- 11 minutes ago
Philanthropic investment in low resource settings can have a profound impact when done well – with a long-term vision, community engagement and respect for local leadership. With a focus on Haiti, this panel will discuss why investments in local systems that promote income generation is key to lasting change for workers and residents.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Lejeune Montgomery Tabron, President and CEO of Kellogg Foundation.
00:30Are you seated? Good morning, Essence. So nice to be here this morning. My name is Lejeune Montgomery Tabron. I'm President and CEO of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and this morning, we're here to talk to you about a place that we believe shares a lot with New Orleans.
00:52It's a place that shares in culture, in food, in agriculture, and in history. And it's a place that we're very fond of at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
01:09It's a place that we have committed to in our work, just as we have with New Orleans. And that place is Haiti.
01:22Many of you have heard, probably, all of the news related to Haiti these days, and we know that they are experiencing very, very difficult times.
01:34But what we know is that despite those challenges that our children and families are facing in Haiti right now,
01:46philanthropic investment has not increased to match these needs. In fact, what we know is that they are declining.
01:57Which is why the W.K. Kellogg Foundation has launched a campaign called Pockets of Hope.
02:05Because we want to encourage more investment in Haiti. And we know, not only is there a need for investment,
02:15there's actually great work already happening in Haiti. And it can be fueled by great support and more support.
02:25But there are children and families and people working on the ground in Haiti every day creating promising solutions to problems that they are facing these days.
02:39And what we want to do is talk to you today about these Pockets of Hope. And our panelists are going to go more into detail about the great work that's happening in Haiti
02:52and how all of you can be a part of this continuing effort to improve the lives of the children and families of Haiti.
03:01And at this time, I'm going to turn it over to one of our great friends and partners in this work, Dr. Raynauld Verrett, President of Xavier University. Welcome.
03:17Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, June. It's good to be here with you. Good morning to everyone.
03:26We wish to share with you some thoughts about the initiatives and investments that are needed and are occurring to promote economic development and lasting change in Haiti.
03:36We will also be reflecting on the impetus that could work. With us, we have today with us,
03:45Madame Michelle Pierre-Louis.
03:51She's President of Focal, the Foundation for Knowledge and Liberty. And she's also the former Prime Minister of Haiti.
03:59We also have with us, Madame Dana Francois, Kellogg Foundation Program Officer for Family and Economic Security in Haiti.
04:11And she will be telling more about the work on Pockets of Hope.
04:16So to begin with, I might direct my first question to Madame Pierre-Louis.
04:20You just flew in from Haiti from Port-au-Prince yesterday and have a firsthand experience of the incredible difficult situation of insecurity in the country.
04:29You coined the term Pockets of Hope.
04:35You yourself coined the term Pockets of Hope.
04:45Can you share with us an example of what you have seen and experienced around Haiti that gives you hope?
04:52Thank you. Thank you very much, Dr. Verrette. And good morning, everyone.
04:59I'm very pleased to have been invited to this event.
05:04The situation in Haiti is indeed very difficult and very complex.
05:12Difficult because on a personal level, you realize every day how fragile life is.
05:20Your own, your families, your colleagues.
05:25High insecurity has impacted our mode of functioning.
05:29Daily life is disrupted by gang warfare, kidnappings, gang checkpoints, ransoming and shooting at random,
05:39paralyzing circulation of produce and people.
05:44You're never too sure that you will make it through the day.
05:49And this form of stress becomes a constitutive element of your behavior.
05:55But it is also complex because the deterioration of the situation is a long process of mismanagement
06:05by all the major stakeholders, national and international, and I insist on international,
06:14and an attitude of neglect towards structural mutations.
06:19Since the 1990s, Haiti has received successive UN missions and been passively submitted to other international
06:31interventions and experts that have weakened the capacity of the state to exert its regular functions.
06:40They organize and fund elections.
06:43They even select the president.
06:46They reform the justice system and make a mess out of it.
06:50They train the police through disconnected short-term sessions.
06:55They propose the implementation of laws.
06:58They overlook the fiscal system, education, health, and other sectors.
07:05This occurred over a 30-year time span when the population has doubled.
