Platfòm Ayisyen Pledwaye Pou Devlopman Altènatif/Haitian Platform to Advocate Alternative Development (PAPDA)
Founded in 1995, PAPDA is a coalition of nine Haitian organizations working together to promote the emergence of a new Haiti, to challenge unfair trade deals that devastate Haiti’s farmers, and to promote public policies based on the common good.
The Platfòm Ayisyen Pledwaye Pou Devlopman Altènatif/Haitian Platform to Advocate Alternative Development (PAPDA) works on diverse thematic areas, including external debt, alternative integration, food sovereignty, participatory democracy and decentralization, climate justice and international solidarity. It focuses on developing unique and effective solutions to hunger, while pressing for structural changes in the nation’s food and agricultural policies.
PAPDA’s work to build movements for local control of food systems (food sovereignty) challenges the more traditional “food security” strategy that has relied largely on imported food aid and has eroded local production and consumption of locally-produced grains and legumes.
PAPDA has acquired an international reputation as a Haitian NGO that has both a well-researched and documented critique of structural adjustment policies and a concrete set of alternatives to these policies. Through research and documentation of economic problems, consultation and strategizing, public education and communications, lobbying officials, and international networking, PAPDA promotes justice-centered alternatives for Haiti.
PAPDA collaborates directly with cooperatives and peasants organizations, dynamically working with them to address needs for land, create effective systems to produce and market products, fight back against land grabs, and advance a national struggle for land reform.
