All showed signs of severe malnutrition: skin infections, patchy hair, listless apathy. 'Their mothers have to bring them here on bicycles,' said duty doctor Jang Kum Son in the Yellow Sea port city of Haeju. 'We used to have an ambulance but it's completely broken down. One mother travelled 72 kilometers (45 miles). By the time they get here, it's often too late.'"

• How America Turned Poverty into a Crime, (Barbara Ehrenreich, Slate):
  "The poor aren't just struggling during the recession; they're being actively hounded by urban officials."

• Partners in Help: Assisting the Poor Over the Long Term, (Foreign Affairs):
  Paul Farmer, Kolokotrones University Professor at Harvard University, gave a commencement speech at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government on aid, his theory of accomplishment, and Haiti after the earthquake.

• Top 10 Striking Findings From the Latest Data on Poverty, (Center for American Progress):
  "Yesterday the Census Bureau released the latest data on poverty, income, and health insurance in America. The data confirm that millions of Americans continue to cope with the Great Recession’s enduring effects, and they show the strength of our safety net and our need for good jobs now. Here are the top 10 most striking findings from the data.

+Click here for a full list of what we're reading at Bread for the World.

My professional background is in photojournalism, so I'm a sap for stories in which people learn photography and then document their lives. In this short film from the Dominican Republic, Haitian migrant women talk about how learning and doing photography changed their perceptions of the world. For some women, it also changed the way the world perceived them.

This story is part of our Wednesday ViewChange video series.

Did you catch Nicholas Kristof’s recent column in The New York Times? He writes about visiting Haiti to talk with women involved in Fonkoze, a Haitian nonprofit foundation that provides microloans and banking services to the very poor.

Kristof and his family met Odecile Jean, a mother of five who, with her husband, previously struggled to feed and educate their family. After 13 months in one of Fonkoze’s programs, Kristof writes, “Ms. Jean beamed as she showed off her brand new cow, discussed her thriving lumber business and boasted that her children were all in school. Her husband, Lionel, hinted of ambitions for them to go to college.”

My colleague Laura and I saw the transformative effects of some of Fonkoze’s programs last October, when we traveled to Haiti for Bread for the World and met many women like Jean. Check out Laura’s photo essay, as well as our article and slideshow on a Fonkoze vitamin distribution clinic in Mirebalais, Haiti.

Saturday’s New York Times carried a good story about some of the many challenges microbanks face in Haiti. One of those banks is Fonkoze, the microfinance organization my colleague Laura and I visited last month. Fonkoze serves about 45,000 women in 43 branches all over the country.

Like other banks for the poor, Fonkoze tries to help clients make financial headway in a country with little infrastructure. It’s a difficult feat. As reporter Daniel Costello notes, Haiti’s economy is expected to contract by as much as 9 percent this year. This makes the work of microbanks critical:

"Their importance to hundreds of thousands of Haitian borrowers and savers gives these little institutions an outsize importance, making them ‘simply too big to fail,’ said Greta Greathouse, a consultant with the U.S. Agency for International Development’s microsavings and lending program in Haiti."

To see some of Fonkoze’s inspirational borrowers and savers, check out Laura’s photo essay as well as our article and slideshow on a Fonkoze vitamin distribution clinic in Mirebalais, Haiti.

By Laura Elizabeth Pohl

Heavy deforestation has left Haiti with less than 2 percent tree cover. Without trees, soil erodes, crops wash away and people aren't able to feed themselves. Trees for the Future, a Haitian NGO, is working to change the situation one tree at a time.

Text by Molly Marsh / Audio Slideshow by Laura Elizabeth Pohl

DEBRIGA, HAITI — We’re in the Haitian village of Debriga, standing inside a small building that serves as the community’s church, school, and gathering center. The walls consist of dried palm tree leaves held together by wooden beams. The temperature and a tin roof keep the room hot and airless, and small children run across the dirt floor—some in pink or orange Crocs, others in their bare feet.

About 100 women and children are sitting on rows of long wooden benches listening to Nicole Cesar Muller, Fonkoze’s director of health, talk about the importance of vitamins and nutrition. Several children have a reddish tint to their hair—a sign of malnutrition—as well as swollen bellies, an indication they have worms.

This gathering is part of a new health program Fonkoze started in the last year. Bank managers noticed that many of their clients’ children were malnourished, so the organization decided to partner with medical groups—such as Partners in Health (Zanmi Lasante in Creole)—to diagnose and treat it. Fonkoze center chiefs, as they’re called, are trained to test kids for malnutrition and connect mothers and children with treatment.

At this gathering, Muller will distribute six months' worth of vitamin A, multivitamins, and de-worming pills to the mothers.

She tells them why vitamins are important. “Put [them] on top of what you’re eating, because we know you’re not getting enough nutrients in your food,” she says. The multivitamins taste good, so Muller reminds them that their kids should only get one a day. And, she says, “It’s a very expensive vitamin, so we don’t want you to do business with it. It goes to your kids.”

