News from the Field

Coordination and collaboration across partners to address needs

The Côte Sud Initiative is based on a platform of coordinated action across sectors and organizations in the South Department of Haiti, not only to avoid repetition and redundancy of interventions by various entities, but also to build strong relationships with the Haitian government and local communities. These relationships are integral to the long-term sustainable development of the region, lasting beyond the life of the CSI itself. 

There are many efforts to achieve critical markers of development and sustain vital needs for safety, health, education and food security.  The myriad of government programs, NGOs, and local initiatives are a demonstration of the dedicated teams at work within the Cote Sud region, yet there is little strategic coordination to ensure comprehensive coverage of basic needs are being met. There is also a lack of consideration of geographic coverage within a region that varies greatly from coastal plains to rugged mountains.

In order to understand this complex landscape of existing organizations, coordination mechanisms, services being provided, in early 2011, the CSI research team undertook a project and organizational mapping exercise to determine what activities were undertaken by which groups, addressing multiple sectors across the 10 initial communes of the CSI. This information has been used to tailor the CSI programs and coordinate the efforts of CSI partners. 

This approach reflects a critical component of development that is often missing: strategic planning and coordination of aid funding across multiple stakeholders.  Without detailed matrices of what funds are being spent by zone and by sector, holistic development, which is fundamental to long-term sustainable development, is essentially limited. Understanding the current aid situation allows CSI to optimize investments to achieve maximum coverage of critical needs with partnerships involving organizations, local governments, and local communities. 

Mapping the number of organizations and their activities gives the CSI and its government partners the ability to visualize gaps in service and make priority areas for action. The communes of Ile à Vache and Arniquet had the fewest projects; Arniquet has the most.  The distribution across sectors within communes is also varied;  Ile à Vache had projects in 5 sectors whereas Port-à-Piment had projects in 14 sectors.  All of the communes have agriculture and agro-forestry as well as health and education programs.

Organizational mapping: who is here, and what are they doing?
The CSI team conducted a detailed project mapping exercise to determine the current level of involvement in the Côte Sud as of mid-2011.  The study built a matrix of existing projects underway by the international and domestic NGO community. The information is used both to support the Government of Haiti’s planning and to help develop stronger networks within the Côte Sud. The study addressed core questions about the actors and activities in the region:

• Who is implementing projects in each region and each sector?
• What is the extent of coverage within each sector and each commune?
• Which regions and sectors have critical gaps or concentrated investment in programs, projects and coverage?

Results were analyzed in a variety of ways to reflect the number of projects per commune by sector, as well as the target populations addressed by projects. Additionally, the report investigated the financial, personnel and material infrastructure of projects operating in the Côte Sud region, including number of full-time, non-volunteer staff, and access to ICT and use of vehicles. The study collected data on level of investment per commune, though the results on levels of financing are not reliable, as not all organizations interviewed reported their annual operating budget.

Identifying and addressing gaps in coverage

Through the process of identifying actors within the CSI region in the first half of 2011, the research team found uneven and inconsistent patterns in project and thematic distribution across the 10 communes. Tourism, nutrition, energy and marine programs have since been expanded in the CSI region.

The study identified gaps and areas targeted for improvement as of May 2011. No commune among the ten had nutrition or tourism projects.  Since this study, the CSI has launched projects in both sectors in the latter half of 2011 and are planned for expansion in 2012. Nutrition was a fundamental action of Child Health Week in the Port-à-Piment watershed, where children received vitamin A supplements along with other preventative health measures like vaccines. School feeding programs are also part of the Education Program, ensuring a healthy meal for children while at school. Destination Sud, the tourism program of the CSI, is launching its campaign in 2012 alongside the Ministry of Tourism, with promotion of tourist sites across the department. Mer Sud—led by the Marine Programme of the CSI—has been launched to address the lack of a coordinated effort in marine and coastal management and the need for comprehensive programs to develop robust and sustainable fishing livelihoods while preserving the marine environment.

CSI partner The Nature Conservancy recently joined Mer Sud, the Marine Programme, to undertake a marine habitat mapping project, working with Haitian students and local fishermen to assess the marine environment of the Côte Sud region.

Likewise, at the time of the research, energy—a cross-cutting, vital sector with implications from poverty to disaster vulnerability—was being addressed only in the commune of Les Anglais by CSI partner Earthspark. The CSI has been working continually with Earthspark to scale up clean energy outreach and programming across the South Department; a cook stove consultant is already at work in the region with CSI partners CRS and Earthspark promoting improved cook stoves; and a focused scale-up campaign will be launched in early 2012. As with the examples of energy and nutrition, tourism and marine, the exercise of creating an inventory of organizations and projects allows areas of need to be identified and areas of priority to be expanded through collaborative partnerships. 

The importance of this type of identification and coordination cannot be understated. According to the report, coordination of the multiple NGOs in the region responding to the cholera epidemic was crucial. Many organizations were brought together to work as partners for the first time; coordination as to who was doing what and where was key to avoid overlaps, exclusions, repetition, and more deaths. This partnership and ability to coordinate was highlighted in October 2011, when the CSI was instrumental in planning and actualizing the emergency response to severe flooding and exacerbations of the cholera outbreak in the region with CSI partners, emergency organizations and the government.

Tools for governance and planning

Beyond the benefits of coordinating efforts among organizations and sectors for the CSI and its partners, the organizational matrix is also intended to play an instrumental role in aiding the local and regional governments. Aid and development work, while important to supplement the historic lack of government-led or regulated initiatives, has been largely outside the efforts of the national, regional and local governments. Therefore, the information in the organizational matrix is being shared with local and regional governments, from the departmental level down to the sector-specific tables sectorielles. Sharing of this information is meant to empower the local decision-makers to apply the information in the inventory to monitor what is happening in their jurisdiction and by whom, and to identify areas of need—much in the way the CSI has done within the context of its programs.

