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Subscribe to RSSFor the past three years Hugh Locke has been conducting an unusual experiment in Haiti. It is a new development model he calls "exit strategy aid" – a strategy of sponsoring short-term, self-sustaining aid projects instead of long-term programs that create a dependency on handouts.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- For the past three years Hugh Locke has been conducting an unusual experiment in Haiti, creating a new development model for a people who have known profound hardships for many years – and who are facing a headwind of more misery this year.
Experts believe Haiti is likely to experience a severe food shortage in 2013 -- beginning as soon as April -- though hunger is less likely to affect those who have participated in Locke’s experiment.
Locke has about 30 years of experience in the developing world, where he used many of the same methods established by the foreign aid community.
Today he is strongly critical of the way most foreign aid is spent in developing countries, including Haiti.
"Imagine for a moment that the current rules of foreign aid were applied to the Hurricane Sandy recovery efforts in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut," Locke wrote in a February blog post.
"In this 'foreign aid scenario,' overseas governments would step forward to provide the $50 billion in aid instead of the U.S. Congress.
Those foreign governments would each decide how their money was to be spent, and the U.S. and state governments would not be consulted.
Each government would bring in its own contractors and its own charitable organizations to implement the recovery efforts, with almost no money going to local groups or contractors. And when the funding stopped, all activities on the ground would stop and the resulting projects would collapse.
With few exceptions, this is how foreign aid is given out by wealthy countries to poor countries the world over. Is it any wonder that it is not having the intended impact?"
Locke -- a Canadian whose background is in forestry -- had an epiphany while embarking on a new tree-planting effort in Haiti.
An enormous part of Haiti’s energy comes from trees that are turned into charcoal. The charcoal is used not just for domestic cooking but also in industry. Who knew that a dry cleaner could be powered by charcoal? Over decades, Haiti’s countryside has been stripped of most of its trees; and with them, vital protection for agricultural topsoil has also been stripped. The nutrient-rich topsoil -- on which crops grow -- has been washed away in floods and storms, crippling the nation’s fragile agricultural production. More recently, it has also been further devastated by weather systems such as Superstorm Sandy.
To stop this topsoil erosion and to help give Haiti’s farmers a chance to produce abundant crops, Locke wanted Haitians to plant trees. But he wasn't sure how he was going to persuade farmers struggling to grow crops to get involved in a forestry project. What would be their incentive? And how would he satisfy his sponsor -- Timberland’s Jeff Swartz – who insisted Locke create a business model that would continue to function after Timberland’s project funding stopped? What Swartz was asking went against most of the established development tenets.
Locke explains that the current practice in foreign aid is to give out money for short-term projects with measurable results, even if a longer program can be shown to build local capacity. "Giving out fish is preferable to teaching people how to fish," he wrote.
"At the same time, there is a rule in foreign aid that those with the money, whether governments or non-profit organizations, can deliver any given service more effectively and efficiently than the local people being helped. The problem is that both of these approaches tend to create a dependency on handouts, and this is particularly true in Haiti."
Helping Haitians help themselves
In a state of conflict and some confusion, Locke came up with a radical idea that would become an ingenious experiment.
Locke calls his model exit strategy aid – and, in Haiti at least, it is a radical departure from classic development paradigms fusing ideas derived from established aid models with hard-nosed business practices.
We recently traveled to Haiti to see Locke’s experiment underway. We left Port-au-Prince early in the morning, but not early enough to avoid the Haitian capital’s gridlock, which seemed a fitting metaphor for a country that doesn’t seem able to move forward, no matter how much traffic there is on its roads.
Leaving the city we soon encountered a surprising smooth asphalt road – which, we remarked, was better than many of the roads in the United States. The road, it turned out, had been constructed by a foreign contractor and was paid for by foreign aid. While it seemed to be a noble effort, it troubles Locke, who said:
“A road that is built by donor money using foreign contractors is never going to be fully a part of the national transportation system. So it will not be maintained. It will always be absolutely dependent on foreign funding on every aspect of its creation and its maintenance forever.”
Locke wanted to break that pattern and encourage Haitians to help themselves.
After two and a half hours driving north, past the fertile soils of the Artibonite Valley, we saw an aid project three years in the making.
In early 2010 Locke and his Haitian partner Timote Georges struck a deal with 2000 small-scale farmers near Gonaives in the north of Haiti: if they formed a cooperative and made a commitment to plant trees, Locke would give them robust seeds for their crops as well as farming tools and training.
Not only would the farmers benefit from improved crops, his theory went, but the cooperative to which they belonged would also be able to sell the trees at a profit – a profit that would be shared. Right at the beginning, Locke decided funding for the project would stop in early 2013, giving the farmers a precise target to hit. The “agro-forestry” project had to be successful by then because at that time Locke would walk away.
