Konbit Pou Ayiti

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.

Wholistic strategies to protect and renew watersheds are central to the environmental movement’s efforts. Haiti KONPAY’s current programs in the Jacmel watershed are a perfect example.

Planting at the Top to Protect the Bottom

Cyvadier, where KONPAY has its office and the JDS central tree nursery, sits on the coastal floodplain just to the east of Jacmel. Many families have agricultural gardens on the steep cliffs of the mountains because the plain itself is narrow. At the top of the mountain is the village of Cap Rouge, and in Cap Rouge is the largest of the new ravines formed by flooding and mud slides during the 2008 storms.

Baie d’Orange, Haiti is a place few people knew of even before deaths from starvation were reported there in November 2008. As you know, Haiti was hit by four powerful storms in August and September, including two hurricanes. Baie d’Orange is less than a two-hour drive from KONPAY’s office in Cyvadier.

The Youth for the Development of Cyvadier (JDS) is a popular program that keeps growing. In 2008, the project received a donation to move onto its own piece of land. We constructed a depot and a kitchen for cooking up Saturday lunches. Children and young adults come on a rotating schedule to volunteer, learn together and enjoy a meal each Saturday morning.

Last year the project suffered some losses during the hurricane season,
but with the support of their generous partners at Global Village in
Peoria, IL, JDS has bounced back.

Haiti KONPAY is currently working with the Environmental Law Institute to develop training for judges in the insular Caribbean about environmental law. The program emphasizes biodiversity conservation, and for that reason it covers three key countries in a Caribbean biodiversity corridor: Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica.

This morning one of my favorite blogs made me stop and think. I like “No Impact Man” for a lot of reasons, and it’s the only blog that I get delivered to my email. The author is a father in New York City, and he is taking part in a great experiment to prove that anyone anywhere can reduce his or her impact on the environment. Today he suggested that “it might be fun if we all--the entire community on this blog--weighed in and told each other something they've seen or an experience they've had or someone they love that makes them feel like they don't want to change a thing.”

Anne Kerns recently visited Haiti where she planted moringa trees (also known as the miracle tree) donated by Haiti KONPAY's Youth for the Development of Cyvadier tree nursery, and she shared this report with us: We have returned from a truly wonderful trip to Haiti and I have to say that the highlight for me was seeing that van full of Moringa trees at the airport!

It is hard to believe another year is already coming to an end. I don’t know about you, but I feel a great relief to see 2008 finish and 2009 begin. Around the Haiti KONPAY office we’ve adopted a new slogan: Tout nèf nan 2009! translating to "All new in 2009!”

Haiti KONPAY is completing the first year of collaboration with the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) in Washington, DC on a program to train judges in biodiversity protection and environmental law. ELI’s program focuses on the insular Caribbean and includes organizations and judges in the Dominican Republic and Jamaica, as well as Haiti.