On a national scale, the Government of Haiti is now adopting this process at the country-wide level to help track donor funds at local level to increase coordination and strategic allocation of limited funding.  For optimal functioning, the platform will need an easy mechanism for annual updates to simplify the input process and keep the information current as projects develop, begin, or come to a close. Announced at the European Development Days in Poland in December, Prime Minister Garry Conille of Haiti has made management of incoming foreign aid through government ministries a priority for the Haitian government, with the goal of national scale coordination of programs and partners for a collaborative approach to development within a broader national framework. The work piloted in the South Department by the CSI stands as an example of increased capacity for local and national planning. Such research provides the government of Haiti with the tools to manage and direct the actions of organizations already at work in the country. 

The entire report can be found here: Organizational and Project Mapping.

As part of the Côte Sud Initiative’s institutional stove program, the CSI site team requested fuel efficiency tests on stoves provided by Catholic Relief Services (CRS) to area schools. These stoves were distributed starting 2007 as part of MYAP – the Multi-Year Assistance Program - run by CRS for schools in Haiti’s entire South Department, which includes the CSI area. MYAP’s school feeding program supports a total of 45,000 students and CRS’s goal is to have at least one cookstove per one hundred students by the end of 2012. Recognizing the work already done by CRS in the area, the CSI offered to provide CRS with concrete quantitative and qualitative data on the effectiveness of the stoves supplied by MYAP.

Locally-made stoves are crafted out of sheet metal 1/16in thick. They can either be bought as part of a package that contains large, 40-liter prefabricated cooking pots, or as separate stove-only units. A 40-liter cooking pot can cook a meal for 100 children.

The stoves used in CRS schools are produced locally in the South Department by Atéliers Écoles in Camp Perrin. Whereas traditional open fires take significant fuel to keep going and waste a lot of the heat produced from combustion, the improved stove design features a cylindrical combustion chamber with a rectangular opening at the bottom for inserting wood and controlling airflow. These stoves, by surrounding the fire, concentrate the energy produced in the combustion chamber better than open fires. The stoves can be covered with a metal stove cover that keeps hot air and smoke confined around the pot and potentially speeds cooking times.

Controlled Cooking Tests (CCTs) in CRS schools began Nov. 25. These tests compare the traditional open fire and the improved institutional stoves as each cooks the same quantity of beans. To begin, a quantity of wood is measured and set beside each stove. Cooks are carefully monitored to ensure that no additional wood is used unless it has been weighed. When the food is done, the quantity of unconsumed wood is measured. The quantity of cooked food is also weighed. With both values, the specific fuel consumption (SFC) for each stove is calculated. SFC refers to the amount of food each stove cooks per kilogram of wood. The complete CCT protocol can be found here.

Traditional stoves and cooking pots use scarce fuelwood uneconomically, as the heat produced by the flames as the food is cooking is lost to the open air instead of contained in a combustion chamber.

Challenges to the use of institutional improved stoves

1. Perceived performance of the improved stoves
2. Resource-rich zone has abundence of available fuel wood
3. Low incentive to continue use of improved stove
4. Inconsistent monitoring for proper usage of stove
5. Smoke resulting from improper usage
6. Stoves not seen as necessity compared to traditional methods

The CRS schools where CCTs took place vary in size, from 200 to 600 students in schools tested to date. Testing begins between 6AM and 6:30AM when the cooks arrive to begin preparing the day’s meal. In all 12 schools visited, parents pay for firewood. Most schools are supplied by vendors who bring wood on an irregular basis. The reported monthly firewood expenditure varies greatly with some figures as low as 160 HGT and others at 7500 HGT.

Schools cook beans and soy flour on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, they cook beans and wheat grain. Since beans are on the menu every day of the week, they provide a reliable snapshot of fuel needs on a typical day in a typical school kitchen. 

Observations from visits to CRS schools in Port-Salut, Port-à-Piment, and Les Anglais shed some light on some of the challenges the CSI faces as it encourages cooks to exclusively use improved institutional stoves.

1.     Most cooks are simply convinced that open fires work better. Even after participating in a controlled test that demonstrates the better performance of an improved stove, they still argue for the superiority of the open fire over the improved stove.

2.     Unlike resource-scarce environments, the Cote Sud is especially lush and green during and right after the rainy season. Cooks see firewood as available and abundant and there is no sense of urgency or resource depletion.

3.     Schools have no direct incentive to conserve wood. Parents pay for firewood and can be asked to donate more if necessary.

4.     Savings and monthly wood expenditures aren’t as consistently tracked from month to month in all schools as they would need to be in order for schools with improved stoves to concretely articulate how much they have saved as a result of using these stoves. With no concrete evidence of the usefulness of the stoves, an administrator is less likely to buy another stove or replace an old one. If schools are not aware of their monthly fuel expenditures, making the case for an improved stove may be difficult.

5.     Smoke. The improved stove sometimes produces more smoke compared to the open fire. This may be as a result of the large sizes of wood pieces used or the compounded effect of burning somewhat wet wood in an enclosed combustion chamber. It may also be due to improper usage. When the combustion chamber is closed too soon, there isn’t enough air to aid combustion and this produces smoke.

Nevertheless, improved stoves will need to consistently perform better than traditional stoves in smoke reduction in order for many cooks to see their advantage.

6.     Special Item vs. Necessity. In at least two of the schools visited, stoves were kept away in storage rooms instead of being used consistently. In other cases, cooks cook beans on open fires instead of improved stoves. Improved stoves are then used when cooked beans are to be mixed with wheat or flour. This accounts for about 20% of all cooking.

The school meals program helps to provide students with the nutrients they need to be healthy and learn well while at school. Efficient use of fuel, such as with effectively-used improved cookstoves, can help parents and schools preserve precious funds while preserving the environment through reduced pressure to cut down scarce trees.