07:13And the bracket of 15 to 45 years of age now represents 65% of the population to whom very little is offered.
07:26And this in the face of a state that already suffered from historical weaknesses and has become more and more powerless.
07:36At the same time, international crime has penetrated all lucrative circuits within government and among other businesses.
07:48Every day they discover struggle of arms, weapons, leather weapons in Haiti, and they all come from the United States of America.
07:58The situation has worsened since the assassination of the president.
08:03Difficult, yes.
08:07But we all know that hope is a discipline and a commitment.
08:14Haiti cannot be reduced to bad governance, corruption, disregard of human and women's rights, and the constant label the poorest country of the hemisphere.
08:28No.
08:29Haiti is much more than all this.
08:32It is a people that is resisting daily to uphold its dignity.
08:39A people that is creative, rich in wisdom and culture.
08:45A people that aspires to a better life.
08:49A people that is confronted with the effects of what I just described, but who chose to organize and fight to be free, to make a living, to send their kids to school, and at the same time, keep an incredible sense of humor.
09:07Yes, we love to laugh.
09:10That is where I find the pockets of hope.
09:14The first time I used this expression publicly, that was in 2002.
09:20I was asked to make a presentation of our community library program at a celebration on our behalf at the big library of La Villette in Paris.
09:32I described as pockets of hope these small libraries lost in rural areas, remote rural areas,
09:42because there were beacons of lights to those communities, offering access to books.
09:48In Haiti, books are extremely expensive, and there are no libraries.
09:53Information, culture, to marginalize children and youth.
09:59Making room for the elders to whom they offer movies, theater, because the library was also equipped with solar panels.
10:11TVs and computers.
10:15Yes, those were our first pockets of hope.
10:19And indeed, so many young men and women were trained and learned in those libraries and never stopped thanking us for the experience.
10:30Today, the pockets of hope expand to other sectors.
10:34First, the smallholder farmers' communities I work with at Foucault.
10:40From Jean Rabel, for those who know Haiti.
10:43When I met Gros-Mont-Verrette, you know I can name so many places.
10:47At Quince-en-Louis-du-Sud, Cavaillon, Camperin-Jérémie, where I was born.
10:53Women and men are working every day to fight against food insecurity, to protect the environment,
11:01manage their loans and saving associations, mostly worn by women, and all this in spite of very adverse conditions.
11:13Because they have to keep hoping for better days.
11:17Whenever possible, I go myself to visit, like I did last November in Jérémie, and in March in Akin, Camperin, Cavaillon, Baradayre.
11:29We are building community centers for five organizations, and hope we can raise funds to do the same for the other communities.
11:39Community centers are essential.
11:42There are places where they meet, they train, they welcome people, but it's also income generating,
11:50because we can host, they can host people there, they can sell, and that's what we're doing in five communities.
11:57Another sector that is promising are the artists.
12:02Like the smallholder farmers, they get little support to continue to create.
12:08I'm also the board chair of Le Centre d'Art, the major art center in Haiti.
12:15The most important institution created in 1944 to promote Haitian art and Haitian artists.
12:25Pockets of hope at Noir, Bel Air, Rivière-Fouade, Carrefour, places where those artists are living today, have all suffered from insecurity.
12:38We will continue to support their creation, and hope to be joined by other funders.
12:44Real sustained investment is rare, short term, and based on conditionalities that cannot be easily met.
12:56Haiti is considered a humanitarian case.
13:01The humanitarian trap leads to and maintains the poverty trap.
13:11I feel honored that the Kellogg Foundation adopted Pockets of Hope to launch a campaign on behalf of Haiti's men and women, children and youth,
13:24whose desire to learn, to exchange, to build, to work, to network, continues to be an expression of engaged productors, artists, and artisans in honor and dignity.
13:40Thank you very much.
13:43Thank you, Prime Minister Piollini.
13:46Madame Francois, I understand that Haiti's, as Haiti's program officer for family and economic security, you at the Kellogg Foundation, you're involved in alliance to work for strengthen rural economies,
14:08a truly enhancing farmer's incomes.
14:11Could you tell us more about what the alliance is doing?
14:14With pleasure.
14:16Again, thank you.
