An urgent appeal to our readers for donations:

Please help us provide fruit trees to farmers in the hurricane-impacted area of Haiti. Click here to make a gift! 

Until just a few weeks ago Haiti’s southern peninsula used to be the country’s breadbasket. The south was where some 40% of Haiti’s food was produced. But on October 4 Hurricane Matthew, the Caribbean’s worst storm in ten years, wiped out agriculture in the south, putting the entire country at risk of widespread famine. While some crops can be replaced in a single season, the loss of the area’s fruit trees, which represent years of investment and produce food over decades, is a long term disaster for Haiti’s food security, the economy, and the environment.

Cacao seedlings at one of TCI’s source nurseries, ready to go!

Working through mayors’ offices, CASECs, local businesses, schools, and community organizations, The Caribbean Institute for Sustainable Development, a charitable 501c3 organization, is delivering a wide variety of nutritionally and economically important fruit trees to farmers and gardeners in the Grande Anse and Sud Departments to help rebuild food security. Our distribution partnership, post-distribution training and extension methods strengthen relationships between people and their local institutions and ensure good seedling survival rates.

We produce and buy seedlings from multiple sources to maximize genetic diversity

Give Fruit trees for Christmas! TCI is distributing 1,500 fruit tree seedlings by Christmas to 250 farmers and gardeners in Abricots, Jeremie and Cavaillon through Paradis des Indiens Foundation, Place Charmante, and the Mairie of Cavaillon respectively. We will increase distribution to 3,000 seedlings per month for 600 farmers and gardeners by Easter. We are raising private contributions to do this.

Our administrative and overhead costs are fully covered pro bono, so we can produce, care for, and distribute trees at only $7 per tree. Any gift you send will be greatly appreciated. A donation of $25, $50 or $100 makes a big difference in the nutrition and long term food security of a family. No donated money will go to overhead or administration, and your gift to The Caribbean Institute is 100% tax deductible. Click here to make a gift!

Nursery Manager Phanès Mondestin with TCI Board Member Tony Marcelli

Thank you for your support. Click here to make your gift! And please forward this message to your friends and colleagues!

Sincerely,

Bertrand Laurent, Executive Chair, The Caribbean Institute for Sustainable Development