John O’Malley Burns has been vol­un­teer­ing self­lessly in Haiti for the past four years. His com­mit­ment? Work­ing with small­holder mango farm­ers to ensure they receive more of the value of their crops and are encour­aged to plant and nur­ture more trees.

The fledg­ling Mou­vman Moun Mango (also known as 3M) pro­gram was just start­ing to make progress. Thanks to farm­ers’ hard work and sales of Fair Trade Cer­ti­fied™ man­goes through Whole Foods Mar­ket, farm­ers through­out five dif­fer­ent rural regions in Haiti got a bonus at Christ­mas time. This was meant to help them hold out for bet­ter (Fair Trade!) prices dur­ing the har­vest sea­son and avoid pre-selling their entire crop to mid­dle­men at very low prices.

But the finan­cial, tech­ni­cal, and orga­ni­za­tional capac­ity of these groups was extremely frag­ile — even before the earth­quake. Now, with­out help to rebuild infra­struc­ture and train lead­ers, par­tic­u­larly where there have been casu­al­ties, the whole pro­gram is at risk of collapse.

John writes to us, describ­ing the after­math of the earth­quake: “Down­town Port-au-Prince has been reduced in pop­u­la­tion by a third or half. Fam­i­lies are still try­ing to get in touch and find the one or two unaccounted-for peo­ple. Com­mu­ni­ties are work­ing together to orga­nize their own clean up. Tent cities have sprung up on all avail­able open land and few peo­ple have gone back indoors to sleep. They con­struct shel­ter made of poles and repur­posed wood from the rub­ble — using quilts, sheets, and card­board as doors.”

He goes on to reflect “After so many years I con­tinue to be amazed by the resilience of the peo­ple deal­ing with the worst of cat­a­stro­phes. There is an extra­or­di­nary oppor­tu­nity here to bring this eco­nom­i­cally and socially frac­tured coun­try together around the com­mon and unit­ing goal of rebuild­ing after the quake. How can we make the com­ing change a last­ing change to get the coun­try back to bet­ter than it was?”

If you would like to sup­port the effort to build an equi­table, sus­tain­able, mango-tree-filled Haiti, please visit http://www.eco-ventures.org/content/view/108/92/ to make a tax-deductible dona­tion via Eco-Ventures, and please remem­ber to spec­ify donated funds are to be directed to Mou­vman Moun Mango or 3M.

Checks should be addressed:

EcoVen­tures International

c/o Lau­ren Frederic,

1519 Con­necti­cut Ave NW, Suite 200

Wash­ing­ton DC 20036.

Thank you for sup­port­ing the rebuild­ing of Haiti.

Sourced from: Fair Trade Certified ™ Blog

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