Love A Child has been expanding its Agricultural Development Outreach for some years now.  As you know, we have the Agricultural Training Center (ATC), where our Director, Wilner Exil, teaches both a two-year and a three-week course on Sustainable Agriculture for Haiti.

Also, at the ATC,  we have continuous demonstration gardens, our edible plant nursery, and many examples of appropriate technologies, adaptable and usable by the average Haitian family to instantly improve their daily living conditions.  We hold the training classes at our ATC as our “extension” program because we cannot possibly get out to the many different areas of Haiti that need help to help teach sustainable methods. Hence, we designed the program to bring the students to us at the ATC for their extension training. Many of you help to support that with your scholarship donations.

In addition to the programs at the ATC and the Miracle Village family garden plots, our agricultural development programs include the slaughterhouse at the Gwo Marche Mirak, the Poul Mirak chicken farm, and the large vegetable garden on the Love A Child campus, where you see this large harvest of mangos, peppers, and other good produce.

Now, we have a new “shade house” (pepiniere) that was initially being built for raising rabbits.  We were not able to get the rabbit project fully underway, so Wilner wanted to convert it to another shade house.  Using some outdoor shade cloth that our friends donated at World Vision, we covered the structure to provide protection for tender new plants from the too harsh Haitian sun. Here, you see the ATC staff planting seeds from Hope Seeds for new crops of vegetables.  We now expect this new shade house will be able to constantly yield harvests of good vegetables from the valuable seeds donated by Hope Seeds. These seeds will be able to supply the five kitchens on campus with nutritious food year-round. We also distribute the donated Hope Seeds to thousands of others throughout Haiti.

Besides feeding hundreds because of these Hope Seeds, our agricultural development projects keep eight Haitian families employed. We give many thanks to the great work being done for hungry families around the world by Hope Seeds and for our enduring partnership that helps thousands of families have “food for life.”

Rad Hazelip, Assistant Executive Director