Building relationships with grassroots organizations that advocate for human rights-based development takes time, but without investing in them, philanthropy is likely to stumble. The case of Haiti is instructive.
With questions surfacing in the media about the Red Cross' housing program and Sean Penn rising to the organization’s defense, the debate about how best to help Haiti is in full swing.
Management consultants generally frown upon tackling too many problems at once. But when public urban water utilities join with rural neighbors to protect water sources, a slew of positive outcomes can result. A new report, “Urban Water Utilities and Upstream Communities Working Together”, describes this potential cascade of benefits:
In a hidden corner of pesticide-laden sugar cane fields in Northeast Brazil, Grassroots International’s staffer Saulo Araujo discovered a tiny oasis of agricultural diversity. “Lettuce, cauliflower, beets, carrots, beans, corn,” pointed out farmers Rubem and Maria dos Santos, members of the Landless Workers Movement. “We grow almost everything we need to feed ourselves and to sell in the local market.”
Nearly a dozen of us stuffed ourselves into a stifling cement room – an oven, really - in the Petite Riviere of the Artibonite, Haiti’s breadbasket. The meeting unfolded slowly. With no breeze and drowsy, my chin bounced off my chest.
On July 28, after years and years of grassroots pressure, the United Nations’ General Assembly will finally consider and debate a resolution supporting the right to "safe and clean drinking water and sanitation.” Grassroots International embraces the human right to water and has signed on to an open letter supporting the resolution entitled “The human right to water and sanitation.
Maude Barlow, former senior advisor on Water to the President of the United Nations General Assembly, described the denial of access to clean water as the
The tidal wave of American interest in local, sustainable agriculture, and the waves of protest around the world over staggering food prices, seem to have washed over the heads of most members of Congress without them even noticing. The 2008 Farm Bill proves it.
Chances are, the average U.S. resident has no idea that their demand for electricity might require that a Mexican village be flooded for a hydroelectric dam. The question is: if the human cost were known, would we consume just a little bit less?
At Grassroots International, our bet is that a little bit of knowledge would go a long way. For those who value human rights, that high social and environmental cost is not likely to sit right.
Our unabashedly biased perspective is based upon the way we’ve worked for more than a quarter century: offering financial support to communities around the world whose natural resources have been extracted and despoiled and sharing their stories in living rooms, community centers and across cyberspace.
Presenter: Diamantino Nhampossa is the Executive Coordinator for the National Small Scale Farmers Union in Mozambique and a Member of International Coordinating Committee of the Via Campesina for the Africa Region. (Contact information for Diamantino Nhampossa: diamantino.n@gmail.com)
Presenter: Anna Lappé is the author of the best selling book "Grub" and a past Kellogg Foundation Food and Society Policy Fellow.
Moderator and Presenter: Corrina Steward, Resource Rights Specialist, Grassroots International. Corrina was a participant in the Forum on Food Sovereignty along with a number of Grassroots International partners.
Editor's Note: Daniel Moss sent this post from Jacmel, a city south of Port au Prince on the Caribbean coast. They visited the small town of La Fond on 21st, the day of the national parliamentary elections.
Please join me in a jeep bumping over river stones with Vigot, an agronomist from KROS, the Regional Coordination of Southeast Organizations. As part of its Resource Rights Initiative, Grassroots International staff visited this remote area to observe up close the work of Haiti's regional peasant associations.
I hope to return from Palestine/Israel a more compassionate and wiser person, although that remains to be seen. What is already written is that I will return much larger. Palestinian hospitality has been abundant bordering on excessive. Last night, a family took my colleague and I to dinner and the waiter did not rest until he'd placed on the table 24 small plates of hummous, tabouli, fatoush and various beet and eggplant salads. Other meals have been only slightly less modest. I thought I'd share with you some conversations had around the food, anise licquer, Arabic coffee wafting cardamom and a perpetual haze of cigarette smoke.
