Haitians Demand Food

An urgent appeal for solidarity from the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund

HaitiAction.net — In light of the food crisis in Haiti the board of the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund (HERF) released an urgent appeal to support their efforts to get funds to grassroots organizations in Haiti.

Since its inception in March 2004, the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund has given concrete aid to Haiti’s grassroots democratic movement as they attempted to survive the brutal coup and to rebuild shattered development projects. They are able to get funds directly to Haitian organization without maintaining relief agency bureaucracies that often interfere with the objectives of the popular organizations while siphoning off critical resources to maintain the bureaucracy and its lobbyists in Washington and UN.

Some of the projects that HERF supports in Haiti:

Sustainable Agriculture – HERF has contributed much-needed funds to peasant cooperatives in various parts of Haiti. They have provided irrigation pumps, funds for seeds and tools, and other needed resources. They believe that local agricultural development and the growth of a cooperative movement in Haiti are part of the long-term solution to the food crisis.

Victims Assistance –HERF funds have supported grassroots activists who had to flee their homes and live as internal refugees. They have also contributed to campaigns to free political prisoners and given much-needed financial support to their families. In a recent case, a family could not locate their son who had been held as a prisoner in Port-au-Prince. After weeks of pressuring the authorities, they finally found his body at the morgue. No explanation was given for his death, a common occurrence in Haitian prisons.

Independent Human Rights Monitoring - HERF has given support to human rights workers and attorneys who continue, under dangerous conditions, to document human rights violations and defend victims of repression. They have provided material, psychological and legal assistance to victims of the 2004 coup. In particular, they have given continued support to the efforts to insure the safe return of Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine, a central figure in Haiti’s popular movement, who was disappeared on August 12, 2007, and has not been heard from since.

Women’s Organizing – Women’s organizations are leading education campaigns, supporting market women, helping women form cooperatives, sustaining the victims of rape and other forms of sexual and physical abuse. HERF has been in the forefront of supporting these projects.

Defending Trade Union Organizers – HERF has assisted trade unionists whose labor organizing was violently attacked throughout the coup period. They have provided support for labor activists forced from their homes and their jobs due to repression, and supported the efforts of trade unionists to fight privatization.

Education/Literacy - Since the coup, government subsidies for school children have been cut and many literacy projects have been terminated. HERF has provided funding for many important educational projects in this period: a school for poor children in Port-au-Prince, educational projects in the rural areas of northern Haiti, literacy programs

Please give to: Vanguard Public Foundation's
Haiti Emergency Relief Fund