It was an audacious plan but is it working? Locke is tracking the progress of the exit strategy aid project on his website.
Locke’s effort in Haiti coincides with a new outside recognition that foreign aid practices in Haiti must change. It is a sentiment echoed by one of the most prominent and knowledgeable figures in Haiti's aid landscape, Paul Farmer, who co-founded Partners In Health, and who has worked in Haiti for three decades.
“If I had been asked 30 years ago, when I first started coming to Haiti, how best to direct international aid to address disease and poverty, my answer would not have been what it is today," Farmer wrote in a recent UN report. "Working in partnership with non-governmental organizations felt right in the early 80s, the third decade of a dictatorship."
"My belief now is that the only way to create durable and transformative change—to break the cycle of disease and poverty affecting the lives of millions of Haitians—is through direct investment in and accompaniment of national and local institutions that confer basic rights.”
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Well did it work?The article doesn't say but if we want to find out we have to go to this guys web site.I'm not going to his website.It will have to remain a mystery to me unless this story is followed up in April 2013.I commend this guy for his efforts and hope that his way of helping people sustain themselves worked out.
It is a long ongoing process. Change comes very slowly. I wish the project success and admire the dedication it takes to follow through. Kudos to Mr. Locke, as well as to Mr. Farmer.
Locke makes a valid point. Donors want to have a very specific hand in where their money goes and how it is applied.Believing that when they do so, they feel the hard earn funds are then more wisely spent, and there is more justification of having chosen the causes they picked.
Then again, it isn't just limited to donors. As i was reminded earlier today. When someone was attacking Christians for supposedly not spending the funds they get on non-Christians. So apparently lots of folks feel the need hold accountability over funds being donated, whether or not they benefit from it directly or not.
The bottom line still is, it is better to teach a man to fish, so he can fish for a lifetime, then to just keep feeding him a fish a day.For then he will always be dependent upon that another.And when that person stops showing up with fish, the poor fella may starve to death. Of course, some people refuse to share, with those who cannot learn, while others refuse to learn, and still more refuse to teach.
Wonder if the quote about "the lives of MILLIONS of Haitians" has anything to do w/ their situation, as well? Haiti is smaller than Maryland w/ a population that's nearly 20% greater.
Bottom line: Haiti is not going to be anything but poverty-stricken until The World leaves them to their own devices, excepting natural disaster relief aid.
The Dominican Republic should take over Haiti and teach those people how to live. Haiti is a failed nation and the sooner it is gone, the better for the people.
In The D.R., about 40 years ago we had the same problem, one of the solutions was the use of GLP as fuel.
The government began a program of reforestation at the same time enforced by the army. Gas stoves were facilitated and sold cheap to the peasants.
At the same time the private sector began to install GLP distribution centers abroad.
In Haiti neither the government nor the private sector has the will to solve this issue, because they want to keep the haitian people as poor as they can be in such a way that they can control them very easy.
Mr. Locke's work in Haiti is commandable, as is the work of so many who geneuinely want to help. His heart may be in the right place, but his ideas are also flawed and obviously lack historical perspective.
Mr. Locke's idea to position the subsistence Haitian farmer into a regional agricultural producer is sound, if indeed that is his aim. In that he has the support if the government of Haiti, the Haitian private sector and Haitian farmers, whose goals are to integrate farmers into participating into the formal economy as a tax payer. The result of which would contribute to the State's tax base and allow it [the State] to provide basic services (water, education, road maintenance, etc...).
Mr. Locke should also note that his ability and that of other NGOs to operate independently and to implement and/or impose his ideas, be they good or bad, in Haiti is precisely part of the root cause of Haiti's problems, represented in the international community effectively creating a parallel State, known as the Republic of NGOs, not subject to any rules, laws and regulations. If Mr. Locke is part of the solution, he is also very much part of the problem.
Mr. Locke goes on to propose the displacement of the republic of NGOs which are fully funded and financed by international governments to position in their stead international corporations, - of which Haitians of course may have no part. As they generally hold no part in most NGO operations, except as secretaries, drivers and cooks, and other menial jobs.
Mr. Locke should do some reading to learn that his proposed business and operation model is not in any way new and has been tried already with dismal failure. For the Haitians. (BTW, this was somewhat the model before the NGO model was adopted...). Part of the reason why is that the corporations sucked Haiti dry and then left with their pokets full and Haiti had nothing to show for it (kind of like the existing NGO system).