Muller then puts on plastic gloves, picks up the vitamin A bottle, and moves through the crowd. The children look up at her from the safety of their mothers’ laps—some protest in anticipation; others are quietly scared. Most are mesmerized by this warm, efficient woman with the yellow headscarf. She cuts off the tip of each capsule and pours the powder on each child’s tongue. There’s no water to wash it down, and the looks on their faces indicate how bad it tastes.

Six months ago, a 5-year-old girl named Ismylove Volma was so severely malnourished that she had no hair and couldn’t walk. She was sent to Zanmi Lasante for treatment. Now she wears white ribbons in her hair, and though she’s still very small for her age, she’s walking.

Twenty-two-year-old Louis Wisline, who lives just behind the building, brought her daughter, Francesca, to the vitamin distribution because she wants her 2-year-old to be healthy. Wisline isn’t a member of Fonkoze, but that’s not a requirement for coming—the vitamins are for any mothers in the community who want them. Malnutrition is common in Haiti, especially in rural areas like Debriga.

Since the program began, 824 children have been diagnosed with malnutrition and received treatment.

MIREBALAIS, HAITI — Purses: They carry all sorts of useful sundries such as pens, business cards, lipstick, and gum. Most importantly, purses carry money.

Here in Haiti, where 54 percent of the population lives on less than $2 a day, microfinance organization Fonkoze is helping women build businesses that feed their families, lift them out of poverty and pad their purses with a bit of cash.

Yesterday at a Fonkoze community meeting I noticed the variety of handbags women carried around. Many were black. Some were small. All seemed to be carried with pride by their owners.

Text by Molly Marsh / Photographs by Laura Elizabeth Pohl

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI — The 45-minute ride from Port-au-Prince to the village of Arcahaie is hot and bumpy. The landscape around us is dotted with shrubs and some trees, though generations of deforestation have left the hillsides of Chaîne des Matheux, the mountain range north of Haiti’s capital city, green but mostly barren.


Children help line up tree seedlings at a Trees for the Future nursery in Gericher, Haiti.

Timote Georges, Haiti program coordinator for Trees for the Future, a nonprofit organization that works on reforestation projects in some 20 countries, points out the devastating effects of deforestation. There are few trees to keep the soil from eroding, to provide relief from the unrelenting sun and heat, and to protect farms and homes from the ravages of heavy rains.

“When it rains, people in the lowlands see their work and livelihoods washed out,” says Georges. Trees would minimize the impact of Haiti’s seasonal rains, not to mention the hurricanes the country regularly experiences. Tree roots also add important nutrients to soil. Healthy, nutritious soil leads to better crops, which leads to more food and less hunger.

Georges and his colleagues stopped their pickups—carrying us and Bread senior policy analyst Whitney Rhoades—on a gravel road overlooking a steep embankment. Next up was a walk through the brush and a wade through a river to reach the community of Gericher. We climbed a hill to enter a small but lively oasis—a nursery packed with plants, trees, and families who are participating in a Trees for the Future program.

Tidy lines of seedlings, planted in dirt and natural compost and wrapped with black plastic, covered the ground. Children carefully watered them so that the trees’ roots would develop. When the trees mature, they’ll be replanted higher in the hills as well as the immediate area. Many of the 170 families served by the nursery already have trees surrounding their homes, farms, and livestock to protect them from landslides and heavy rains.

Involving family and community members in the projects is key, says Georges. “Before we start doing anything, we do training. We talk about existing environmental problems. We help them become aware of the consequences of deforestation, and we tell them how trees can control erosion and help stabilize soil. We talk about the importance of trees for nature—for them.”

Once community members decide on their plan, Trees for the Future provides training, tools, and technical assistance to help them establish their nurseries.

The organization manages projects in three areas of Haiti—Arcahaie, Gonaives, and Medor—which serve 20 communities. It’s a small organization with a big impact—they’ve planted close to 1 million trees in a country whose tree coverage is estimated at 2 percent.

“We lost bridges in 10 minutes,” said Georges, referring to the hurricanes Haiti experienced in 2008. “It’s because the environment around the bridges was degraded. When we talk about helping Haiti, we have to invest in the environment.”

Our group left the nursery and walked back down a dry, rocky hill toward the river. “Before we planted, it was like this,” Georges said, pointing to the barren earth underneath his feet. “It was lifeless. Now it is living.


The Trees for the Future nursery in Gericher, Haiti, lies in a field dotted with low-lying shrubbery and rocks but few trees.


"Doing reforestation without environmental education is a mistake," says Timote Georges, Haiti program coordinator for Trees for the Future. Georges studied agronomy in Haiti and Costa Rica and started working with the organization in 2008.


The tree nursery in Gericher, Haiti, serves 170 families.


Haiti is 98% deforested, which exacerbates soil erosion problems and hurts agriculture production, thus contributing to poverty and hunger in the country.

Bread for the World is traveling in Haiti this week to collect stories related to alleviating hunger and poverty.