The Food for Work Program provides both jobs and food for people! It is a win-win-win for everyone. The people work and in return receive desperately needed food for their families. Additionally, the entire community benefits from having repaired roads. This innovative program has just begun and we have high hopes that it will be a big success.
Fixing the roads in and around Fond des Blancs has become a life and death effort. If the people are to eat and not starve to death, trucks must be able to get in to deliver food. This is even more important now as thousands have lost everything in the torrential rains and flooding generated by the recent four hurricanes that have come one after another, with more on the way.
In response to the ongoing food crisis before the hurricanes, Catholic Relief Services has implemented a "Food for Work Program" funded by USAID and their well-stocked food depots in Port-au-Prince. They were looking for a way to get the most amount of food distributed to the greatest amount of people and the idea was born. Proposals requested were to be based on needs in the applicant's particular area of Haiti. The St. Boniface Haiti Foundation was not about to miss such a great opportunity. A meeting was convened with community leaders and representatives of RATRAP, the local peasant cooperative. What they came up with was a road project to improve the roads in Fond des Blancs. Little did they know that soon after the work began, hurricanes would degrade the roads to worse than they had ever been, making most of them totally impassible.
The only paved roads in Haiti outside a few major cities are 2 national highways crossing the country, one in the northern arm and one in the south. Only 72 miles long, the ride from Port-au-Prince to our hospital typically takes 4-5 hours at best, the last 15-mile stretch of it an hour and a half. From steep rocky cliffs, it plunges into gullies, mud holes, and to deep, sandy ruts in the flat areas. Navigating is a challenge for man and machine. The smaller roads extending out from the hospital are in far worse condition. Now, many of these roads are under water as is the surrounding countryside. Places have flooded that have never been flooded before.
Under the "Work for Food Program", in excess of 1000 workers in Fond des Blancs have been hired for a period of 6 months. They will work on 62 kilometers of the worst areas, clearing brush, widening the roads, filling holes and depressions with crushed rocks, and planting a variety of bamboo, noted for its extensive root system, on both sides of sections most prone to erosion. Of necessity, the work has become a crisis response. For the food to come in, the roads must be made passable.
Equipment purchased for the program includes wheelbarrows, machetes, and shovels. Piles of rock and fill have been distributed, but more are needed. Currently, 25 % of the workers are women. With so many being the breadwinner for their family, that number is expected to rise. St. Boniface's program has the greatest number of workers of all the participants in the Work for Food Program. At a time when the food crisis has become a life and death issue for everyone, it offers hope and stability for those who work on it.