In summary, the Atéliers Écoles stoves distributed by CRS reduce fuelwood usage on average. Misconceptions about improved stoves still exist. Further training on the effective use of stoves as well as a general increase in energy literacy of communities in the CSI will ensure the endurance of gains already made by the introduction of improved institutional stoves. Based on the challenges discussed earlier, it is necessary to create incentives for school cooks to effectively use improved institutional stoves. This could be an award, monthly bonus or other type of recognition for cooks who effectively use the stoves provided to them. Another effort in encouraging the use of improved stoves will focus on engaging school administrators in the effort to use less wood. Schools with the most informed administrators often relied more heavily on their improved stoves than schools with less-involved administrators. Finally, it is important to discuss the smoke problem with Atéliers Écoles and work with them to improve design as necessary. This would not only benefit end users but also improve the quality of locally produced stoves.

Roughly half of the world’s population burns solid biomass fuels for cooking and heating.  Throughout poor, rural areas of the developing world, biomass is the dominant fuel, and cooking is usually performed using a simple three-stone open fire, often in poorly ventilated structures. In Haiti, this dependence on wood and wood-based charcoal has been the country’s reality for decades. In the South Department, the Côte Sud Initiative and its partners are working to make real alternatives to the use of wood fuels and production of charcoal a reality for this and future generations.

The cycle of charcoal, deforestation, and poverty

Decades of deforestation has severely eroded hillsides and riverbanks, making Haiti particularly vulnerable to flooding.

In Haiti, only 2% of the original forest cover remains in the otherwise deforested national landscape. This is both driven by, and continues despite, the reality that biofuels comprise 75% of the total energy consumed in Haiti. Of the biofuels used by households and small businesses to cook their meals and heat their homes, the majority is made from wood. This is in part due to a lack of electricity infrastructure and pervasive poverty; electrical grids are available to less than one in four Haitians and electricity comprises only 2.6% of the national energy balance, which makes what little electricity is available outside the economic reach of the grand majority of Haitians.  Particularly in rural areas, dead wood and farm waste are gathered and used for cooking. Additionally, green wood is collected and used as firewood or transformed into charcoal, both for household cooking needs and for small businesses. From dead wood to the production of charcoal from green wood, the majority of the population is dependent on tree-based sources of energy. Other viable and large-scale alternatives for household energy have been lacking for generations, creating a systematic dependence on wood and charcoal, as they are relatively inexpensive and easy to obtain. The most recent statistics in 2003 estimated that wood consumed in Haiti amounts to over 4 million tons.

This dependency on wood is directly related to the severe and chronic levels of poverty throughout the country. Access to electricity is extremely limited in the majority of rural Haiti. Rural residents rely primarily on agriculture for their livelihoods; the production of charcoal is very often a supplemental income. The need for these extra funds surfaces in times of want; a striking example is the soaring production of charcoal at the beginning each school year, when parents are faced with the payment of high private school fees for their children, the result of inadequate free public education.

Studies at the Earth Institute (EI) have found that while the rainy season brings conditions that are unfavorable for charcoal production, the decreased supply increases both the demand for the good and the price it fetches. Further, economic needs are often exacerbated after natural disaster events such as flooding, which compromise agricultural investments.  The already vulnerable population continues to exploit natural resources as an income safety net for their families and basic subsistence.  This already vulnerable landscape is only further damaged in the negative feedback loops as communities cut down the remaining trees and branches to produce charcoal.  The viscous cycle continues, as the population is increasingly susceptible to natural disasters and the severe effects of increased damage to infrastructure, decreased agricultural products, and increased need to produce charcoal.

Realities of charcoal production in Port-à-Piment

Charcoal produced throughout the watershed acts as a source of income for residents, who must work within the limitations of road infrastructure to get their goods to markets. Most of the charcoal produced in the watershed, as throughout Haiti, goes to serve the energy needs of Port-au-Prince.

Researchers at EI have studied the complex chain of charcoal, from production in the field to sale in the market, in the Port-à-Piment watershed, the site of the Port-à-Piment Millennium Village Project.  Estimates determine that between 60-85% of people in Port-à-Piment use woody biomass for their household energy needs, while between 15-40% use charcoal and less than 2% use kerosene, LPG or electricity.  Cooking in the Port-à-Piment watershed is done mainly using three-stone fires—a means of cooking that uses a large quantity of fuel wood and  places an enormous stress on the environment.  While this is true in most places where rural households cook on open fires, this is particularly true in the South Department of Haiti. Its position on the southwest peninsula of Haiti is one of the most frequently hit by hurricanes and vulnerable to floods. The majority of the population is rural, living on an overwhelmingly steep terrain, where agricultural production is difficult. Further, the biological hotspot of the Pic Macaya National Park boarders the upper the watershed zones; it is unclear what level of forest cover is left in the unenforced areas of Pic Macaya.  This proximity to remaining forests and economic vulnerability of the population contribute to the South’s role as a major producer of charcoal for the whole of Haiti.

A traditional three-stone open fire consumes a large quantity of wood fuel and produces dangerous smoke.

Though relatively few people use charcoal for their daily needs in the South, the large majority of residents of the Port-à-Piment watershed rely upon the wages earned by producing it, either as a source of supplemental income or full time work. While agriculture is a primary source for livelihoods in rural Haiti, in a preliminary study in Port-à-Piment, 85% of respondants self-identified as producing charcoal at least seasonally or part time. In addition to those who produce, charcoal is also the livelihood for those who act as merchants, transporters, and wholesalers in the charcoal market system—often producing for the urban centers in Port-au-Prince or Les Cayes.

While production of charcoal can be done by individuals, families, and labor groups called konbits, the burden of collecting the fuel wood used for cooking in the rural areas of the South falls primarily to women and children. The amount of time invested varies by season, but feedback from focus groups in the Port-à-Piment watershed estimate that between 30 minutes and 2 hours are spent collecting firewood each day. Some households are not even able to prepare two meals a day, especially during the rainy season, due to difficulties obtaining fuelwood.  Moreover, particulate emissions due to inefficient combustion from the traditional cooking method are also considered a major cause of indoor air pollution in the rural households.  During the dry season many women are able to cook in partially enclosed kitchens outdoors, but in the rainy season many women cook in small indoor rooms, increasing their household’s exposure to harmful indoor air pollutants.

