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The village of LaSikri. Homes with bedsheets as walls and a few tarps are aligned together.
This boy's family herds goats and has reforested a great deal on the mountain around the springs in Bedard. They'll use the roofing to cover the holes in their walls until they can rebuild.
Madam Delome of Bedard, the local pig farmer, received a donation of cement thanks to money from donations.
This is Magdalena, a local bread maker.
In a neighboring community where The Haiti Tree Project used to reforest for many years, we helped five families get materials to secure and rebuild their homes. Magdalena chose roofing to put in the place of walls.
Jezula of Bedard, a successful business women and someone who always invested in trees over the years, lost her family home. She was lucky she could get most of her belongings before her home was demolished.
Jezula of Bedard, a successful business women and someone who always invested in trees over the years, lost her family home. She was lucky she could get most of her belongings before her home was demolished.
Thanks to your donations, so far we have helped 6 families create a shelter with metal roofing for $125 each. They finished nailing it down one day after they received it. Above are the new homes of Rosnie, Wood, and Junedes, a few of our foresters, and below they talk about their struggle and give many Thanks, “Merci.”
Last night, after a long day in the city, Enel, our project manager, brought home supplies for our team. The 6 main employees of THTP got 20 sheets of roofing so they could build a small shelter for their families. Rosnie, our planter, said, “Thank you so much, Kiirtana (Karen Nicolas). Thank you so much to all of you. We have been sleeping outside in the weather and unable to have shelter. Thanks to you we go build ourselves a small home and finally stay dry. “
Enel also bought 20 sheets of roofing for himself, but because he has beloved neighbors with nothing to sleep under, he gave almost all of them away… Each neighbor who lives around him begged him for a sheet or two. He felt obliged. We hope with help from our supporters we can provide another 94 families in the area roofing as well.
20 sheets of metal roofing for one home plus nails = $125/home
On August 14, Southern Haiti experienced a devastating 7.2 earthquake that left more than 2200 dead and destroyed or damaged over 130,000 homes.
As the people of Haiti recover from this natural disaster, they lack basic necessities such as clean water, food and shelter. Our Director, Karen Nicolas, has set up an emergency campaign to get aid to the people who need it—fast. Her aim is to raise money for 100 families in rural villages near Saint Louis-de-Sud.
“Nearly everyone’s home has been destroyed and most people are using only bed sheets for shelter. They desperately need funds to build protection from wind and rain. We’ve been able to afford beans and rice to feed the families for a few days, but they continue to need more food, Some local truck owners have been kind enough to ship in water from springs using barrels from our nursery, but that support is only temporary.”
$20 buys 20 feet of pipe to replace broken water pipes that carry water from the springs to the villages (4000 feet is needed to rebuild the system).
$125 buys a family metal roofing sheets and nails to build a permanent shelter they can use as a new home.
$150 feeds a family for a month while they get back on their feet.
$840 ($70/month) provides a community service job with a daily meal for a survivor who lost everything to help them rebuild their lives and their community.
Visit our home page to see the latest survivor stories or take action now.
While food is still in great need, people are calling THTP saying how badly they need shelter.
The Haiti Tree Project would like to raise funds for 100 families of two villages to receive enough metal roofing to start rebuilding permanent shelter. With a metal roof, natural material from the local area can be used for walls. You can see in the photos that they are finding wood poles, and next, many will use wood sticks to weave walls and add adobe. They will have a nice home again and it won’t crush people in an earthquake like concrete would. It’s the roof that they need to purchase.
Unfortinately, the environment is too degraded to find the grasses past generations once used for roofing. Interestingly, many asked for tarps at first because that’s what people received in 2010. But they agree the plastic degrades in the sun and adds pollution to the environment and is later burned. Purchasing metal roofing and nails would bring them back to having a secure home and restarting a life much faster.
We’ve received many phone calls from people in the Lasikri saying they haven’t eaten, and before anything else to please send food.
We sent another MoneyGram today and distributed rice, beans, and vegetable oil to 60 families to take home and cook. Enel told me about his experience on What’s App, “We intended to walk with a wheelbarrow to each family to deliver the food but when they saw us coming, people started shouting to everyone to “Hurry, food, hurry food or you won’t get any!” So we set up a line in the nursery and let people come to us according to our registry. Thanks to the reforestation project, Lasikri had a registry of all the families in the village. The Treetracker App by Greenstand not only tracks trees but geotags each farmer at their home as well.
To feed a family for one month until they are able to work again = $150
Two days ago, we distributed small cans of rice to the families in LaSikri. Today people are again sitting and waiting hoping relief supplies will come soon. They’ve heard that some places about 30 minutes away on the main road are receiving some small items but not food.
The people are hungry in Lasikri and getting desperate. But, Enel has a friend in MoneyGram who will make sure he gets a money transfer from me in the morning. I have asked Enel to give the 60 families in the village a meal tomorrow. It will cost $300 to feed the 60 families in the locality. That will leave us with $600 from your generous donations to help the community survive until more help comes. Tough decisions.
Please spread the word that we are accepting funds for Haiti. We have this depo above for the nursery that is still standing and secure. We can store beans and rice there. We have great leaders who can manage its distribution and start creating work teams that can use food for pay to start cleaning up the rubble and help find people’s belongings.
Above left is LaSikri, Saint Louis-de-Sud. No aid has arrived, but they are able to sleep now that the rains have stopped.
The middle photo is of a home in Boileau. The tin roof is still on its wood posts so they knocked out the walls and put up sheets so they could sleep undercover.
On the right, is Enel Cyril’s bed. He is using our new nursery sign for a bed and he hung the soil tarp up on the trees for shade.
Everything our General Manager Enel, his wife, and mother owned was in this house. Luckily he had his phone with him when the earthquake happened. Unfortunately, Enel’s clothes, money, and resources like phones for The Haiti Tree Project, are all under the rubble. But luckily everyone in his house ran out fast enough to escape the collapsing ceiling.
Thanks to solar panels, people in Haiti are sharing their solar power to allow friends and neighbors to charge their cell phones. Having access to communication is important, especially after a disaster.
With the tropical storm rains, Enel and his family are looking for ways to stay dry. They also have to travel a long distance to get water since the nursery's water pipes have broken again.
Without money, it’s extremely difficult to get food because everyone is trying to hold on to what little they have left.
I sent Enel some money of my own, and hopefully, he can get a ride into town to visit the Moneygram. Accessing the money will allow Enel to purchase food to feed his family and a tarp to keep them dry from the rain.
The Haiti Tree Project is a 501c-3 charitable organization, registered in the state of North Carolina, USA.
Tax ID: EIN: 46-1012434
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