Remarkable New Documentary on Ecological Restoration and Permaculture in Haiti
"One Day, Everything Will Be Free" is the title of a remarkable new feature-length documentary on an ecological restoration and permaculture community in Haiti. The film is still in final editing, but you can see an inspiring preview and get more information at onedayeverythingwillbefree.com. The movie explores the challenges, motivations, and broader implications of Sadhana Forest Haiti, an unlikely reforestation community organized around an alternative, cashless economy in an area of Haiti devastated by soil erosion and social immobility. The director, Joseph Redwood-Martinez, emailed me the following: After living and working with this community for an extended period, I put together this video as ...
New 100K Jobs for Haiti Newsletter — February 2013
Download the latest newsletter here: 100kJobs4HaitiNewsletterFeb2013
In-Depth Reporting from Haiti Brings More Disturbing News
As one of the co-founders of the Sustainable Haiti Coalition, I've been feeling guilty lately about how little time I'm able to spend on sustaining our initiatives in Haiti. The demands of the local situation, especially after Hurricane Sandy, and following several financially-disastrous years for many of us, have diminished the hope of leading a group of students on a study tour of Northern Haiti, and many other projects have fallen by the wayside. There are some bright spots: we've supported the Partners Worldwide 100,000 Jobs initiative, which is gaining ground. MTB Ayiti, working with Travelcology, have pulled off the mountain ...
Haiti’s first ever pro-am mountain bike race viewed as a success
This event took place over January 30 to February 2, 2013; you can read more about it and view a video here. The Coalition was instrumental in working with Travelcology in the early stages of this event. Please visit this page to keep in touch with the organizing team for the 2014 event. -----PRESS RELEASE------ Partnering with the Ministry of Tourism, MTB Ayiti promotes Haiti as the hottest new destination for adventure travel. Port-au-Prince, January 28.- Mountain Bike Ayiti (MTBAyiti) presented by Pepsi Max, the first ever pro-am mountain bike stage race in Haiti, will take riders from Port-au-Prince to Marigot through some of ...
Solar Power Advances in Haiti
Solar Power Advances in Haiti December 9, 2012: NRG Energy, Inc. has announced the completion of its “The Sun Lights the Way” project in Haiti. The program entailed the installation of solar electric systems at 20 schools, a fish farm and a drip irrigation system supporting agricultural production throughout Haiti’s Central Plateau region, through collaboration with a non-profit organization called Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF). This project helps to improve the quality of education for more than 6,000 Haitian students by providing the electricity needed to power lights, communication systems, laptop computers and other school equipment in remote areas of the country. ...
3rd Annual Haiti Track at Movement Day 2012 NYC September 27th-28th
3rd Annual Haiti Track at Movement Day 2012 ~ TWO DAY TRACK “Redeveloping Haiti: Partnering for Strategic Impact” Hilton NY Hotel Thursday, September 27th 12:45pm-3:45pm and Friday, September 28th 8:00am-4:00pm We recently received the following very special letter from our friend Marie-Yolaine Eusebe from Community2Community:
New Features Extend Coalition Web Site’s Functionality
We're introducing a couple of new features designed to facilitate communication amongst Coalition members. The first is "Community-Submitted News," which allows you to easily submit items for publication to the site. You don't need to register or log in to do this; just go to the submission page and enter your content. (For more details, see this post, which was created using this feature.) In addition, we're adding a Community Portal — see this page for more details. This is still under development, so don't expect much content — yet. But we invite you to add your content, including projects, interests, ...
New Web Site Feature Allows Members to Post News
Now there's a simple way to submit your news items for publication to the site. You don't need to register or log in to create an item like this. Instead, just use the form at Community-Submitted News to post your news items. We'll make sure everything is okay before they're posted to the front page like this.
Follow up to the 2012 Sustainable Haiti Conference
We had a pretty extraordinary time in Miami at the end of April, reconnecting with old friends and making new ones, impressed by the level of development occurring both in Haiti and in the Diaspora community (though of course it is still barely scratching the surface of both the challenge and the opportunity) and determined to make a difference on our return.