Creating alternatives through improved cookstoves

Enèji Pwòp customer Leoni (right) is still cooking with her miracle stove more than one year after purchasing it. Her daughter (left) helps her at her market cooking stand.

While the problem of charcoal is complex and requires multiple adjustments and actions to break the pervasive cycle, one of the many actions being undertaken by the CSI is the integration of improved cookstoves, which can lessen the dependence on biomass in cooking. The Earth Institute and EarthSpark International have combined EI’s expertise from other Millennium Villages in efficiency testing with EarthSpark’s operational excellence and marketing creativity in cookstove distribution to create a CSI Cookstove Program. Improved cookstoves use less wood more efficiently, which can decrease the amount of time needed to collect firewood and prepare food, save families money in expenditures on fuel, and decrease a household’s exposure to harmful smoke. Earthspark estimates that a family saves an average of US$0.25 a day on fuel by using more efficient cookstoves—a small sum that amounts to significant savings to Haitian households.

EarthSpark is an International energy NGO that provides support to Eneji Pwop, a small store in Les Anglais that sells clean energy products.  EarthSpark’s mission is to empower communities by eradicating energy poverty.  They seek to achieve this by partnering with entrepreneurs and organizations to develop local businesses and supply chains for clean and efficient energy technologies.  EarthSpark has been operating since 2009 to provide communities around Les Anglais with access to clean cookstoves and solar products for household use, such as solar lanterns and lightbulbs.  Partnering with the CSI, EarthSpark will scale its distribution model of improved household energy products to the other communes in the South Department; Earthspark will also increase marketing, identify and train vendors and oversee the sales of cookstoves.

Cooking tests of beans at a school.

EI has previously provided technical support to help launch cookstove programs in the Millennium Villages by providing technical expertise in executing controlled cooking tests, cookstove marketing and delivery. The same field testing program based upon the widely accepted Controlled Cooking Test (CCT) methodology to compare fuelwood consumption across multiple stove models will be employed in Haiti. In the CCTs, two local foods are identified and tests are conducted, where local women cook local foods with their own fuel wood employing typical cooking techniques, like a three-stone fire, while also testing both local and imported improved cookstoves simultaneously. Questionnaires assess cooks' overall impression of the stoves' design, usability and cost, including specific questions regarding which stoves the cooks would purchase and use at various prices.

A team is currently working in the CSI to provide EarthSpark and other Haitian partners with technical assistance on how to run Controlled Cooking Tests (CCTs), and assist Earthspark with training, marketing and distribution of stoves.  A series of updates and findings will be provded by the CSI cookstove expert while conducting the CCTs and working with Earthspark to expand the CSI Cookstove Program in the South of Haiti.

For more information on charcoal in Haiti, please visit: Haiti’s Charcoal Challenge and Charcoal, Construction and Coffins on the Earth Institute’s State of the Planet blog.

In early November, the CSI Monitoring and Evaluation team began the first stages of the impact evaluation study by launching a household mapping exercise that will collect information vital for monitoring CSI interventions in the South Department.

The impact evaluation study primarily consists of household-level surveys on a wide range of topics related to the Millennium Development Goals, such as education, gender equity, and infrastructure. Moreover, the household survey also collects vital information on the health of the population, including basic physical measurements, health seeking behavior, fertility, skilled birth attendance, and child mortality. 

A river bed in the commune of Coteaux demonstrates the severity of much of the landscape in the south of Haiti that the mapping and enumerating team must navigate to create their maps.

In Haiti, without an established system of spatial data and addresses—or even accurate maps of each settlement in the region—determining where to go was the necessary first step before enumerating households. To this end, a mapping team of five Haitian cartographers was recently trained by representatives from Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and the Earth Institute at Columbia University (EI) to systematically plot community structures and record basic identification information, such as address, residential status, and number of dwellings within each physical structure.  These maps will act as a spatial template to guide the regimented household selection process for the surveys. 

While creating maps may seem like a simple matter, the terrain of the CSI intervention area can cause significant difficulties.  The CSI intervention area includes about 200,000 people in 10 administrative communes across more than 1000 km² of extremely varied terrain – from swollen riverbeds to mountain ranges reaching  2000m above sea level. Across such wide distances and hilly terrain, it’s not difficult to lose your way. 

To aid in the process of creating the maps the Earth Institute provided the CSI team with high resolution aerial photographs of each enumeration area, including detailed GPS coordinates.  

In the field, the mapping team is using handheld GPS units to locate a reference point from the aerial photographs. Each GPS reference point falls within a randomly pre-selected research segment (i.e. a small village or cluster of approximately 40-50 households). In this way, the mapping team can orient themselves on the map and collect spatial data with firm scientific footing.

The Haitian mapping team uses the high resolution aerial photographs.

The mapping team uses GPS coordinates to make sure they are in the right place according to the aerial photographs.

Recording accurate maps and identification information is very important, because a few weeks after a segment is successfully mapped an interviewing team will randomly select about 20% of these households for the full cadre of household- and individual-level questionnaires.  The interviewing team will need to find these selected households primarily by using the hand-drawn maps and identification information. 

From this single reference point, the mapping team is recording the geographic location of each structure and residential dwelling in the village by hand. The team is also gathering  as a list of basic identification information about structures within each community. The mapping team’s primary goal is to prepare clear documentation and record each household in the research segments. With accurate data on all households, each individual household—including the most remote and vulnerable households with poor access to services—will be eligible to participate in the detailed household survey.

The mapping team discusses how to properly document a group of dwellings and commercial structures.

