Konbit Pou Ayiti

Haiti KONPAY is a Haitian organization located in the heart of southern Haiti, just outside the town of Jacmel. We are three weeks into our emergency relief efforts in the wake of two tropical storms and two hurricanes that have devastated our region. Haiti’s Southeast Department was hard hit by Hurricane Gustav, which made land here as a Category Two storm. Fields of plantain trees were flattened, and garden plots were flooded throughout the coastal plain. On the mountainsides, families lost homes to mudslides and flash floods. Haiti’s impoverished majority were already deep in the midst of a food crisis when the storms came in quick succession, destroying nearly all the crops in this area and forcing the Haitian government to release water from a dam in the north and flood the rice-producing Artibonite Valley region.

The emergency relief phase of our work in the community has focused on getting desperately needed food aid to the families of our youth group, the Youth for the Development of Cyvadier (JDS), and families in the hardest hit rural communities.

Building on this emergency relief work, as we did in the aftermath of the death and devastation of Hurricane Jeanne in 2004, KONPAY is now envisioning a reconstruction program for the Jacmel area, but as we rebuild homes and gardens, literally in the shadows of mountains, we are pursuing strategies that will prevent future flooding and loss of crops. KONPAY’s multi-dimensional reconstruction plan addresses both the immediate needs in terms of food and housing, and at the same time seeks to create a sustainable solution to the environmental crisis that is inseparable from the impoverishment of the rural population.

Over the last four years KONPAY has created Haiti’s first national coalition on the environment, emphasizing collaboration and sharing existing resources and expertise. By creating regional strategic plans with those people and communities most affected by Haiti’s environmental crisis, KONPAY has developed projects that meet the priorities of Haitian families. Our youth group, JDS, embodies our philosophy: educate young people and children, and support their activities to protect and renew the environment, while encouraging them to educate and raise awareness in each and every one of their communities.

Our reconstruction efforts are focused on these four priorities:

1. Rebuilding homes: Many homes lost roofs or walls to flash floods, whereas other communities saw whole neighborhoods awash in as many as ten feet of flood water. In other areas, mudslides and rain water left behind rocks and debris high enough to cover first story windows. KONPAY will purchase materials and organize work teams to repair homes for families that are currently in temporary shelters or are particularly vulnerable to continuing rain fall.

2. Planting new crops: The heavy rains continue to fall and wash away fields that were not destroyed when Gustav first made land in Jacmel. Ravines are filled with floodwaters from mountain villages north of the coastal area. Most of the farming families of Cyvadier, Meyer, Jacmel and villages to the east are facing a complete loss of harvest and in addition, most of the plantain fields were flattening by winds in excess of 90 miles per hour. The plantain crops were on the verge of harvest time, so this constitutes a major economic blow for this plantain-producing region.

3. Replacing trees in greenbelts and reconstructing tree nurseries: In some areas as many as 85% of trees were lost during the storms. Tree nurseries were flooded and some were destroyed. A critical first step to preventing future catastrophe is to get these nurseries functioning again, replanting greenbelts and distributing seedlings.

4. These three areas will be tied together and reinforced by a complimentary education and network building effort based on KONPAY’s long-term work. We will educate and train our target populations about the links between the environment, community development and poverty. Network building efforts will connect people and organizations from different communities and regions to share knowledge and expertise in a sustainable way.

KONPAY has a goal of launching a one-year reconstruction project to:

• Hold community-wide training and educational sessions on several simple, basic techniques that can improve family-level food security, including grafting of fruit trees and planting edible trees such as the moringa;
• Train young people to build rocket stoves to increase cooking fuel efficiency and distribute these stoves to families throughout the region;
• Train young people and mothers in the area in a process developed by MIT professor Amy Smith using organic waste (such as coconut husks) to make alternative charcoal briquettes;
• Launch an awareness-raising campaign on the importance of trees for erosion control and to prevent future flash floods and mudslides;
• Open new tree nurseries in areas that are lacking and provide seedlings for tree planting;
• Develop an initiative with regional youth to plant greenbelts in the Jacmel River watershed, as well as digging control channels on the mountainsides to protect existing greenbelts;
• Plan and execute canalization projects in key locations that were devastated by recent storms to prevent future flooding;
• Plan and execute the rehabilitation of major ravines;
• Create a sample environmental curriculum based on the training of youth in JDS to be used in schools in our region, and ultimately throughout Haiti.

Haitian environmental activists and leaders consistently emphasize the necessity of addressing the twin crises of poverty and the environment simultaneously. Without massive education and awareness raising, none of these development strategies will succeed. There is an opportunity today to educate the population while the importance of the environment is on every family’s mind. KONPAY is on the ground and is connected with the grassroots groups, non-governmental organizations and government representatives in the southeast region. We most recently gathered representatives from throughout the area in Jacmel for strategic planning in July. We are in an excellent position to translate plans into action, and we hope that you will be interested in making this a reality.