Rice farmers & orphan care

An unplowed field produces food for the poor,                                                                                    but injustice sweeps it away.  Psalm 13:23

This week Emma and I had a chance to go visit a rice farmer's cooperative about 1.5 hours outside of Port au Prince. Located out near an area called Thomazeau, it looks a lot like the rice fields and farms in the valley surrounding Sacramento, California where I grew up. Here's a farmer tending his field of carrots.

The cooperative is housed in a small concrete building with an office, and a bigger room which houses the 2 rice mills. There is a large concrete pad outside for drying the rice and a larger mound of old rice hulls.

When we visited, there was a large group of local women who brought their harvested rice on the backs of donkeys to dry it out and to run it through the mill. These women represent local farming families that plant a total of 2,000 acres of rice each year. Here is a dry field ready for flooding and planting.

The cooperative provides a tractor, expertise, and the drying and milling facility so they can prepare their rice for their own use or to sell in the local markets. The cooperative takes 25% of the rice as payment for their services and sells it to local food programs and resellers.

We are looking at possibly purchasing this local rice for our food distribution program. This particular area is an up and coming rice farming location, not in the part of Haiti that is typically known for growing rice. They are in need of more markets to sell their rice in, so that they can continue to grow their farms and provide stable income for these local families.

rice mill from Ted Barlow on Vimeo. 

So what does this have to do with orphan care? This rice will be distributed and resold in Port au Prince, providing "living wage" jobs for parents and other caregivers in our communities. These individuals represent families that are at risk for having to give up their children if they can't earn enough to take care of them. Their children could end up in local orphanages, where more than 80% of the kids are "economic orphans", children who were given up to the orphanage because their families couldn't provide for them. This rice will be an important part of our micro-finance and small business programs that will help prevent these kids from being abandoned in orphanages. 

Our goal is to tackle the orphan care problem here in Haiti at the source: and this new farm-to-table project aims to do that by creating opportunities, resources and jobs for vulnerable families. 

Ted

Comments

[tara b]

Ted ,
This is the the same sort of conclusion we came to after years in Kyrgyzstan. Often a big part of the solution to things is in giving people the dignity of being able to work and provide for themselves and their family ( and often extended family!). As evidenced by you're opening verse it is also a spiritual solution that is as old as time and very much aligned with the heart of God. I love the way in a very short time you have figured out not only how to do orphan care but orphan prevention.