The Mountain of Food - Rice, Vegetables, Konbits and NGO’s

As an independent volunteer in Ayiti, I am on the lookout for good organizations to work with, and I found a great one on March 1. It’s called “Food for Life”, and it’s one of only two small foreign NGO’s in Haiti (the other is United Sikhs), that cooks and serves hot food to people living in the “Abrits” camps.

Yes people! With hundreds of millions raised for Haiti, the World Food Program (WFP, called “PAM” in French and Creole) and every other Food distribution organization, gives out DRY food to people without homes or jobs! Many camps receive no food at all. Rice prices, in particular, have gone through the roof, as the WFP bought so much of it from wholesalers, then distributed it to organizations that hoard it and/or leak it to resellers, choking the market and profiteering from the disaster like crazy.

In the meantime, the Haitian government has sent the Prime Minister to talk to Obama, asking for financial resources to create jobs, instead of (or at the same time as) sending “Food Aid”. That is a great idea, except that money is even more prone to corruption in distribution than food. The “Work for Food-Cash” program is highly touted by the United Nations, to compensate people for clearing buildings and other post-disaster labor jobs. Ayiti needs permanent jobs, not BS for NGO’s to make themselves look good and then leave when the Shock Value of the earthquake wears off.

Not only do poor recipients of “Food Aid” have to come up with their own cooking fuel, oil, seasoning, etc… (if they even choose to cook it instead of sell it AGAIN, which is often smarter) but there is no means of “Konbit”. Konbit is a Creole word that means coming together to create and share resources. Since most NGOs don’t maintain relationships with leaders and organizations within the camps (who are more than capable of cooking for their own people), they don’t bother using “Food Aid” to do anything sustainable. If they were to help the people cook on-site, they would have to INVEST in industrial cooking supplies, water access, and waste disposal in the camps, which are other issues they ignore.

My friend Jimmy, who grew up in Port au Prince, has a great idea; to create employment in the camps through Cooking Konbits. He knows that Ayitians would rather work for the future, than receive donations. As people save up money, they will improve or move out of the Abrits.

“Food for Life” is the next best thing, because though foreigners cook the food in a foreign style off-site, they do it with Love, and then serve it directly to the people. I now know each member of the FFL team, who came from Bulgaria, Slovenia, Canada and the USA, to live in tents and volunteer for a minimum of a month. The head cook is a guitar-playing, orange-cloth wearing Hare Krishna monk from South Africa, who wakes up at 3am everyday to cook the beans and vegetables. Food for Life is the ONLY food relief organization in Haiti, that buys locally grown produce. Even United Sikhs sends a truck to the Dominican Republic every day, to buy Dominican AND imported food at half-price from markets in Haiti.

Please consider donating or submitting a volunteer application, to FFL in Haiti: http://haiti.ffl.org