HDI Opens Office in Arcahaie, Haiti

On January 23, 2017, we celebrated the opening of Haiti Development Institute (HDI)’s office in the city of Arcahaie with a ribbon cutting ceremony. We were honored that many key partners joined us for this occasion, which marked the culmination of a long effort to transform the Haiti Fund’s foundational work into a permanent Haitian institution devoted to supporting long term development efforts. In attendance were representatives of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, The Boston Foundation, the Mayor’s office of Arcahaie, State University of New York (SUNY), YouthBuild International, Ame-Sada, Hope on a String (HOAS), and ECODA, as well as several members of the new Board of Directors of HDI.

We celebrated by making visits to several former grantees of The Haiti Fund. The goal was to showcase past Haiti Fund accomplishments and to demonstrate our intended impact moving forward. We also held meetings that cemented the importance of collaboration and deepened our relationships with key partners from civil society, local government and philanthropy.

The Haiti Fund was born in the days after the devastating 2010 earthquake due to the tremendous generosity of Boston-based donors Karen and Jim Ansara and many others. It was created to provide long-term support to human rights and reconstruction efforts in Haiti. As the Haiti Fund, we made 140 grants in Haiti and the Greater Boston area using an open, multi-lingual grantmaking process, targeting the most impoverished rural communities. We scoured the Haitian landscape to discover and support little-known community organizations with deep roots in their communities, run by local champions. Through our work, we learned that the problem was not only the crumb-sized volume of aid delivered to Haitian organizations, but also that aid was often allocated to poorly conceived short-term projects hatched far from the affected community. These projects may have offered relief, but no real transformation. These factors contributed to the lack of systemic progress, especially in rural communities. Haiti needed a mission-driven independent institution committed to sustained and tailored development to support more effective philanthropic investments and development efforts.

 HDI is built on the belief that an integrated approach to development is necessary to usher in systemic change in Haiti. We know that local leaders, civil society organizations, and social entrepreneurs have the potential to bring about transformative changes. The opening of our offices in Haiti is not just the culmination of our work over the past 7 years, but signals a shift in developmental approaches in Haiti. We hope that HDI’s presence in Haiti marks the beginning of giving a platform to local leaders struggling to create social change in their communities to share their voices.