Haitian Relief Through Fair Trade

Now you can support relief efforts in Haiti by purchasing beautiful Haitian fair trade crafts and jewelry. AlterNatives, HSP's sister fair trade boutique, has created a Haiti Relief section of its web page for products from fair trade producers in Haiti. We are going to donate 50% of sales from the Haitian product to Lamp for Haiti.

While emergency assistance is very important, assisting in job creation and opportunity in the next few weeks is going to be critical in rebuilding a positive and transformed Haiti. I’ve experienced in Guatemala that the communities who were helped through the market and business development had far more sustainability and positive results then their neighbors who were supported as long as it was the cause célèbre, but then abandoned when the next crisis took precedence. We can all see how the widows of Chontola are much better off for the investment in threads then corn 25 years ago. Chontola was one of the very first villages HSP worked with, first helping the women literally rebuild their community and then critically helping them form their own cooperative, Ruth y Nohemi, now an internationally successful business.

After hurricane Mitch hit Nicaragua, we focused on marketing the pottery from San Juan del Oriente. It really worked out that they were able to not only recapitalize from lost inventory but to sustain growth that continues today.

We do not feel that it is correct to “profit” off of the calamity and therefore are donating all proceeds from the sales of the product to sustained efforts to train and advocate for the poor of Haiti.