CHF

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has announced the opening of an apparel training center in Port au Prince.  The intent is to help Haiti take advantage of expanded trade preferences under the Haiti Economic Lift Program (HELP) Act that passed the Senate in May 2010.  My main concern is that foreign investment, while sorely needed, will primarily occur in Port au Prince.  Building a better Haiti depends in large part on building a decentralized Haiti where agriculture is viable and profitable.  Rural development has been all too often neglected in Haiti, but is critical for the future.       

Hello from Cap Haitian, the chipped pearl of the Antilles.  When I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Central Plateau, I would sometimes take Route National Three from Hinche to Cap for a long weekend.  I never looked forward to the grueling trip, but I always looked forward to being in Cap.  The beaches were (and still are) beautiful and this region is historically rich.  It is here that Christopher Columbus landed and where he lost one of his ships.  The Haitian slave rebellion began with a single Vodoun ceremony in Bois Cayman and ended with the battle of Vertieres. The Citadel looms from a mountain in the distance.  While the city of Cap Haitian has changed, and not for the better, it is still good to be back in the north.

At the recent Clinton Global Initiative meeting, Fonkoze, BRAC, BRAC USA, Partners In Health, CGAP, and CHF announced a partnership in which they would contribute $50 million towards a two-year effort to improve health and reduce poverty in Central Haiti.  The initiative will target 575,000 people on Haiti's Central Plateau and will do what all development programs  should be doing...helping people to help themselves. 

Hurricane season has begun.  Flooding  will be inevitable each year until environmental degradation is reversed.  Still, leadership, preparation, and coordination can mitigate the human and economic costs.  Jacqueline Charles describes, in the Miami Herald, the last minute efforts of the Haitian government to bolster infrastructure in Haiti's most vulnerable cities, yet to recover from the consequences of last year's storms.  Haiti is more ready than it was last year, but still has a long way to go.