Entrenched poverty, political instability, deficient private and foreign investment, severe natural devastation by floods and hurricanes, catastrophic deforestation…and then there was January 12, 2010; an earthquake registering 7.5 on the Richter scale and claiming 220.000 lives. It was a brutal blow to this nation, already on its knees. The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) was here, walking with the Haitian people as we have since 1983. Development and emergency relief work continues because of the endurance of the Haitian people, so we do not lose hope.
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The Trailblazers…
High in the steep mountains of Grand Goave, 75 kilometers west of Port-au-Prince, a handful of people are hard at work. They are men and women, young and old; they wield hoes and shovels, picks and rakes, in the heavy Haitian sun.They are farmers, but they are not working in their fields. They are building a road.
Defending the Forest
“When I came here 20 years ago, the forest was so thick that when you looked up through the pines you couldn’t see the Sun,” says Zamor Ducasse, LWF Foret de Pins (Pine Forest) Project Coordinator. He showed me some of the original Hispanolian pine trees that were planted by the project in 2007, as Lutheran World Federation Haiti began its active protection of this precious and endangered forest. In this 5 hectare plot, four years later, the trees are about 3 meters high.
Lifting Up Weary Souls
Disaster can wear down the soul, unless one finds support to endure until hope is restored. These stories about work being done by the Lutheran World Federation Haiti psychosocial team were encouraged by their technical advisor, Mikael Wiking, during his work with us in Haiti. The stories have been rewritten in English so that you get a glimpse of what LWF Haiti is doing and why.
Getting cyclone-proof roofs over their heads-an Update
Walking by the seaside neighborhood of Mariani, you see a patchwork of roofs, and these days quite a few are shiny new toll roofs. That’s because 58 families are living in steel element semi-permanent shelters. They are no longer IDP’s (Internally Displaced Persons).