Join us for the Sustainable Haiti Conference April 23-25 in Miami
This year's Sustainable Haiti Conference promises to be an extraordinarily useful gathering of people and organizations — with tangible plans, access to investment funding, and innovative solutions to the challenges of rebuilding Haiti. This 3rd annual conference will take place from April 23rd- April 25th, 2012 at the Miami Beach Convention Center. We'll be hosting a session on April 25, on Coalition Building for Sustainable Enterprise Development, and we invite you to join us for this — and take advantage of the resources, contacts, and opportunities present at the Conference, which is now a regular part of John Rosser's remarkable Sustainatopia ...
100,000 Jobs in Haiti Newsletter Just Released
100,000 Jobs in Haiti — February 2012 Newsletter PDF Version: 100KJobsNewsletter
100,000 Jobs for Haiti Site Launched
http://www.100kjobshaiti.org/ The Coalition is happy to support this initiative and host the web site for the 100,000 Jobs for Haiti project created by Partners Worldwide, in association with Peace Dividend Trust (creator of Building Markets, which lists more than 3500 "vetted" Haitian businesses) and Fonkoze, Haiti's leading microlender.
The Sustainable Haiti Coalition is seeking contacts, partners, and support for two related proposals—one aimed at creating local Social Enterprise Catalyst organizations to foster a wave of social enterprises in Haiti, and the second as an example aimed at expanding the sustainable cultivation of bamboo and the development of multiple industries around this and other products. Public summaries of the proposals are here—and we welcome your inquiries and feedback on them:
BambooCommercializationInHaiti-Proposal19Jan2012
DIV-SocialEnterpriseCatalystJan2012
Please contact Jonathan Cloud at jcloud@sustainablehaiticoalition.org or by calling 1+908-581-8418 if you have any questions or comments. Thanks
Dear friends of Haiti,
In March of 2011, over 250 Haitian Business Owners and Members of International Non-Profit Organizations came together at the first ‘Buy Haitian, Restore Haiti Conference’, to address the need for local purchasing in an economy dependent on aid. Since last year’s conference, the results of local purchasing by International organizations have been tremendous!
The Haitian economy is projected to grow by 8% in 2012 (Economic Commission Latin America & Caribbean). As Haitians offer high-quality, locally produced goods and services, local purchasing is essential to the long-term restoration of the country. To ensure stability, economic growth, and the creation of 100,000 new jobs by 2020, Partners Worldwide is equipping Haitian businesses and international non-profit organizations to collaborate across sectors. For this reason, we invite you to attend the second ‘BUY HAITIAN, RESTORE HAITI’ Conference at Karibe Convention Center, January 26, 2012.
Speakers and Attendees include organizations and businesses— buyers and suppliers. This conference is a win-win for all attendees! Read the rest of 2nd Annual ‘Buy Haitian, Restore Haiti’ Conference January 26 in Port-au-Prince »
Haiti’s Tragic History
By ADAM HOCHSCHILD
Published: December 29, 2011
For the better part of two centuries, outsiders have been offering explanations that range from racist to learned-sounding — the supposed inferiority of blacks, the heritage of slavery, overpopulation — for why Haiti remains the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. None of these work: nearby Barbados has a greater population density, and about 90 percent of its people are descended from slaves, yet it outranks all but two nations in Latin America on the United Nations Human Development Index. Neither Barbados nor any other country, however, had so traumatic and crippling a birth as Haiti. Read more here…
The Haiti Rejuvenate Symposium that was to be held Thursday, January 12, 2012, at Essex County College in Newark, NJ, has been postponed until June of 2012. For more information, see http://HaitiRejuvenate.org. Here’s the original program:
Read the rest of Haiti Rejuvenate Symposium to be Rescheduled »
Former U.S. president Bill Clinton says Haiti has the potential for sparking competition in the Caribbean that would transform the island nation into a regional leader. He made the prediction in New York City at the yearly Clinton Global Initiative, or CGI, a leadership forum that tackles some of the world’s most pressing problems.