The team will continue their work until they have mapped all 114 research segments.

Beginning in the commune of Coteaux, the CSI mapping team created a map of their first research segment on November 8, 2011. That leaves only a 114 more research segments to go.

As of the week of December 5, the CSI survey mapping team has completed the three communes in the Port-a-Piment watershed (Coteaux, Chardonnieres, and Port-à-Piment), which includes 45 research segments.  Next, they will move onto the communes of Les Anglais and Tiburon.  Meanwhile, the household survey enumeration team has been following-up in the mapped research segments by randomly selecting and enumerating households.  The enumeration team has finished household enumeration of 33 of the 45 mapped research segments, which equates to about 330 households. 

 Child Health Week: one week of efforts so all children can live in health

The health and education sectors of the Port-à-Piment Millennium Village Project (MVP) recently organized a series of activities for Child Health Week. Though the event is usually celebrated at a national level by the Ministry of Health, this year only the communities of the Port-à-Piment watershed were able to coordinate and celebrate Child Health Week, thanks to a strong collaboration between the various partners of the MVP, including UNOPS, Catholic Relief Services, the Ministry of Public Health (MSPP), the Mayor of Port-à-Piment, the National Police of Haiti, community organizations, church representatives and managers of educational institutions.

Partners from the Port-à-Piment Millennium Village Project sport shirts of Child Health Week, Semenn Sante Timoun. Partners present included the MVP Health and Education team, CRS, and the Haitian Ministry of Health.

The health and education sector teams had multiple objectives in the initiatives planned for Child Health Week. As the week marked the official launch of the activities of the health and education teams of the MVP, one of the priorities was to inform the general population of Port-à-Piment about the MVP and the planned activities in health and education. The focus of the week was the promotion of children’s health: to strengthen the rates of vaccination and deworming of children under 5, to improve the rates of tetanus vaccination among women over 15 on at the level of school facilities, to strengthen the coverage of Vitamin A supplementation in children, and to support the promotion of primary health services for children.

Child Health Week activities took place primarily in two communes of the watershed: Port-à-Piment and Rendel. In these two communities, one along the coastal plain and the other at a higher inland elevation. The MVP team met with community organizations, staff of health facilities, and key community figures regarding the planning and implementation of Child Health Week. 

Marching through the town of Port-à-Piment, school children and community members gathered to promote Child Health Week and participate in activities aimed at promoting positive healthy actions, from everyday prevention to good hygiene to the importance of vaccines.

On Sunday, November 28, a large parade for Child Health Week brought together delegations of students and teachers, directors of educational institutions and community organizations, and the staff of the  hospital in Port-à-Piment and the health center in Rendel. The Baptist church of Port-à-Piment contributed their podium and communication equipment to the event, who planned a presentation for the community at the end of the march route in the central plaza of Port-à-Piment.

The key messages of Child Health Week focused on ways to keep children healthy, from daily activities to preventative measures. Lessons included nutritional information, such as the benefits of breastfeeding and three vital nutrient groups (carbohydrates, protein and fats). Hygiene, including hand washing with soap and water, was a emphasized as a cruicial part of daily health for children and adults alike. Linked to hygiene were discussions on preventing avoidable diseases which arise from poor sanitation conditions, from diarrhea to cholera; the MVP team and partners also presented on how to prepare oral rehydration salts at home. The importance of immunizations for communicable diseases was also a key message for Child Health Week; during the week, the MVP teams provided immunizations in 13 schools in Port-à-Piment and 10 schools in Rendel. Teams also distributed Vitamin A and deworming drugs.

School children gather for Child Health Week.

Another campaign to promote child health similar to Child Health Week is planned for June 2012. With the strong connections to local communities, the network of community health workers, and the robust, collaborative partnership of the MVP, the Education and Health Sector teams will aim to reach more communities and extend child health promotion efforts to Paricot and Balai, other communal sections in the watershed.

The start of the MVP programs in health and education through its activities for Child Health Week was extremely well received and promises an excellent future of community collaboration.

More images of Child Health Week and the activities of the MVP team will be included in an upcoming Child Health Week gallery. 

The Côte Sud Initiative has launched a new program as part of its agricultural support sector. The Earth Institute at Columbia University is working with the Organization for the Rehabilitation of the Environment (ORE), an NGO with a strong presence in the Côte Sud region, to pilot a new cell phone based survey tool to monitor agricultural practices, crop productivity, and farmer yields of crops. After the initial pilot phase, the technology is intended to provide real-time feedback to farmers on market information as well as best practices for farm management and seasonal crop calendars. 

ORE has been operating in Haiti since 1985, working to improve the environmental, agricultural, and economic conditions in rural Haiti. ORE’s core programs focus on increasing the incomes of farmers through improved seeds, producing nutrient-rich foods for Haitian families with vegetable and tuber crops, and using high value commercial fruit trees to improve Haiti’s degraded environment. ORE’s agronomists have extensive experience in surveying the region and in collecting and analyzing agricultural data, but until now all of their data collection relied on paper forms and a manual data entry process. 

CSI’s new pilot program, Information Communication Technology for Agriculture (ict4Ag), is a cell phone based agricultural monitoring system that can be used to collect field-level information about farmers. This information can be aggregated on a regional or national level, with the goal of eventually providing real-time updates and feedback to farmers. The pilot program is designed around existing networks of agronomists and agricultural extension agents that work with CSI partner organizations, including ORE. Agronomists will be equipped with smart phone based data collection toolkits, which include the phone-based agricultural survey as well as useful tools for data collection, such as GPS and a digital camera. Agricultural extension agents will be able to record important indicators on agriculture and enter data into cell-phone based forms and avoid the data entry process after the survey is complete. Some of the indicators in the first round of data collection include farm management practices, crops grown, yields, and tree planting and harvesting.  Subsequent modules will collect detailed information on planting, harvesting, post-harvesting and tree planting / harvesting. 

