Beating Hunger in Haiti with Seeds and Tools for Small Farmers

On the cusp of Haiti’s spring planting season, we received urgent requests from our partners and allies in Haiti about their dire need for seeds and tools to ensure that food production would be secured in the immediate planting season — this is all the more important in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake and the massive migration to rural areas from Port-au-Prince.

Grassroots International is making three new grants of $25,000 each, all of which will help provide seeds, tools and training for this planting season to these groups:

• The Peasant Movement of Papaye(the MPP). Funds for the MPP will cover the Central Plateau.
• The Haitian Platform to Advocate for Alternative Development (PAPDA). Funds for PAPDA will support their work with MOREPLA in the Artibonite, VEDEK in the Southeast, and some smaller peasant groups in the North and Northwest.
• Tet Kole Ti Peyizan Ayisien – Heads Together Haitian Small Farmers. The grant to Tet Kole will cover the 47 communities in which they are organized across nine departments throughout Haiti.

These grants come on the heels of previous funding by Grassroots International shortly after the earthquake. We are also working with some of our closest allies here in the U.S.—the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee and American Jewish World Service—to develop a co-funding strategy for seeds, tools and agroecological extension services and training. And we’re hoping other allies will join us in this endeavor.

As our partners repeatedly mentioned to Beverly Bell, from Other Worlds are Possible, Grassroots International believes that “A Future for Agriculture is a Future for Haiti.”