Post-earthquake Haiti: Women fight to rebuild their lives and engage in reviving farming and food businesses

Rural women are not often in the spotlight. Yet they should be, because in countries like Haiti, for example, which is vulnerable to natural disasters and extreme climate change, these women demonstrate a remarkable level of courage and resilience.    

On 15 October 2021, the International Day of Rural Women was celebrated under the theme "Rural women cultivating good food for all". To mark this day and the extraordinary stories of these women, we want to highlight the stories of two brave and determined Haitian women active in the agricultural and food sector as they navigate the impact of these devastating disasters.  

Bernadette: a brave and committed woman leader who shows the way forward 

It is 5 a.m. Bernadette Charles is ready to step out into her garden. It is vegetable crops season and she wants to take care of her plants to prevent drought from deteriorating them. Before the earthquake hit Haiti on 14 August 2021, southern Haiti was already facing water shortages. The situation worsened with the earthquake and now has serious consequences for women like Bernadette, who make their living mainly from agriculture.   

Communities in the departments strongly affected by the August earthquake are now trying to rebuild their lives. Rural women are recovering by cultivating the land. 

Bernadette lives in the city of Les Anglais, a town located in the south of the country. As a mother of two, she faces many challenges. Her house was partially damaged by the earthquake and she is struggling to get back on her feet and to support the members of the Organization of Women for the Development of Les Anglais (in French: "Organisation des femmes pour le développement de Les  Anglais", or OFDAN), a cooperative with nearly 200 female members. 

"With the earthquake, in addition to our dead and injured relatives, we rural women have seen our homes destroyed or damaged. The earthquake and the Grace storm damaged our fields. Our agricultural and commercial activities were disrupted. We can no longer afford to pay back our loans," she laments.    

When she is not in her garden or grinding the cassava she grows into flour with her machine, Bernadette leads training sessions for her fellow cooperative members to help them redevelop income-generating activities. She also travels to remote areas to offer seedlings to women who do not have access to basic services.  

"We also grow fruit and forest trees," she explains. "We help women to start their own business through farming. We don't just grow agricultural products, we also process them. [...] But we need agricultural inputs, workshops and equipment for processing our products, storage facilities, training, financial means and access to markets," she adds. 

In fact, if Bernadette can afford to continue producing, processing and selling her crops, it is thanks to the support of the FADEKA project (an acronym that stands for "Fanm nan Agrikilti se devlopman ekonomi Ayiti"), which means "Women working in agriculture are the pillar of economic development in Haiti".   

FADEKA is a UN Women programme funded by Norway and implemented in partnership with the Ministries of Agriculture and Women's Affairs, as well as with civil society organizations. It has been deployed in rural communes in the South and Grand Anse with the aim to empower rural women and strengthen their resilience to climate change. 

This support allows Bernadette to keep hope for the future, even though there are still huge needs to be met. 

Yvrose, a passionate entrepreneur who is confident in her resiliency 

Yvrose walks the streets of Canapé Vert, a working-class neighbourhood in the capital Port-au-Prince, selling her goods, especially food. 

The terrible earthquake that struck the island on 12 January 2010, killing hundreds of thousands of people and causing countless damages, disrupted her life and work. 

This upheaval, Yvrose was able to overcome it by re-launching her business thanks to a UNDP initiative called "Women Entrepreneurs". 

Implemented in collaboration with the city's community platforms and funded by the Korea International Cooperation Agency, this initiative was launched in the wake of the 2010 earthquake.   

Its purpose: provide vulnerable Haitian women with quality business management training and help them invest in equipment to develop their businesses. 

Like many other women who benefited from the project, Yvrose used the skills she learned from the initiative to also recover from Hurricane Matthew in 2016 and from the most recent earthquake, which hit the country on 14 August 2021. 

"It's not just about income. Thanks to the "Women Entrepreneurs" project and UNDP, I was able to access the equipment I needed to restart my project. Otherwise, I would have had to save money for months or even years to be able to buy my own refrigerator," she insists. 

Referring to the August earthquake, Yvrose emphasizes, among other things, what the "Women Entrepreneurs" initiative has changed in the way she runs her business: 

"At this point, we are able to instantly identify and respond to earthquakes. Our businesses are located in single-storey buildings as a safety measure, and our supply system is now based on the proximity of our suppliers. If roads were to be blocked, we would be affected to a lesser extent. We were terrified at the time, no doubt about that, but then we realized that it was just the ghost of 2010," she says.  

Today, in Haiti, UNDP supports over 500 women-owned SMEs.

Preparing the ground for the equitable and resilient society of tomorrow  

Th UN calls on the need for all stakeholders to scale up their support to rural women and primarily to those of the Grand Sud, which were severely affected by the recent earthquake.    

As the theme of this day in Haiti reminds us: "Fanm riral se senbòl rezistans pou remambre ekonimi peyi a, ann kore yo pou yon sosyete san fòs kote". In other words:  

"Rural women are the symbol of the resistance needed for the national economy to recover. Let's support them to create an equitable society".  

This is the reason why UN Women and UNDP remain committed to working in Haiti to create an enabling environment for gender equality, women's empowerment, and improved resilience of local communities, especially in rural areas. 
 

Article adapted by the Development Coordination Office (DCO) from a piece originally written in French by Laura Louis, UN Women, and an article in French published on 21 September 2021 on the Exposure page of the UNDP in Latin America and Caribbean. Translated to English by DCO.  To learn more about UN's work in Haiti, please visit Haiti.UN.org/en. To learn more about the results of our work in this area and beyond, please read the latest UNSDG Chair Report on DCO.