In the pilot stage, expected to last through April 2012, ict4Ag will assist ORE agronomists to collect information about farmers in the Côte Sud region. In later phases, CSI partners including ORE, Catholic Relief Services (CRS), and the Haitian Ministry of Agriculture will be a part of the expanded data collection process.

Agronomists practice using the Android phones loaded with the ict4Ag data collection toolkit

In October 2011, staff from EI and UNEP trained a group of agronomists and staff members from CSI partner organizations ORE and CRS to use Open Data Kit (ODK), an open source data collection tool, to collect agricultural data with the ict4Ag program. Training on the technology lasted three days. On the first day of training, management from ORE, UNEP and EI worked together to create a schedule for collection of agricultural data throughout the South Department.  ORE agronomist helped to customize the ict4Ag survey to make the tool optimal for the conditions in the Côte Sud and the farmers in the region. The second day of training, Jean Elie Thys, a trained agronomist and the UNEP Environment Coordinator, gave a full day workshop to agronomists from ORE and CRS on the new ict4Ag pilot program.  The training, conducted in Haitian Creole, included the use of the Google Android phones, an introduction to the CSI farmer baseline registration survey, an overview of the CSI-wide agricultural data collection strategy, and practice using the ict4Ag registration forms on phones.

The final day of training, ORE Agronomists use the ict4Ag tool in field practice.

On the third day of training, the agronomists were ready to test their new skills in the surrounding area. Each agronomist surveyed three farmers to become comfortable with the phones and identify any necessary changes to the survey questions. After field practice, the agronomists gave feedback on the aspects they anticipated being most difficult in real data collection.  These included the battery life of the phone, the amount of time it takes to record a GPS location (especially on a cloudy day), where GPS locations are best taken, and the fact that while the surveys are in Haitian Creole, some of the phone instructions are in English. Data collection using the ict4Ag survey tool and Android-based data collection will begin in November, 2011. 

The week of the ORE ict4Ag training, the South Department experienced severe flooding as a result of heavy rains in the region. Anticipating widespread damage to personal property and infrastructure, UNEP asked ORE to undertake a rapid agricultural assessment to gauge the agriculture losses caused by the flooding. ORE agronomists were able to use their new phones and take advantage of their new ODK knowledge to undertake a rapid agricultural assessment. 

In the South Department of Haiti, rains that began slowly on the 9th of October continued as a steady downpour for days. With steep and unstable hillsides, any large quantity of rain has the potential to degrade the stability of the environment in the Côte Sud region. Multiple days of heavy rain caused the rivers of the region to overflow their banks, resulting in widespread severe flooding and serious damages to the homes and livelihoods of residents. Extensive damage was also reported to agricultural land, standing infrastructure and the increasingly vulnerable ecosystems. 

 The still new partnership of the CSI put its resources into action to coordinate an emergency response with the  necessary Haitian partners. Using monitoring data from the CSI weather stations in the Port-à-Piment watershed, the team was able to confirm accurate rainfall amounts that contradicted to the forecasted data, showcasing the need for accurate weather prediction and flood modeling. The team was able to overcome challenges of communication to reach partners in remote areas, reporting increasing cases of cholera and scarcity of medical supplies in time to make appropriate emergency responses. Calling upon partners, the team conducted preliminary damage assessments and contributed to recovery efforts led by the Haitian Government.

The realities of the situation in the south are serious: residents have been stranded in their villages, cholera cases are reportedly on the rise, and agricultural and livestock investments of those in the flood plains have washed away, along with bridges and river banks. 

The Côte Sud Initiative, like the Port-à-Piment Millennium Village, was not created as a mechanism of emergency response, focusing rather on long-term sustainable approaches to Haiti's development challenges enacted in a collaborative and multithematic way. Therefore, CSI's response to the flooding reaches beyond its involvement in direct emergency management, conducting damage assessments and integrating and evaluating lessons learned in the flooding and response into planning for the future of the region in the short, medium, and long term. 

An overview of the devastating floods in the South of Haiti, the effective mobilization of the CSI team, and the way to incorporate lessons learned from this disaster moving forward can be found in a two-part blog series on the State of the Planet blog of the Earth Institute. Part One focuses on the flood event and the immediate response, while Part Two assesses the damages and looks to the future. 

For more images from around the CSI region, including maps, figures, and photos, visit the October Floods gallery here. 

CSI partners have been rapid in producing documents detailing the flood events. For a detailed perspective on CSI's response, assessment, and planning for the future, consult the CSI documents on the CSI Publications page.

The slopes of mountains all around us seem as dry as ever, many are a dull dry brown, completely naked of vegetation, but there are distinct signs that the spring planting season is already under way. Groups of farmers can be seen swinging their tools, leaving trails of freshly tilled fields, a darker shade of slope, across the landscape. There isn’t much of a road where we are going—in many places no road at all—but this time of the year the river is all but gone, and driving, although rough and slow, is still possible.  What took us an entire day of hiking filled with river crossings back in November, takes us an hour by 4x4. 

The day started warm and sunny, but the clouds are starting to move in and we hope that this might turn out to be a good day to start planting after all.

In our convoy, there are two other trucks packed with a field crew from the Organization for the Rehabilitation of the Environment (ORE), a local Non-governmental organization that has been working in Haiti for over twenty years, and which is now one of our main partners. The goal of this excursion is to establish the first plots of a bean seed trials which will be run on 14 farmers’ fields spread throughout the watershed. There are two objectives for these plots.

The first is to test a number of varieties of bean seeds and various associated agricultural practices, in order to select the best combination of beans and management practice. Right after the earthquake, Catholic Relief Services (CRS), another of our main project partners, initiated a rapid assessment of seed resources in the region. They concluded that for most crops, farmers were generally able to purchase seeds from the local market, and actually saved seeds for the next season.  However, this was not the case for beans, which are the main cash crop in the area.  Bean seeds are usually sold instead of saved for the next season:  five times more farmers purchase beans from the market than save them.This explains why, when prices go up in post-disaster situations (after a hurricane for example), farmers who have to purchase seeds switch to cheaper crops like maize. 

