Konbit Pou Ayiti

Amber Lynn Munger, January 16, 2010. 7am:  The gunfire spread last night to our zone.  At 1 am it started.  It was off in the distance a ways when it first started but got closer and closer up until about 2:30 and then it seemed to stop.  All of the homeless on the streets and in the refugee camps again met the chaos with loud singing, clapping and prayers.  I am at the Matthew 25 house in Delmas 33.

We made contact with Cyvadier this morning and thankfully, our co-founder Joe is shaken, but fine. Our friends and colleagues are safe, too.

Haiti is still experiencing aftershocks. We will be making assessments today of the damage to the city of Jacmel and surrounding communities.

Melinda, our Director, is currently in Massachussets making plans to travel to Haiti in order to assess where the relief priorities are, and how we can best attend to them.

Please contact me at elise@konpay.org if you have questions about how you can help. Donations through our DONATE button are welcome. We hope to also create categories of aid that are non-monetary.

Elise

KONPAY created a Facebook Cause last year which today boasts a membership of 7,500! Although we post updates and information on the Reforest Haiti Cause bulletin board, we have never engaged our supporters as a group. So, in an attempt to get to know our Cause community, we started a fall
campaign which we hope will elicit ideas, stories and pictures from our members.

The Youth for the Development of Cyvadier (JDS) are children and young adults who come to the tree nursery to volunteer, learn and enjoy a meal each Saturday. Last year the project suffered heavy losses during the hurricane season, but with the support of their generous partners at Global Village in Peoria, IL, JDS has recovered. Here are some recent highlights.

JDS’s co-ed soccer team made the finals! We hope to make team t-shirts available for sale soon!

The nursery continues to produce 50,000 seedlings for distribution each year, including the highly nutritious leafy green moringa tree. KONPAY intends to also distribute a powder supplement made from the moringa plant to increase nutrition consumption in the community, so we planted several of the trees on the nursery grounds.

Paul Miller, with the Haiti Justice Committee of Minnesota, arranged a donation of 30 "Treegators" for thirtsy greenbelt trees! Paul was in Chicago for the American Society of Landscape Architects Conference when he met Rob Taylor of Spectrum Products. Paul convinced Rob to make this donation of Treegators which will save time and water in Gros Morne, where workers have to carry water from the river below to trees on the mountaintop. The slow-release bags attach directly to a tree, and keep it happy and watered for up to a week. Thank you Paul and Rob!

Our latest newsletter includes articles about our work with the Youth for the Development of Cyvadier (JDS) and news from Haiti. We are excited to introduce some of our supporters in this newsletter, and we hope to make a regular column on our website about you and all you do to support Haiti KONPAY!

KONPAY director Melinda Miles is interviewed by Nadine Patrice, director of Operation Green Leaves. Melinda speaks from Haiti about work being done by grassroots environmental groups today, concerns and priorities in the enviromental movement, and how KONPAY is increasing the impact of the movement. http://www.oglhaiti.com/ (if you don't have time to listen to the entire interview, forward to minute 20 for current events)

KONPAY created a Facebook Cause last year which today boasts an impressive membership: 7,000. Although we post updates and information on the Reforest Haiti Cause bulletin board, we have never engaged our supporters as a group. So, in an attempt to get to know our Cause community, we started an 8 week campaign designed to elicit ideas, stories and pictures from our Cause members.

The initial topic was "Why do you love Haiti", which generated the blog that Melinda and I posted here about how we got involved in advocating for this incredible country.

I was born in Massachusetts in the late 60's, in a suburban white middle class family with a history professor and a math teacher for parents. I was the youngest of six kids and I was doted on. My life in a word: safe.

As far as I'm concerned, there isn't a better food than mango. April - mango season - is my favorite time of year to visit Haiti. I walked through Melinda’s neighborhood on the first day of my recent visit to our home base of Cyvadier and the warm, moist air felt still and content on my skin. Simultaneously, my mind struggles to reconcile that sense of calm with anticipation about all that is happening in and around Haiti. The country, the region, the diaspora, the international community, all seemed to be poised at a historic window of opportunity to collaborate in the reinstatement of Haiti's sovereignty. Will we rally? Either way, the mangoes will be ripe in April.