Our mission is to support the work of Passion for Haiti: Achieve Food and Income Security for the People of Haiti
Our Key Initiatives
Micro Loans
Latest News & Updates
- Notes from Etienne’s Report at the Haiti Club Meeting – 5/24/2021
At our first-ever virtual meeting of the Haiti Club, Etienne called in through WhatsApp to update us on his activities and plans. It was wonderful to see and hear him. This post is a summary of the news he shared. (Tap here to read his Speaker’s Notes.)
Wells
With the money that Haiti Ap Grandi (thanks to our generous donors) sent for well repair, 8 wells have been fixed and the communities now have safe drinking water. The well near the beach village not only had a worn-out and broken head, but repeated floods washing past it carried tons of soil away, leaving the concrete pad and well inaccessible. Loads of rock and gravel were used to build up the area around this well and a larger concrete pad was built around and under the existing pad, so the well should be fine for a long time.
Lagoon Well Before 
Lagoon Well After Goats
Funds raised largely through Community of Faith’s Advent goat sale provided 101 goat kids for 51 happy human kids. Kids for Kidz has been a very successful program over many years, providing families with milk and meat for their table and income from selling the milk and offspring of the goats. One of the earlier program participants has grown his herd to 25 goats: very impressive for an adolescent! When a child’s goat has its first kid, that baby goat is given back to the program. This year, several of these “return goats” were sold by Etienne to cover medical costs for various community members who had serious illnesses and required hospitalization and medications.
Women’s Entrepreneur Loans
The $2000 that Haiti Ap Grandi provided to start the Women’s Entrepreneur Loans program in late 2020 has grown to $3000 from the women’s returns on their investments. The women have purchased goods such as black beans or bottled soda (and a cooler) to sell at local markets and provide the main support for their children and families. This initial group of five women participate in a group together for support, education, and advice.
The Mighty Toyota
Etienne expressed his continuing thanks for the sturdy Toyota pickup we bought for him and the continuing supply of tires and other maintenance items. Previously he had an old, beat-up truck that broke down a lot. This new truck provides transportation for his crew, carries materials all around the country (like metal roofing and goats and trees), and takes sick people to the hospital. “It is a blessing to have such a good truck.”
Home Rehabs and Roofs
After Hurricane Matthew, Etienne’s teams, in partnership with another group, rehabilitated 800 homes in the Bwa Pikan community. They are currently preparing for a summer project to fix 120 more homes there, including new roof tins.
So Many Coffee Trees in the Nursery Trees
Another of Etienne’s projects for this coming summer is to manage 60 college students, 40 from the public university of Jacmel and 20 from the American University, in the transport and transplanting of 200,000 coffee and cacao trees on farms. These trees, funded in part by Haiti Ap Grandi, planted and cared for by his agents and other employees, will not only provide income for the farm families but are key to reforesting the mountain slopes to reduce erosion, flooding, and other problems.
10,000 cacao trees, planted in prior years, will be ready for harvest next year and 20,000 coffee trees are already growing on farms. There are 4500 pineapples to harvest this summer.
Spreading the Model
Etienne reported that universities and NGOs from all parts of Haiti are adopting Passion for Haiti’s methods as the model for their own programs. Empowering educated and passionate Haitian leaders to originate, develop, and run projects to address local priorities, with external non-profits providing funding and other support as requested by these local managers, is a new way to operate international aid programs, and it works.
- Compassion for Haiti Has a New Name
Haiti Ap Grandi means Haiti Growing, which sums up our vision and programs: increasing food and cash crop production, raising incomes, sharing knowledge, improving health, and supporting environmental recovery.
Effects of the Name Change
Obviously the website address is different now. For the next 10 months, the old web address will forward to the new one. The email addresses for Board members and general inquiries have also changed to …@haitiapgrandi.org. The old email addresses will forward to the new ones until about March of 2022.
The website has been changed from static pages to a dynamic structure so we can add information and photos more frequently. This article, or “post”, is an example of how this works: The webmaster or other contributor will write a new post when there is something to share with our supporters and the public. That post will be visible on the News Archive page for a long time. The newest posts will also be featured on the Home page until they are pushed off by newer posts.
An all-new Facebook page is being developed and we plan to post there frequently. When that goes live you’ll see the most recent Facebook posts along the right side of Home and other pages throughout the website.
We updated our contacts list and moved it to Mailchimp to make it easier for us to keep the list current and for recipients to manage their contact info and preferences. At this time there is a single email list for news updates and invitations to Haiti Club meetings. We are limiting the number of emails to two or fewer per month. We plan to create a separate email list dedicated to Haiti Ap Grandi topics; these emails will be less frequent and people will be able to choose whether to receive emails from one, both, or neither of these lists. If you aren’t receiving the Haiti Club emails and want to be added to that list, go to Subscribe to Haiti Club Emails to fill out the brief form. To make sure our emails don’t get trapped in your Junk folder, add @haitiapgrandi.org to your Safe Senders list. For instructions on how to do this, search the web using the name of your email app and “safe sender” (eg. “gmail safe sender”).
Why We Made this Change
Compassion for Haiti was notified by a large international charity that our use of the word “compassion” infringed on their rights. Rather than spend many thousands of dollars to defend our name, we chose a new name and logo. We have better uses for money. Having a unique name will also put us at or near the top of search results instead of many pages down the list once our new name has been active for awhile.
- November 2020 Update
200,000 coffee trees, a new “Female Entrepreneur Micro Loan Program”, and more goats for kids.
The Passion for Haiti (PfH) agronomy program has been very busy with ongoing programs and developing new ones in response to the economic effects of Covid-19 and damage from extreme weather. Etienne Francois and his team are growing over 200,000 coffee trees in a nursery, and Haiti Ap Grandi will provide funds to get the plants into the fields next spring.
We’re excited to announce a new program through PfH called the “Female Entrepreneur Micro Loan Program”. Most men are currently out of work in Haiti, making it hard to provide for their families, though they can often find various small sources of income. But so many women in Haiti have no job opportunities. If their husband is not able to work or they are alone it is truly a desperate situation for them and their children.
Our other focus with PfH right now is funding a new round of the “Kids for Kidz” goat program in which Etienne and his team train young people to raise goats and build herds for their families. This a great program to engage young people in a meaningful endeavor that can fund their own education, provide support to their family, and, by gifting back their first baby goat for distribution to another child, create opportunities for more kids and families in the future.
You can sponsor a nanny goat for $60 dollars, a great gift idea, or a billy goat for $250. Go to our store to “buy” a goat in your name or that of a loved one.
