Posts Categorized: Haiti

FONDAMA celebrates 10 years amid chaos

Joining Hands Haiti continues to fight for peasant farmers as political and economic instability grow By Ernst Abraham | FONDAMA, Joining Hands Haiti The 10-year anniversary of FONDAMA, the Joining Hands network in Haiti, has come at a difficult time for the country.  All citizens are protesting. As the population took to the streets, the… Read more »

Asking for Prayers for Haiti

By Cindy Corell | Mission Coworker Haiti Our neighbors in Haiti, so accustomed to dire poverty, are once again under the fire of deadly crises. Violent protests and rampant criminal activity have locked down most urban centers and villages across the country. Protesting deep corruption and embezzlement of billions of dollars from a fuel program,… Read more »

Haiti Facing Economic Disaster

Haitian farmers organize to defend their rights By Fabienne Jean | FONDAMA, Joining Hands Haiti For more than 20 years, the people of Haiti have faced dire hunger. Population growth, dependence on imports for essential foods, changes in eating habits, and the misallocation of wealth have, among other things, had a considerable impact on Haiti’s… Read more »

Haitian farmers and civil society peacefully demand social reforms

By Cindy Corell | Mission Co-worker Haiti Haiti operates daily in crisis mode. Eighty percent of Haitians survive on less than $2.40 a day. Inflation puts the price of daily necessities further and further out of reach for the average family. The cost of education, too, is rising, so parents will do without to send… Read more »

Haiti: Land use and the environment

By Fabienne Jean | Coordinator for FONDAMA   Before it was colonized, the island     of Haiti was inhabited    by a people who depended mainly and traditionally on natural resources. These people lived and produced their food with methods that respected the “Pachamama,” a term meaning “Our mother, the earth.” With the Treaty of Ryswick (1697), the island… Read more »

One Year after Hurricane Matthew

Haitians continue to recover from the devastation and find hope sprouting in the garden By Cindy Correl | Mission Co-worker, FONDAMA, Joining Hands Haiti When the storm had passed, dazed survivors looked out from broken houses to count the cost. More than 500 people dead, by some counts as many as 1,000. Livestock killed. Gardens flushed… Read more »

Plight of Haitian farmers inspires efforts of U.S. churches

By Cindy Corell | Mission Co-worker Haiti My job description defies easy explanation. I work with farmers’ organizations from all across Haiti. Together, the hundreds of groups – consisting from several hundred to many thousand members – form a Joining Hands network that advocates for a better life for Haitians. The network, Hand to Hand… Read more »

Haiti’s New President Worries Land-Rights Advocates

By Cindy Corell | Mission Co-worker, Joining Hands Haiti With more than 2 million of its almost 11 million citizens still suffering seven years after a catastrophic earthquake struck in 2010, Haitians living on the island took another harsh blow in October 2016 when Hurricane Matthew hit. The massive storm took lives, destroyed crops, livestock… Read more »

Amid disaster, Haitians seek change

Hurricane Matthew Raises the Importance of Working Towards Long-term Social Change in Haiti By Cindy Corell | Mission Co-Worker, Joining Hands Haiti Our brothers and sisters here in Haiti are suffering – again, and as they too often do. The effects of Hurricane Matthew of Oct. 4 were horrendous. Most people in the far southwestern… Read more »

We’ve made you angry, so now what?

Haitian woman holding oranges By Cindy Corell | Mission Co-worker, Joining Hands Haiti The man sat in the Fellowship Hall growing angrier by the minute. I continued explaining how foreign countries dumping cheap imported food into Haiti made it all but impossible for Haitian farmers to sell their local foods at market. Cheap rice from the U.S. sells quickly. Better quality,… Read more »