
Haitian nurse / PLD staff member showing placards used in teaching family health and sanitation measures.
Despite considerable obstacles, progress in Haiti over the past six months has been impressive. We continue to focus on building the foundation upon which to create strong, lasting local institutions. This includes assessing existing local structures, promoting community development plans, strengthening priority activities to meet basic needs, and developing broad-based leadership where women and youth may participate equally in decision making structures. Since October 2010:
- 341 new gwoupman (small solidarity groups of 8-15 community members who pool their limited resources) have been formed.
- 1,258 village leaders have initiated training to learn to support locally-led development processes.
- 46 democratically-elected village committees have been established to promote cooperation, help ensure continuity of the process, and fulfill a number of other important functions.
Also, due to the cholera outbreak that began in October, during the past six months we have paid special attention to community health. Since last October:
- 227 new large family water filters and 273 latrines have been built.
- 2,231 families have adopted water and sanitation (including hand washing, water treatment, etc.) measures to avoid cholera and other waterborne diseases.
- 18 village health committees were formed. They promoted and supported the cholera prevention activities as well as workshops on HIV/STD prevention, which were attended by 3,594 adolescents and adults.
- PLD staff and local health committees launched a massive campaign to aid victims, educate families about preventative sanitation measures and provide basic supplies (chlorine for water treatment and oral re-hydration solution).
Finally, great strides continue to be made with respect to agroecology and natural resource management. For example, during the past six months:
- 1,182 farmers have been trained in critical soil and water conservation techniques.
- 89,194 tree seedlings have been produced and have or will soon be planted.
These are just a few of the recent accomplishments in Haiti. Now that the cholera epidemic has abated somewhat, we are again shifting our focus back to creating strong local organizations, and we are placing increased emphasis on income generating activities (seed banks and micro-savings and credit) that have the potential to become self-financing mechanisms for local organizations. We are also working with partners with stronger capacity levels and those that have already transitioned out from being directly supported by PLD to build networks between peasant organizations and supporting them to increase outreach to neighboring villages.