It's official. We filled out all the forms for non-profit status last spring and were granted it this fall. We are officially Just Haiti, and you can find us at http://www.justhaiti.org/.
Our broad mission is working for justice, peace, and poverty alleviation in Haiti...but our project right now is working with a group of subsistence farmers in Baraderes (where we have a long-term relationship with the community) to help them form a legal cooperative, improve the quality of their coffee, and sell it for a higher price in the organic fair trade export market.
Why Haiti? you may be asking. Partly it is due to our relationship with the community. When I left my position at St. John's I did not want to just forget about Baraderes, and it seemed clear that St. John's was not going to further expand their work in the community. Another reason is that Haiti is still the poorest country in our hemisphere, and perhaps in the world. It seems to me that we have a chance to facilitate the bringing of a more dignified life to this community, and I do not want to let that chance pass by.
I also have enormous admiration for Haitians. They were brought to the island from different parts of Africa through the Atlantic slave trade..in fact, at one point half of the slave trade went to Haiti. Out of disparate tribal origins, in an environment of incredible violence and cruelty, they formed a new culture, religion, and language, and came together as a people to overthrow the slaveholders and to become the first colony in the Western hemisphere to declare their independence. An interesting fact is that the reason so many slaves were sent to tiny Haiti was because they had to keep replenishing the plantation workers: they died too quickly to reproduce.
We traveled to Baraderes in January to begin a process of formation for the farmers so that they will understand better what they need to do to produce coffee for the export market. We brought with us a team from the Mexican cooperative Cafe Justo, which I had encountered while working on the U.S. Mexico border in 2005. The Cafe Justo folks formed their cooperative, with the assistance of the Presbyterian border ministries, as a way to help subsistence farmers stay on their land, so they would not have to make the dangerous migration north, across the border, in search of a liveable wage.
The Cafe Justo model not only guarantees their cooperative members a fair trade price, but it also owns the roasting business, where most of the profitis made in the coffee business. As a result of the money brought in by the roasting business, Cafe Justo has provided health care for all its members, a water purification system for their community, and improved buildings and infrastructure. Note that the community is providing this for itself, as the fruits of their own labor, rather than through charity from the north. We want to use their model in Haiti, which is why we brought them with us.
The Cafe Justo guys conducted a two-day training for about 25 Haitian farmers representing 18 very small rural communities. They basically went through a step by step process of explaining everything they did to create a successful business. Imagine this: the guys from Just Coffee spoke in Spanish, and then it had to be translated into English, and then from English to Haitian Creole! What was exciting for me about this was the idea of campesinos from one country supporting campesinos from another country. The guys from Mexico, who are rural poor themselves, were shocked at the extent of the poverty they witnessed in Haiti. At the end, they said they would like to remain involved.
One thing we learned from the whole thing is that the Haitian farmers are growing the exact same type of coffee under very similar weather and shade conditions as the Cafe Justo farmers. The difference is that in Haiti they are using a fermentation (dry) process of drying the beans that saves time and requires less equipment (and therefore less expense) but leaves the coffee with a slightly unusual taste. This is okay forthe domestic market, but internationally people are not used to the taste. So in order for this to work, the Haitians will have to change their production methods.
An interesting side note is that in the 18th century Haiti supplied half of Europe'scoffee.
They now know what they have to do, and we heard over and over again how pleased they were with the training. These are the methods that their forebears used, but had been largely forgotten. We have hired a local agronomist to work withthem half-time, and we have told them that once they are ready we will provide them with a very low or no-interest loan to buy the machinery they need, to be paid back out of coffee sales. Meanwhile, we are working on our side to figure out how to get the coffee out of Haiti and where to sell it. As they pay the loan back to us, we will be able to do the samething in other communities, which is what Cafe Justo has done.