The Ministry of Agriculture has stated that a major priority for this region is to improve access to high quality seeds by increasing the capacity to multiply and store varieties that are well adapted to the local climate and soils.  Currently, roughly 40% of the seeds used are locally adapted ‘improved’ varieties,  40% are ‘improved’ but non-local, and the rest are un-improved., According to ORE’s technical director, Eliassaint Magloire, it is possible to develop varieties in this region that are significantly more resistant to disease and pests. A seed breeding program and improved storage would drastically increase farmers resilience to the events that seem to continually disrupt Haiti’s agricultural production, be it storms, earthquakes or political upheaval. 

ORE selected 14 farmers scattered throughout the watershed, choosing farms that were typical of bean production on steep mountainsides throughout watershed: tiny farms, with rocky fields located on slopes that most farmers around the world would have a hard time hiking up, let alone planting.

Thanks to the generous support of the Countess Moira Charitable Foundation, on each of these farms,OREwill plant four different varieties of beans: three local improved varieties and one local non-improved. These varieties will be planted either at a low-density, which is how farmers in this area usually plant them,  or at the recommended high-density. Throughout this region, farmers plant beans and maize in combination. Eliassaint suspects the farmers are not using the optimal density of planting for beans in order to obtain the greatest yields for both beans and maize. He also notes that most of the farmers in this region do not use fertilizer, and wants to see how much the addition of fertilizer will actually increase the yields for each of these varieties.

The test plots will therefore enable us to control three parameters and their interactions: the bean variety (four different kinds), the planting density (high or low), and the use of fertilizer.

During the July harvest, we will be able to compare these various plots scenarios , and see which ones have the best results (i.e. which ones have the greatest yields with the least amount of weeds and the lowest incidence of disease).  One main question is if these improved practices will be able to significantly increase the quality and quantity of the harvest.

A second and equally as important objective of these test plots is educational. These plots will serve as a type of training school. The idea is that farmers learn best from other farmers.OREis training 14 farmers with the hope that these 14 will then share their knowledge with many more.

The ORE team planting bean trials on
the slopes of a demonstration farm.
Photo credit: Earth Institute, at Columbia University 2010.

During a one-day workshop, the farmers learned to plant grasses in strips along the contour of steep slopes. These strips of grass prevent soil from washing down the hills, while at the same time providing nutritious feed for animals such as goats or cows. They learned to use an A-frame level to mark the contours.  Later on, once the trial has been underway for a while, other farmers will be brought to these fields. They will see with their own eyes the differences between the varieties and decide for themselves which ones are best, and hear from their peers about the effectiveness of contour planting and the ease with which contours can be put in.

Contour plantings helps prevent soil erosion
and provides much needed feed for livestock.
Photo credit: Earth Institute, at Columbia University 2010.

As we gaze down on what is almost a cliff, it’s impossible not to wonder how these incredibly steep slopes can produce enough food to feed everyone living in these mountains. National estimates currently show that Haiti’s per hectare crop yields are similar to those found in sub-Saharan Africa, or at least 3 times lower than that of neighboring Dominican Republic. It’s clear that these hillsides can not sustain annual crops like beans and maize each year for very long: what little soil is left will soon disappear.  One of the farmers involved in the project jokes that the boulders on the slope are growing better every year.  We laugh, but we all know the sad reality: the rocks aren’t growing, it’s the soil around them that is washing away.

A farmer demonstrates how to use an "A" frame level
to plant elephant grass on steep slopes to prevent erosion,
a skill he learned through ORE's training program.
Photo credit: Earth Institute, at Columbia University 2010.

The farmer goes on to tell us that he used to grow coffee on the slope where his new stand of beans is going to be. Years ago, he replaced coffee–a perennial crop that protected the soil from rainfall –with annual subsistence crops. These inevitably leave the soil exposed to the torrential downpours which occur during a good part of the year (see the CSI's Weather Station page).  He explains that he abandoned coffee for several reasons: firstly, he was unable to export after the local coffee cooperatives fell apart. Secondly, his trees were not producing like they used do, as some of them were over 100 years old. He says if he could get new varieties of coffee to plant and the cooperatives were reformed, he would want to switch back. But  switching back means loosing the current crops. As coffee planted today won’t be marketable for another 3 to 5 years , what will sustain him and his family until then?

The farmer says that over the last few years, he’s noticed a steady decline in the yields of the annual crops he’s been planting, but is not sure why this is happening. We hope that these trials will help increase the yields of subsistence crops , until a more sustainable production system, perhaps coffee planting, is found for these incredibly steep mountainsides.

As we drive down the mountain, looking down into the deep valley below, it starts to rain.

March 8, 2011 marked the 100^th International Women's Day, a day which celebrates the economic, political and social achievements of women and reminds of the gender inequities still to be redressed. On this occasion, it seems only fitting to highlight the crucial, yet too often unacknowledged, role played by Haitian women in community development.

Experience has shown that the scale of women’s participation in community-based organizations is indicative of the level of social engagement in a particular community, and that women’s participation has a strong impact on the sustainability of development interventions.  Assessing the level of women’s engagement in the Port- à -Piment watershed was therefore one of the key aims of the Port- à -Piment baseline study conducted by Earth Institute researchers in 2010.

In 2010, the Ministry of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Rural Development (MARNDR) developed a inventory of community-based organizations working in Port-a-Piment commune. In this database, the Earth Institute found 26 organizations which provided details on the organization's purpose and its membership, specifically on male/ female ratios of registered members.  All 26 organizations included female members, and women made up at least 30% of the members for over half of the organizations.  Almost 20% of the organizations were run or chaired by women and more than one third included women within their management structure.

