Reaching Rural Haiti

It is no secret that travel to our partner communities in rural Haiti is difficult at best. In the rainy season it is quite common for the dirt roads to be washed out and certain villages are unreachable. In light of the August 14th earthquake, which was followed by a tropical storm, rescue and relief in the rural areas were slower to come by.

We were able to gather supplies and send a team to the rural west about 2 weeks after the earthquake. While we were in contact with our Haitian Directors, we had yet to have face to face contact with any of our Haitian partners.

Thank you to our team—Jeanne Touloute and her son Luvio, as well as Matthew and Christina Hansley—for tirelessly traveling the difficult roads (and lack of roads) to be some of the first people to reach our partner communities, and then going back to deliver food kits and tarps to provide relief and much needed temporary shelter.

Thank you to the farmers of Partners in Progress for packaging and delivering food kits to Les Cayes for our team to distribute to Haiti H2O’s community partners. Each kit contained Haitian grown rice, beans, peanuts, and corn meal.

The community of Meloniere came to unload the truck full of food kits.

Our partners in St. Martin, Plain Matin and Meloniere:

Toto came with a team from Bassin Caiman to pick up food packages to distribute to families in need. These kits also contained seeds from the PIP Farmers who plan to return to visit our communities and help them with planting and harvesting advice. Bassin Caiman and St. Martin hope to participate in a farmer training program as soon as they are able to travel safely to PIP’s community north of Port-au-Prince.

This week, Jules will be distributing water filters to our communities as he and Jeanne make their quarterly community visits. Please continue to pray for our staff and partners in Haiti. While we have been able to get immediate relief delivered, the next steps of recovery will take longer as we work to help rebuild what was lost during the earthquake.

Thank you for your support!