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Church-supported program assists Haiti food crisis

>Jul. 29, 2008

NOTE: Photographs are available at http://umns.umc.org.

>A UMNS Report By Jan Dragin*

Struggling in the grip of a worsening world food crisis, Haitians in the
island nation's remote Artibonite and northwest regions are gaining food
security through a church-supported sustainable agriculture program.

Church World Service, the global humanitarian agency, is the lead agency
for the program, which also has support from the United Methodist
Committee on Relief, the Mennonite Central Committee, Reformed Church
World Service and the United Church of Christ.

A new grant from the U.S.-based Osprey Foundation will help expand the
program to provide more people, particularly women, with opportunities
to grow enough food for their families and increase income for other
basic needs through access to credit and training.

"The program was launched in 2005 following Tropical Storm Jeanne as a
transition from disaster recovery to sustainable community development,"
said Martin Coria, regional director for Church World Service in Latin
America and the Caribbean.

"We've seen really impressive results in terms of people building robust
food production, so they can feed themselves. But more important, beyond
basic food survival, the program has flourished in an area of severe
poverty which was compounded by the devastation of the 2005 storm.

"Twelve agricultural community cooperatives of men and women have
formed, and they continue to increase their farming skills through
training and with the provision of what NGOs like to call 'agricultural
inputs.' (That) translates as: tools, livestock, poultry and seeds."

>Drop in childhood malnutrition

As a result of the post-storm Rural Development Program, family income
is up and adult and childhood malnutrition is down, while elsewhere
Haitians are rioting over lack of food. Families participating in the
northwest co-op farming program are producing larger, healthier and more
diversified crops, including rice, by using fertilizer, crop rotation,
and cultivation methods that tackle environmental problems and prevent
soil erosion.

In the northwest cooperatives, nine small agricultural loan funds and
five women's microenterprise loan funds are now viable, rotating sources
of micro-funding which help members expand their ventures or start new
ones.

The Christian Center for Integrated Development (Sant Kretyen Pou
Developman Entegre, SKDE), a CWS Haitian partner, coordinates the food
and livelihood security program locally.

"After Hurricane Jeanne, most will remember what terrible flooding and
destruction there was in Gonaives, in Artibonite," said the Rev. Herode
Guillaumettre, the center's director. "But, now, if you go to
Artibonite, where food and gardens were totally destroyed, now people
have gotten their gardens back.

"The farming cooperatives in Artibonite and northwest Haiti are like a
light in the communities, showing people the way to food security that
will last," he said.

A new road being built into the region is literally creating a
market-driven economy in the remote area, according to Guillaumettre.
"Trucks from other areas will now be able to go in and buy food from the
farm cooperatives," he explained.

>Training farmers

The established co-ops are extending their project by reaching out to
other farming groups. "We send people from our projects to other areas
of Haiti to train other farmers so they can establish their own
cooperatives, food sources and livelihoods," Guillaumettre said.

Coria said the Foods Resource Bank, a U.S.-based hunger and
poverty-fighting organization, has supported the CWS program since its
inception in 2005 and will continue through 2009. USAID also provided
some funding in the past.

He noted that "more funding was needed to propel the gains and strengths
of these communities to a higher and even more durable level. The new
$100,000 Osprey Foundation grant will make it possible for the existing
Artibonite and Northwest co-ops to increase the capital in their
agricultural credit and micro-enterprise loan funds and for new co-ops
to establish new loan funds."

CWS will provide further business management training for participants,
seen as critical for the ongoing success of the loan funds and the life
of the cooperatives themselves.

"This is not just learn-how-to-plant-compost-and-irrigate agriculture
for home gardens," Coria stressed. "The people of Northwest Haiti who
are participating in these cooperatives are learning hard core business
success models."

The new Osprey Foundation grant to CWS will fund training in
results-based management, efficiency and practical outcome
measurement--all areas that successful business enterprises have to
master.

>'Mud patties won't do'

"In the case of Haiti and Haitian farmers, results-based management will
translate into, 'We can eat now and next year, have healthier children,
create family income and build an economically stronger community
through cooperatives,'" Coria said.

"The current food crisis has heaped intolerable scarcity on the existing
complex, chronic and critical food needs of the people of Haiti. Eating
mud patties just won't do. We wish more Haitians could be strengthened
and could feed themselves, through programs like those in Artibonite and
northwest."

The Osprey Foundation also is a supporter of the CWS Weapons for Water
program in Mozambique and of the agency's Emergency Response Revolving
Fund, which most recently assisted Kenyans displaced and threatened by
this year's post-election violence.

The Chicago-based Foods Resource Bank works on behalf of 25 member
Christian denominations and agencies, including the United Methodist
Committee on Relief, to mobilize and increase resources that support
smallholder, agricultural food security programs in some of the world's
poorest areas.

*Dragin is a communications consultant for Church World Service.

News media contact: Linda Bloom, New York, (646) 369-3759 or
newsdesk@umcom.org.

>********************

United Methodist News Service Photos and stories also available at: http://umns.umc.org

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