Further analysis of the database showed that women play an important role in all types of economic activities, even those sectors traditionally thought of as being male dominated such as farming and commerce.  Of the 15 organizations which had over 30% of female members, all but one engaged in farming activities such as agricultural extension and outreach, livestock raising, irrigation, plant nurseries and crop storage. Thirty percent of these organizations focused specifically on environment-related activities, and 20% on business development and commerce. In general, all organizations expressed an active engagement in community development.

Though these figures highlight the crucial role played by women in the social and economic life of the Port-a-Piment watershed, much remains to be done in terms of capacity building for women and gender equality.  Thus, the median number of female members per organization was 26, compared to 136 for male members. This is why gender issues are one of the CSI’s crosscutting themes, and will be integrated in all of its thematic interventions from education, to health, to business development.

In 2010, Haiti endured a year like no other. The country was struck by a devastating earthquake, a cholera epidemic, floods, violence and political uncertainty. At the same time, Haiti witnessed heroic rescue and relief efforts and an enormous demonstration of international goodwill. Today, recovery and reconstruction are taking place, albeit at a frustratingly slow pace and not currently at the scale of existing needs.

Just as importantly, 2010 brought a renewed awareness of the need for lasting solutions and associated improvements in aid design and delivery. During the next few days we will look back after one year and remember the tragic events of January 12th, 2010, while at the same time, we must look forward, not just one year but twenty.

Already before the earthquake, Haiti was a fragile state trapped in a slow but vicious negative spiral. A tightly interconnected trio of chronic environmental, political and socio-economic crises has gradually ensured that Haiti has had the lowest human development indicators in the Western Hemisphere with life-long poverty, chronic hunger and violence. Catastrophic events, such as natural disasters, epidemics and political violence, have simply steepened the descent. Moreover, disaster recovery efforts to date have systematically failed to bring the country back to pre-disaster levels.

In spite of this depressing analysis and forecast, we should not resign ourselves to failure. The situation can be turned around, but only with great effort and by foregoing “business as usual.”

The first step towards change is full recognition of the situation. In the case of Haiti, this means recognizing the marked failure of foreign recovery and development assistance to date. It is pointless to blame any particular institution or individual for this: the current state of Haiti is the culmination of generations of efforts and decisions, good and bad, combined with rapid population growth and an inherent vulnerability to natural hazards.

The second step is planning. While relatively solid recovery plans have been developed by the Government of Haiti with international assistance, their implementation has not so far met with success, due to four interlinked problems.

First, the humanitarian imperative for urgent and chronic relief is overrunning all good intentions for recovery and development – it is politically impossible, inhumane and simply unwise to ignore the basic resource needs of a cholera epidemic and a million people living in tents. Second, nothing suppresses development investments like political violence and uncertainty – few donors and even fewer companies will invest whilst riots and political uncertainty paralyze the country and destroy its reputation. Third, the planning process is necessarily democratic and participatory-- as a result, however, virtually all of the country’s needs are listed with no reliable process of thematic or geographic prioritization. Finally and perhaps most importantly, although the plans are official and uncontested, they generally lack broad credibility and commitment: weary aid workers, government officials, donors and the general public look back at the fate of previous plans and not surprisingly expect these latest efforts to fail just as others have before.

Unlike virtually all other aid organizations I have met in Haiti, the team behind the Haiti Regeneration Initiative (HRI) has fortunately been given the vital time and seed funding to reflect on these issues and try something really different. After two years of preparation, on 4 January 2010 we launched a long-term rural sustainable development initiative for the southwestern tip of Haiti. The Côte Sud Initiative aims to transform the lives and the degraded environment of 200,000 people living in one of the poorest yet most beautiful parts of Haiti.

This specific initiative will only directly assist 2% of the population of Haiti, but just as importantly we aim to demonstrate that sustainable development is truly possible in this country. Because national-scale issues require national-scale efforts, we also aim to promote change through dialogue and assisting the government of Haiti to develop and deliver on sustainable development plans that work. This is the primary mission of the HRI. In this context, we offer the following advice.

The short- to medium-term goal should be only stabilization – in other words, to arrest the long-term decline as soon as possible. This includes, but is not limited to, basic recovery from the earthquake. At the same time, we need to establish the foundations for the long-term radical changes that are an absolute prerequisite to achieving sustainable development in Haiti. We must prepare to turn the vicious circles into virtuous ones.

So what are the short- to medium-term priorities? The first is political stabilization, as vital foreign aid and direct foreign investment will simply not arrive in the face of such negative news and uncertainty.

Second, a massive aid investment in potable water and sanitation is required to suppress cholera in the longer term. No country can develop in the midst of recurrent major epidemics. This investment needs to be designed for sustainability; in other words, infrastructure needs to be accompanied by realistic locally financed mechanisms for maintenance. Otherwise it will become useless within weeks of installation.

Third, persistence is needed on the current debris clearance and rebuilding efforts – we know from many other countries that such efforts can take years to be completed.

Finally, development aid should move out of Port au Prince and into the regions. In 2010, the massive influx of earthquake relief and reconstruction aid actually increased the economic pull of the capital and exacerbated existing urban problems.

What to do to prepare for the long term? Implementing radical change requires political support and even cultural reform, so in addition to good ideas, the HRI partnership will  work hard to develop a sense of national ownership of the solutions as well as the problems.Many of the ideas are not new: mildly decentralized development, diversified and value added agriculture, niche tourism, improved aid coordination, public-private partnerships, etc.

Many however are radical, including a proposed paradigm change on migration and remittances, education, food security and import policies, widespread privatization, harsh revisions and rebuttals of traditional development models and assumptions, and adaptation to the new types of religious NGOs – these are just a few of the concepts and opportunities we have identified and will work to make a reality in Haiti.

Over the next few years, the HRI hopes to foster an intelligent and useful dialogue on sustainable development in Haiti. We look forward to having all of those who are concerned about and interested in helping Haiti join us in the debate.