Economic Growth Haiti Project #53939

Land for Leadership & Development Center in Haiti

by Roots of Development

Project Report | Dec 9, 2021
Finalizing the land purchase this month

By Chad W. Bissonnette | Executive Director

With two large offline donations made at our annual event and the contributions that came in on Giving Tuesday, we are only $6,222 away from having the funds needed to help our partner in Haiti buy the land for the future leadership center on La Gonave.

With one more push and a final donation from our supporters in 2021, we believe we can finalize the land purchase before the end of the year. In fact, if you and each of the other donors who have supported this project thus far, were to donate just $41 right now, we would hit our goal today and have the plot of land purchased by the 31st.

This would be a tremendous achievement and allow us to focus entirely on getting the design and construction of the Leadership & Development Center started next year. The plot of land measures approximately 1,200 square meters. We expect to build on a little more than half of that, which would mean a facility of about 600-700 square meters (6,500-7,500 square feet).

To acquire a design for the center, Louino Robillard, Rasin Devlopman's Program Director, and I have begun speaking with several architectural firms in Haiti. We had a meeting with Ateliers Co-Lab yesterday and will be speaking with three others next week. We are asking each firm to submit a proposal for developing a design for the leadership center and will choose the winning firm based on cost, clarity, creativity, and previous experience.

Stay tuned for more! We promise to keep you updated and please consider making a final 2021 donation today.

Sincerely,

Chad Bissonnette

Links:

VIDEO: Highlighting the importance of the leadership center

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Nov 19, 2021
A deposit has been made for the land

By Chad W. Bissonnette | Executive Director

On Thursday, November 4, 2021, with your support, we helped our partner organization, Rasin Devlopman, make a deposit on the piece of land they hope to purchase by the end of the year. Rasin's Program Director, Louino Robillard, and the owners of the land signed a document confirming the details of the sale and exchanged a deposit to confirm Rasin Devlopman's plan to purchase the land once all funds have been raised.

Louino Robillard recently wrote the following when explaining the importance of the leadership center...

"Our vision and commitments have outgrown the physical space we currently. For the past four years, Rasin Devlopman and Roots of Development have been renting a house in the town of Anse-à-Galets, which provides us with a small office, a kitchen, and a few guest rooms. While this setup has allowed us to run our programs and welcome a small number of visitors and trainers to the island, the space cannot accommodate all of of our "Volunteers for Change" at once, let alone the other leaders, learners, and innovators that we want to bring together. When we have trainings, the "Volunteers for Change" often need to travel back and forth on a daily basis from their homes to Anse-à-Galets; not only does this limit the time we have with them, but it exposes them to extra risks on what are often dangerous roads. It also consumes extra resources to rent training space from other organizations, in addition to the funds we are spending on renting the main office space each month. We believe those resources could instead be better spent investing in more sustainable infrastructure to support Rasin's identity, services, and mission."

The land measures approximately 13,000 sq feet and overlooks the coast of La Gonave and mainland Haiti. Its GPS coordinates are 18.8375244, -72.8845212 and is located in the port town of Anse-a-Galets, La Gonave's most populated town and the maritime gateway between the island and mainland.

Links:

A video about the importance of the Leadership Center

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