Discover Haiti, Rediscover Yourself!
- Haiti
About Program
Vermont-based, Volunteers For Peace has been collaborating with community and grassroots organizations in Haiti for over 15 years! Our focus is on education, clean water, and the environment through the lens of cultural exchange. Our projects work to empower local leaders, provide meaningful activities for children, and leave behind sustainable projects in the community.
VFP offers projects around the year ranging from 1 week to 3 months. We also work with community, educational, and family groups in the USA to develop custom projects to meet their goals and skills.
Our Summer Day Camps are offered in two locations in Haiti. In 2015, we provided enrichment activities to more than 800 children.
One of our initiatives for 2016 is to work with community organizations to sprout and plant coffee and other trees. This project will increase sustainable revenue streams in rural areas and help reforest Haiti.
Response from Volunteers For Peace (VFP)
At VFP we do learn and grow from every project we organize, especially in Haiti. It is true this specific project was challenging and several volunteers were not satisfied. Our Board met and reviewed comments, corresponded with volunteers, and reviewed policies. The main change that was made was to be more transparent with volunteers about the challenges of organizing a project during a national (Haiti Independence Day) and international (New Year's Day) holiday period. It is true projects sometimes fell through and VFP was scrambling to organized other opportunities but we believe one of our assets is we have deep connections in the community and were able to reschedule when plans didn't go as expected. Not sharing this stress with the volunteers resulted in inaccurate assumptions of how staff was spending time and did not allow them to learn about community development work. We have run 6 projects since then at this same location with very positive outcomes and are always happy when policy and performance changes are effective.