Clinton Touts Haitis Investment Potential
Martelly also announced that his country will host an investors’ conference in November.
VIDEO REPORT – Haiti needs a Prime Minister because his signature is needed to start a wide range of projects… President Martelly’s job is arguably the toughest job in the Western Hemisphere, AlJazeera says…
Watch Al Jazeera’s Craig Mauro’s report from Port-au-Prince.
I have posted my April 16 Haiti Update presentation at the Morristown EcoCenter in two formats: Viewable Online (no videos), or downloadable Player Version with Movies. I now plan to complete my notes on the trip, enter all of our new contacts, and follow up with messages regarding specific projects, as well as a general update to our members.
I believe we need to find a more effective way to dialog with and collaborate with our members, in order to support the wide range of initiatives we have identified as high-potential opportunities in Haiti; and I invite your comments and suggestions on this through this site.
Opportunities and challenges in the sustainable redevelopment of Haiti: Can we imagine an alternative future for “the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere”?
Haiti is perhaps the most powerful example of a society suffering from a deficit of triple-bottom line outcomes-ecologically, economically, and socially, though it continues to have a strong culture and an indomitable spirit. Our recent trip was both magical and disturbing, inspiring and transformative, and profoundly moving.
Read the rest of Haiti Today: The Sustainable Leadership Challenge »
[Some of this is reconstructed from handwritten notes and from memory.
Beginning with Day 3, I had trouble keeping up with the stream of events, and fell asleep before I was able to get it all recorded; and at the end of the fourth day the charging mechanism in my MacBook failed, taking with it the possibility not only of continuing my blogging but also of my correcting any errors from the day before. This seemed to me potentially serious, for I may have reported something publicly that was meant to be stated only privately, the attribution of which could harm the standing or reputation of a friend. I hope that this is not the case, but having written something and posted it publicly I was at this point unable to change it, and it stood without qualification for more than a week.
Our second day in Haiti was filled with more surprises, more insights, and several further misadventures. Our night sleeping in tents at the GRU property proved to be more difficult than any of us imagined, between the high heat and humidity, the hard ground, and the mosquitoes who somehow got past the tent’s barriers to congregate as a swarm when we awoke. I was half-determined to move us to another location, though in the end we decided to return for a second night — this time with additional padding, and mosquito netting over the tents, which proved a wise choice — because we had booked our flights to Cap Haitien for early Saturday morning.
During the day we had two very productive sessions — the first with Chad Walsh, the Grassroots United director of operations; and the second with several senior staff at the US Embassy — as well as an extensive if unanticipated tour of Port-au-Prince from the back of a pickup, and something of a trip back in time with the coordinators of our later stay in the capital.
After less than a day in Haiti, it’s already clear what many of the obstacles are to establishing a successful business or series of businesses here.
For one thing, the combination of heat and humidity is oppressive, even at night, especially when there is no breeze, and nowhere to retreat to that is air-conditioned. It’s not that people can’t live this way — clearly they do, and after a day or so seem to take it for granted, like most of the other adverse conditions — but it is not conducive to the kind of focus that most of us are accustomed to associating with work in, e.g., northern New Jersey. (And if this is the standard condition in the compound, it’s hard to imagine what it must be like in the tent cities that still house more than half of the million-and-a-half people left homeless and with nowhere else in the country to go after the January 2010 earthquake.) Read the rest of Our First Day in Haiti »
The Team Heads to Haiti
“Co-founder Jonathan Cloud, along with colleagues Matt and Sandy Polsky, head out fearlessly in stormy weather…”
Good thing we still have a sense of humor, as it looks like we’ll need it. As of this writing, it’s been snowing for a day and a half in Central Jersey, but supposedly our flight is on schedule for this morning.
If we can, we’ll blog the trip from time to time here. Read the rest of Trip Update & Sustainable Haiti Conference Apr 4-6 in Miami »
Cluster Map of Users