Help Raise 50K for Haitian Farmers to fight Hunger

Over 1,000 people - students, teachers, directors, and community members - benefited from the Institute technicians’ expertise across this year’s 18 trainee schools. Overall, schools are starting to see their gardens as an important source of income in an education system that rarely receives state funding. One teacher told us, “MCLC taught us techniques for how to grow vegetable gardens successfully. In addition to planting at school with my students, I started my own garden at home and was very successful.” Schools report that their gardens were able to bring in between $50 and almost $150 during their first growing seasons - the equivalent of almost half a year’s income in rural Haiti.

When you hear the word “technician”, what comes to mind? Maybe not leaves and dirt - but MCLC’s Institute of Learning calls the agricultural staff it sends out to trainee schools “technicians'' in recognition of the highly-detailed, problem-solving skills that their work with the gardens calls for. Technicians know how to look at the gardens as a system to maintain and tweak. When school plots were under attack by cricket-like insects, they taught schools how to prepare a natural insecticide using soap, African bird’s eye peppers, and neem. They have been experimenting with introducing new plant varieties that are not typically grown in La Gonave, including potatoes and garlic. Lately they’ve been raving about chives, explaining, “it keeps bugs away and doesn’t require much water”. 

MCLC Institute staff are at work preparing a training curriculum to use with 20 new trainees during the upcoming school year, including additional units that are specific to best practices for school gardens. As Haiti navigates an uncertain time in the wake of its president’s assassination, we are appreciating the small, meaningful progress of a seed unfurling into a plant - and the vision of local self-sufficiency that these plants represent for the island of La Gonave and its school system. We have raised $8593 of our $50,000 goal. Help us keep this project moving by making a donation today. Together, we can reach all 200+ schools on La Gonave.

Thank you for your contribution to help Haitian farmers fight hunger on the island of La Gonave! As we transition into spring and a new planting season, Friends of Matènwa is excited to update you on how the Institute of Learning's school and community projects are going (and growing)!

Agriculture is central to life in rural Haiti, but because farming is looked down on as a path for the uneducated, most schools do not teach planting as a skill. With your support, over 450 students at 18 schools are learning basic organic gardening methods. Their classroom is outdoors - in their school garden plot, where they sow, weed, water, measure, and harvest. 2/3 of the schools are already growing enough produce for them to sell in local markets, boosting local food security while generating income for the schools. 

Institute staff also share their knowledge with families in each school's community. Right now, 90 families are applying organic gardening techniques in their own gardens, with support from the 42 local teachers the Institute is training. One parent from Mon Pikmi school shared with us that his brother and father-in-law have started using Institute techniques, after they saw how well the methods worked when he applied in his garden. 

We are excited to share these first fruits with you, and we look forward to many harvests to come as schools and communities build a resilient food system on the Haitian island of La Gonave. These classes are important first steps, and we are still looking to expand our efforts to offer seeds, supplies, and support to reach farmers. Please consider giving what you can to help more families move closer to this vision of sustainability and self-sufficiency.

Links:

• On this YouTube playlist, we showcase our garden projects