Haiti Outreach

Haiti Outreach, Inc. is a non-governmental organization (NGO) based in Pignon, Haiti, with an administrative and fundraising office in Minnesota. Committed to the vision that Haiti become a developed country, we work with communities in Haiti on water, education and other projects that the communities initiate, help build and sustain. We operate using a 4-point community development model for long term sustainability to ensure that the projects will last over a long period of time. In order for this to happen, a maintenance program based on an economic system - a community savings account to which all users contribute and from which future repairs can be paid - is created and used. Our work is based on a grassroots effort involving community responsibility, participation and ownership, unlike many well-intentioned development projects that lack this economic sustainability element and end up creating a dependency.

The vision of Haiti Outreach can be expressed quite simply: That Haiti become a developed county. Th

Goal One: Continue to engage with the national and local governments in Haiti to have them take on more and more responsibility for the water and sanitation infrastructure in the country

Goal Two: Enroll other non-profits and organizations doing water and sanitation infrastructure to adopt sustainable models operated by the local and national people of Haiti and not by them.

Goal Three: Provide a successful model for developing water and sanitation in developing countries that Rotary International can promote, adapt and use in other developing countries

We have developed our own leadership course which we give for local and national community leaders, as well as leaders of other organizations including non-profit organizations, to cause a transformation in the mind set of people from being victims of circumstances to empowering them to realize they can take on responsibilities themselves and can therefore impact results without relying on "others". Others would include the various layers of government, other organizations and non-profits which are often relied upon to "bring" services, develop infrastructure, and/or manage them for sustainability. Our leadership programs are designed to cause a transformation of consciousness that move people to take action and bring about the desired outcomes without relying on others and blaming others if they do not have what they want for their communities.

When we were told that the country was basically in lock down by the government, of course we complied. But after that, things slowly opened up and got more or less back to normal. Unfortunately in Haiti, gangs have taken the place of government authorities in some areas, especially after the assassination of their president. But we do not operate in those areas and avoid traveling through there to get to the areas where we do work. We have also worked more and more to strengthen the government agencies involved with potable water and sanitation, showing them the possibilities of better managing this infrastructure and how they can participate more directly in doing so. Our goal is that the Haitian people and government agencies become the organizations that maintain and sustain clean water infrastructure, as in a developed country. It is a slow process and takes both convincing them of that possibility and showing them how it can be done, but we continue to make progress in doing so, despite the many natural and man-made circumstances that have hit the country in the past 1 - 2 years.