Skilled Konparet Bakers

Rosnie, Marie Maude, and other women on our nursery team are becoming experts in baking breadfruit konparet. We were able to put 60% breadfruit flour / 40% wheat flour in the recipe today, giving the konparet balanced and super-packed health benefits.

We’re making enough konparets to distribute to 15 schools in June. As you can see below, baking konparets has become easier for our team, but they need more tables because konparets should be spread out to dry more quickly and evenly. A $100 donation would allow our team to purchase a table and expand their work. Please use the button below to donate, and send an email to info@thehaititreeproject.org to let us know your donation is focused on the konparet table. Thank you!

Gifting Konparet and Trees

On May 2 and 3 we gave out trees and konparets to schools Ecole Mixte Frere Bobo de la Hatte, and Ecole Ket Colombier. It's been hard trying to find the perfect material to keep them sanitary, so we wrapped them in paper. This is our easiest option for avoiding environmental waste, and not adding plastic waste into the environment, especially since there aren’t any landfills. We’re always open to more suggestions and ideas? Maybe a compostable paper?

Thanks to Trees that Feed Foundation for providing the funds we needed to produce and distribute konparets to over 750 students and adults along with cacao and cashew trees. Our local Doctor Yvra Oreste and volunteer THTP motivator spoke to the children and parents about the importance of agroforestry in maintaining year-round nutrition.

Our motorcycle is doing well and working hard. We’re working hard to regularly distribue trees to schools this week.

Rosnie and Konparet

Rosnie is measuring the weight of konparet bread for customers. It’s a complicated process. She needs to figure out how much each bread will weigh, how much to sell them for, and how much the materials will cost.

Will they end up making a profit? Well, for now, Trees That Feed is generously allowing us to make these baked goods and give them to schools along with information on the importance of konparet. Then once the area is familiar with the importance of breadfruit flour in foods, we hope it’ll increase interest, allowing the business to take off.

Expanding Our Mission: Konparet For Schoolchildren

Forty-two fresh pounds of konparets were baked today. Were planning to visit fifteen local schools over the next month to distribute konparets to the schoolchildren, who will also take them home and share them with their families.

Education is always the first step in our mission, so whenever we give out large amounts of plants, konparets, or other crops, we provide seminars on nutrition and the importance of eating locally, especially from trees.

Sharing the benefits of konparet, along with a sample will help us promote the health and possible financial benefits of baking konparet on a larger scale. But first we need to select women leaders who will manage the business. Within the next few months, we’re planning to create 20 small businesses for selling konparet. More importantly, as konparet starts to sell and expand in use to local communities, and as we continue growing cash crops, our business owners will be able to take on new ventures in other fruits, foods, and even their own personal crafts.

Thank you Trees That Feed for all the support you have given so far in this great endeavor to bring more tree products into Haiti's local economy.

Making Konparets In La Sikri

Rosnie and Marie Maude are back from their training and making valuable breadfruit pastries at our nursery home in La Sikri. This is a major milestone for our work, and now people from surrounding locales are pouring in to taste our konparet. So far, no one has gone home disappointed.

One of our missions is always to inform, so we're making sure the nutritional value is shared. This week we are experimenting with pricing materials per konparet. Next week, we’ll present the konparet in schools and share the importance of breadfruit and other nutritious foods.

400 Breadfruit Roots

Immediately after the konparet breadfruit seminar, Enel got back to work to increase our breadfruit output. He's growing as many breadfruit seedlings from roots as possible thanks to the knowledge he acquired in the Jeremie breadfruit factory.

We bought 400 hundred roots today that will go in a rich silty soil bed covered in mulch and that will be watered twice a day for a month.

Agronomist Nerva Gives A Seminar

Four hundred youth assembled today for a nursery seminar in Les Cayes. One of the main topics was increasing the volume of trees that provide the best foods for Haiti. Here, Agronomist Nerva is giving a lecture on Breadfruit trees while our team gives out konparets. The Haiti Tree Project plans to start a konparet production facility in our nursery locality soon.

Here you see a Komparet, a kind of dry sweet bread, that is being produced in Jeremie and we hope to produce it in Saint Louis de Sud. Our team spent the day exploring everything that is needed to produce this product from the seedlings to the ingredients.

Konparet Breadfruit Factory Visit

Today, six team members traveled to a breadfruit konparet factory in Jeremie, Haiti. Our team has been chiefly grinding breadfruit into flour, but thanks to the seminar, they'll learn to make more marketable products from the breadfruits we grow.

Agronomist Pierre Moise has been growing his breadfruit business for 10 years. And now thanks to the support of Trees That Feed, our team can start growing our own.

Here you see a konparet, a kind of dry sweet bread, that is being produced in Jeremie. Once our team returns to our Saint Louis de Sud, they’ll be able to teach the rest of the nursery team everything they’ve learned from how to produce this Konparet from the seedlings to the ingredients.

Breadfruit tends to be either overabundant at certain times of the year or hard to find most of the year. When it is in season, a lot of the fruit either falls to the ground and rots, or it's fed to livestock.

After you shred the ripe breadfruit, you can place it in the sun to dry. But during the rainy season, this method doesn’t work so you’d need a dehydrator like the one below. The pieces of breadfruit are on screens and hot air from the solar oven wings, push up through the center of the dehydrator like a fan and dries out the pieces. We hope to build one of these in Saint Louis one day.

At the konparet factory, our team was able to see how a fruit dehydrator works. Think about all of the dried fruits you purchase at stores; if we can purchase a dehydrator for our nursery, we'll be able to make nutritious products year-round with all of the fruit we grow.