Mission
The Rural Haiti Project is a U.S. based youth leadership organization that aims to empower children to become leaders and builders of their communities by conducting programs for low-income at-risk children in rural areas of Haiti. The project fosters children’s civic, social and intellectual development and promotes community engagement and development.

Decades of poverty, environmental degradation, violence, instability and poor governance have propelled Haiti into a leadership crisis that acts as a barrier to development. Children and youth (ages 0 to 24) make up a majority of the population, yet this young population is completely unprepared to take up the necessary leadership roles as agents for change at the individual, local and national level. Many factors such as poverty, lack of education, unemployment, rapid urbanization, crime, violence, lack of role models, lack of social networks and social exclusion affect Haiti’s youth in negative ways. These detrimental factors have led to serious lack of self-esteem, life skills and sense of civic responsibility in youth; predisposing a large proportion of the young population to chronic failure, idleness and aggressive behavior.  

The Rural Haiti Project seeks to remediate these deficiencies by motivating, empowering, supporting and strengthening young people in rural areas of Haiti to become leaders and builders of their communities. The organization explores creative ways to engage young people, challenge them and encourage them to reach new heights. The organization engages children at an early age to create and understand their own visions, to identify the positive aspects of their communities as well as recornizing the problems that their country faces whilst collectively creating innovative approaches and solutions to bring about change

History
The Rural Haiti Project started in 2006 with a summer workshop entitled “Imagine your Environment” in Sibert, Plaine du Cul de Sac. For the summer of 2007, we introduced our second workshop entitled “Let’s Protect our Environment”. Local artisans, horticulturist, teachers and specialist on reforestation were invited to share their expertise with the kids.

Approach

Inspiration: conduct annual workshops with children in rural communities to promote creative thinking.

Development: identify, research, initiate and help fund community development projects through youth leaders that complement programs led by existing institutions.

Education: raise awareness about youth leadership and development.

Action: use a systems approach to action by examining the linkages and interactions between different parts of a problem in relation to the whole and implementing strategies to tackle these parts.

Community Service
Creating ambassadors for community development and participation through creative service oriented programs.