Haitian Platform to Advocate Alternative Development (PAPDA)

On the cusp of Haiti’s spring planting season, we received urgent requests from our partners and allies in Haiti about their dire need for seeds and tools to ensure that food production would be secured in the immediate planting season -- this is all the more important in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake and the massive migration to rural areas from Port-au-Prince.

Grassroots International is making three new grants of $25,000 each, all of which will help provide seeds, tools and training for this planting season to these groups:

• The Peasant Movement of Papaye (the MPP). Funds for the MPP will cover the Central Plateau.

Today marks the first of many anniversaries in this new phase of Haiti’s history. It has been a month. The earthquake—known simply as “the incident” to Haitians—changed everything, instantly dividing their experience into a before and after. Many large NGOs, international institutions and donor countries are jockeying to get a seat at the table in rebuilding Haiti. Some of their core prescriptions involve the same policies that have kept Haiti near the top of the “Failed State Index” in the first place.

In what’s left of Port-au-Prince, Haitians have self-organized into 450 camps administered by neighborhood committees. These newly formed communities not only provide temporary shelter, but are also launching points for local organizers to promote Haitian voices in rebuilding their society. Outside the city, peasant movements and organizations are welcome displaced victims of the earthquake into their communities. These returnees are part of a massive reverse migration back to their places of origin

Since a devastating earthquake shook Haiti more than two weeks ago, Grassroots International’s partners on the ground have been working to assess the situation and respond to the needs of the community – even as they themselves have suffered great losses.  With help from hundreds of people who have donated in response to the crisis, Grassroots International has made three initial grants to three of our partners in Haiti.

Grassroots International ally Food First's executive director Eric Holt-Jimenez wrote recently -- on HuffPost -- on the long roots of the disaster in Haiti. His point about the "historic bleeding of Haiti's economy and the systematic undermining of its political institutions" being at the root of the disaster as much as the "tectonics that leveled Port-au-Prince" is right on the mark. Grassroots' partners and allies in Haiti have long struggled against that bleeding and undermining, and fought for better Haitian and international policies on agriculture, trade, and food that would sustain their people, and their land.

Grassroots International partner La Via Campesina, a global network of peasant, family farmer and small producer movements more than 100 million strong, and with members in Haiti issued this call for solidarity with Haitians including the peasant population.

Recently, Grassroots International received an email from our partner Camille Chalmers of the Haitian Platform to Advocate Alternative Development (PAPDA). It is translated below.

In the last 48 hours, my work to gather information from our partners in Haiti has become a puzzle game. As of Thursday morning, I have been unable to talk with our partners and allies in Haiti. The lack of electricity to power the phone lines is probably the main barrier to reaching folks in Port-au-Prince. As I place together the scattered information from colleagues from Dominican Republic, Brazil and Honduras, I keep checking news from different sources. Scarce and brief notes from other member organizations of the Via Campesina and our allies in the U.S. give us hope that they are all well and alive.