In addition, let's remember that Haiti's poverty is wholly and totally manufactured by international governments whose primary aim was to open markets such as Haiti's for their corporations and/or constituents to sell their goods. The result is that this systematically forced upon Haiti the erradication and decimination of its main economic agricultural and agro-industries base, spread poversty to 58% of the populations when 30 years ago, the poeverty rate was below 50% and increased the enemployment rate to over 70%.
Another major flaw in Mr. Locke's ideas is the somewhat imperialistic and paternalistic, and I am trying very hard not to say racist view of bypassing Haitians themselves. Is that not what the international community and governments have been doing over the past three decades with organizations such as his and other NGOs? What has Haiti to show for it? Mr. Locke's proposed displacement of international governments with international corporations without Haitian involvement is somewhat arrogant and at the same time naive and, furthermore, the failure of such a proposition is openly showcased with the recent cries of where goes the US$ 7.5 billion post-earthquake in assistance to Haiti, which mostly benefited NGOs, some corporations with Haitians benediting barely 1 percent! So kinda been there done that scenario .....
Please note that most international aid to Haiti goes back to its country of origin, in some cases, Haiti barely benefits or gets over 1 % of the allocated aid. And, the roads that the writer/journalist is writing about was done in conjunction and partnership with Haitian contruction companies and Haitian workers.
The only way for Haiti to move forward is to remove this dependency trap established by the very nations that are supposedly helping Haiti. The solution is to invest in Haitian private sector development which will incrementally create a tax base that will allow consistently growing sectors of the population to contribute towards the funding of basic services, be it waste collection, health, education, etc....
Haiti has been free and independent for over 200 years and this is the best the Haitians can do or will ever do. All they want to do is to make babies, make voodoo and slip into the US to sponge off the US tax payers.
You're very informed about world affairs, aren't you? Good for you! Crackers are usually the best informed trolls around here.
Yes I am. I have been in and out of Haiti for many years. Can you even find it on a map?
Hugh Locke's & Timberland's reforestation project in Haiti has been a huge success. After Hurricane Sandy, these cooperatives had their own disaster relief in place and didn't need the governments. They were able to lend help to the members and neighbors in this recent time of need. This is huge. It's working, They are taking care of themselves and their neighbors.
Hugh Lock & Timberland have been successful with their reforestation project! Millions of trees have been planted. and after Hurricane Sandy, their co-operatives provided their own relief and didn't need government help. They helped their own farmers and neighbors. This is huge!
But are they paying taxes on goods sold????
The Locke/Timberland Project by itself is a great initiave and model and a great start. But it only checks very few boxes.
Are the farmers within the Timberland project and other similar projects actively participating in contributing to the country's tax base and towards economic self-sustainability? Are the farmers moving towards greater participation and integration into the formal economy? Which btw is the only means to maintain roads on which they travel to sell their products and the water to irrigate their crops? Allow the State to provide health care and education? waste collection, etc...
If Haiti is to be economically self-sufficient, US and other international aid which gives most of its funds to NGOs such as that of Mr. Locke, - funds generally to be returned to the home country, - must also look towards integrating such programs into a national program to reduce Haiti's dependence on foreign aid and reduce vulnerability to global food and fuel price fluctuations.
In other words these programs must actively view matters with a wider national scope by positioning the subsistence farmer to transition into a regional agricultural producer with the capacity to contribute towards meeting local market needs and to establish a tax base which allows the government to meet the people's most basic needs.
In my opinion, this article demonstrates the lack of research done by producer Mr. Justin Balding of NBC and his lack of research and knowledge of Haitian history. Especially of past international economic investments and/or intervention in Haiti.
Mr. Balding has failed to present or even to challenge the views espoused by Hugh Locke, whose program implemented in the Artibonite and financed by Timberland is a good and viable program, even though Mr. Locke’s (the Timberland program director/implementer) views and “proposed Solution to
break Haiti’s vicious cycle of poverty” are deeply flawed.
As someone who is a strong proponent and supporter of international investments in Haiti, I found this article to be merely akin to a paid advertising, marketing and repackaging of failed foreign aid in Haiti. I also noted that yet again, another author or journalist did not consult any Haitians for their views or their solutions for their own country.
I do not question Mr. Locke's good will and intent, but his views of bypassing Haitians themselves whose problems he so wants to solve is arrogant, ridiculous and I am trying hard not to say racists, - even if it is the perpertuation of institutionilized economic and paternalistic racism as opposed to more petty and overt action.
NBC is probably the network I watch the most. But in this case, shame on NBC for such a poor job done!
Régine Barjon
Interestingly, there's no mention that Hugh Locke was Exec. Director of Yele Haiti, the now defunct NGO started by him and Wyclef Jean......