Help Raise 50K for Haitian Farmers to fight Hunger

Thank you for your generous support for the Matènwa Community Learning Center's project 'Help Raise 50K for Haitian Farmers to Fight Hunger' on GlobalGiving. We are grateful for your generosity and your solidarity!

500 More Families Get Seedlings and Seeds to Plant Gardens

Your generosity made it possible to distribute seedlings and seeds to 500 more families in communities throughout Lagonav Island during some of the most difficult times in recent memory in Haiti.

Families were trained on how to plant and care for organic vegetable gardens at their homes.  Training includes a variety of techniques to improve their yield without chemical fertilizers, such as using compost and natural insecticides.

Thanks to you, these families are now better able to grow their own food and provide for themselves, instead of relying on handouts from aid agencies or purchasing food produced on the mainland.

79 Families Receive Water Catchment Systems

Drought is a constant reality on Lagonav Island. Families lack a regular source of water that they can use to irrigate their crops and vegetable gardens and use for cooking and hygiene needs.

Your gift helped provide rainwater catchment kits for families that include gutters, pipes, and cisterns to capture and store rainwater. Trained local technicians install the systems and teach families how to use them for everyday tasks like planting and irrigating backyard vegetable gardens and larger crops, and how to make any repairs that might be needed. With a regular source of water, families can now grow more and different types of crops and vegetables, improving their own nutrition and providing a source of income by selling excess food in their local market. We hope to get more donations so that we can supply more families with these water catchment systems.

What Impact Do Home Vegetable Gardens and Water Catchment Systems Have on Families?

Anecdotal evidence collected during workshops and home visits with families who received rainwater catchment systems last year showed that many families were experiencing the following types of improvements:

• Healthy vegetable crops even in the dry season;
• Decreased hardship to collect water for household usage during all seasons, leading to children arriving on time for school and parents stressing less about water procurement.
• Households reported experiencing increased time in conversation with children too;
• Increased variety of vegetables raised and consumed in meals, including cabbage, bell peppers, Scotch Bonnet peppers, tomatoes, carrots, beets, lettuce, eggplant, and watermelon;
• Increased spending power either because families no longer needed to use household revenue to purchase vegetables, or due to new revenue from sales of vegetables; and,
• Integration of new sustainable farming practices.

We anticipate that the 79 families who recently received rainwater catchment systems will realize similar results. We will continue to work with these families to provide any support or technical assistance needed to ensure that their water catchment systems work well and that their home vegetable gardens are producing.

Thank you again for your generosity and solidarity. You are making a real difference in the lives of vulnerable families in rural Haiti.

Schools and Families Have a Successful Garden Harvest Despite a Caterpillar Infestation

A serious caterpillar infestation impacted school and family gardens across Lagonav Island. Despite their efforts to hand pick them off the plants, their crops died. This forced everyone to have to start from scratch. They grew more seedlings, transplanted them, and a successful garden harvest of hot peppers, scallions, and tomatoes was realized by the 20 schools and families with whom we are currently working.

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The solidarity of so many sustains the Matènwa Community Learning Center's vivacious model of hands-on, nonviolent, democratic, mother tongue education that respects local Haitian priorities and values -- especially in these tough times.

Thank you to everyone who gives so generously. You are planting seeds of hope in Matènwa!

More Than 100 Schools on Lagonav Island Trained to Plant & Maintain Gardens

One of MCLC's priorities is to train more teachers and students in how to plant and maintain school gardens. Most schools in Haiti shun any classroom connection with rural life and agriculture. We want students to respect it. We've already trained teachers at 100+ schools on Lagonav how to plant and maintain organic gardens.

In these school gardens, students learn to value and care for their local environment. They learn techniques to improve yield and mitigate drought driven by climate change. The vegetables they grow are either used in daily school meal programs or sold in open markets in order to buy school supplies.

By integrating agriculture into the classroom curriculum, students learn skills that they need to build better lives for themselves where they live, without having to migrate to the city. Students see that they can earn money by growing vegetables at home. 

It's the generosity, care, and heart felt concern of so many that makes school gardens and everything we do at Matènwa possible!

Students Learn to Plant at a Very Young Age

At a very young age, students start to learn how to plant gardens in small, one-meter plots of their own. Each child picks four vegetables to grow in their plot. They get to choose from a variety of seeds including tomatoes, carrots, cabbage, scallions, green peppers, hot peppers, and eggplant.

Since the gardens are organic, students don't use pesticides. Instead they learn to pick off insects that harm vegetables.

Thanks To Everyone Who Supports This Work

We are so grateful to everyone who supports this work. The generosity of so many people who care is empowering teachers and students to learn new skills and grow local food at a time when imported food from the mainland is even more difficult to come by. Thank you for supporting this sustainability effort.