14:18It is such an honor to be here and such an honor to be among such a panel.
14:22What actually honorable Michelle Piollini just described in terms of the context of Haiti, it's something that I continuously am struck by how this context is a context that is very familiar, that is very familiar here in the United States.
14:38I was listening to the conversation yesterday, particularly the SNESG conversation.
14:44And again, it struck me that some of the patterns are the same.
14:491%, less than 1% of black farmers receive funding, less than 1% of Haitian farmers receive capital.
14:55Even though entrepreneurs are the growing, faster, and strongest kind of group, black women particularly in the United States, again, very little capital, less than 2% of VC funding.
15:07Similar situation in Haiti.
15:09So in this sense, the context and really the structural barriers that particularly affect black communities and our communities in Haiti, in this case and the context of the Haiti Food System Alliance, particularly smallholder farmers, is familiar and it's very similar.
15:26So the Haiti Food System Alliance is a long standing initiative that has been nearly a decade in the making.
15:34As you may know, as a foundation, we've been engaged in Haiti for a very, very long time.
15:40But particularly over the last decade, I've had a very focused, place-based approach that has put us in a driver's seat to be able to witness Haitian brilliance at its finest.
15:51We've worked very closely with over 200 organizations, but particularly 14 organizations, of which six working directly with smallholder farmers around the same things that you know, access to capital, access to seed, access to grain, access to market, ultimately for wealth creation.
16:12We've worked very closely over the years with, as an example, schools, a network of 200 schools focused on 50,000 students, work with hospitals to, on one end, make sure that smallholder farmers have local markets.
16:27Because, again, it's so important to keep in mind that local food systems have to be anchored and be able to transform to create opportunity for smallholder farmers.
16:37So they've worked together for many, many, many years.
16:41And actually in August 2021, when the earthquake hit the south of Haiti, it was an opportunity to really see Haitian power and Haitian leadership at the heart of the Food System Alliance take the lead.
16:54And it's something that maybe wasn't publicized a lot, but the response, the first responders to the crisis were Haitians and were the partners of the Food System Alliance.
17:03So the Food System Alliance is essentially focused on creating economic opportunity and food security access for children, for families across Haiti.
17:13And since their inception, they've worked with 36,000 farmers, supported food on a daily basis with 32,000 kids, students, and they're only getting started.
17:25They are the evidence of what is possible when they have close accompaniment, when there is an opportunity for smallholder farmers and local entrepreneurs to be in the driver's seat.
17:40And part of the question is also around impact, right? So I talked about numbers, and these are impressive numbers.
17:47But in reality, to Michelle's point, when you consider the reality of food insecurity and the extent to which communities are marginalized, there's a lot more to be done.
17:58And what is most impressive, in my opinion, with the work of the Food System Alliance is the fact that not only it proves what we know, that communities know how to solve their own problems, that smallholder farmers are powerful, that they know what they need, but they don't need more training.
18:17They need capital, they need access to resources, they need market, they need long-term accompaniment.
18:22So it is proving that Haitian smallholder farmers, and similarly to so many communities here in the United States, black communities, that people know what to do.
18:32And the resources are the gap. So with that, I think it's for me, I think when we think about the future and the potential of the Food System Alliance, Haiti being such a young population, over 50% of the population is under 35, it means that there's a huge opportunity for engagement.
18:51There's opportunity for widespread entrepreneurship, small business development, true economic vitality, and economic wealth creation, and it requires the full breadth of resources, grant, blended finance, to be able to materialize that.
19:05And I believe and I see that the story of the Haiti Food System Alliance is one that resonates far and wide, because in all our communities throughout the world, marginalized communities, black communities, I'm sure that we all can recognize this sort of pattern and the power of community to come together.
19:21And solve their own problem with the right kind of support. Thank you.
19:28Thank you. Now I'll turn the floor to Ms. Montgomery Tadron.
19:32And can you suggest, tell us how we all can get involved in moving this forward?
19:37Yes, thank you for this wonderful panel. And in closing, what we like to say at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation is there are many pockets of hope in Haiti,
19:49and we encourage all of you to follow up. You can go to HaitiPocketsOfHope.com for more information. Thank you.
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