Men Nan Men
Our Projects
Men Nan Men is dedicated to ending malnutrition and hunger in Haiti. Through microfinance efforts, agroforestry campaigns, and medical services we aim to eliminate agricultural unsustainability and crop-shortage related hunger. We have partnered with multiple local and international organizations to promote help social and economic change throughout Haiti, but specifically our efforts and headquarters are located in Bassin Bleu.
Watershed Initiatives
The severe fluctuations in Haiti’s weather have created a vast shortage of farmable land and resources for the hometown communities of Haiti. During Haiti’s monsoon season, there is so much rain that it overflows rivers, and destroys much of the land’s crops, permanent forestry and developed communities, leaving the land barren for future agriculture, while other seasons often are filled with endless months of drought, making the land infertile. In order to combat this problem Men Nah Men has partnered with Chemonics and the Haitian government to improve watershed management.
The program is designed to provide management and material support to agro-supply stores and train farmers on best practices for growing target crops. The initiative also focuses on rehabilitating and maintaining a large functional irrigation and drainage system that is powerful enough to handle the rains.The main focus of the project is to protect specific hillsides using a ditch drainage technique as well as to support agroforestry in order to increase the tree coverage.These strategies aim to strengthen agricultural markets through multiple mechanisms including rehabilitating farm to market feeder roads; reducing post-harvest losses; and rehabilitating rural markets and vendors through facility maintenance.
Education
Training farmers on best practices for production of target crops at the initiative’s regional sustainable rural development centers, and rehabilitation and maintenance of irrigation and drainage systems is a major project that we hope to achieve the following goals:
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Provide community knowledge and skills to make the best use of their land and leverage all of our resources
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Educate community on benefits of grafting to transform low quality fruit trees into the best commercial varieties
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Improve relationships among population and encourage them to work together to continually educate each other and future generations
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Encourage community to adopt microfinance phase of growth and crop production for revenue after 5 years
Agroforestry
Agroforestry systems offer increased productivity, economic advantages, and health through an increase in ecological diversity. This project will:
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Contribute to food security by restoring the soil fertility for food crops
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Provide cleaner water through reduced nutrient and soil runoff
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Reduce poverty through increased tree products for home consumption and sale
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Fight off malnutrition by increasing the number of drought-resistant trees and the subsequent production of fruits, nuts ,and edible oils
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Reduce deforestation and pressure on woodlands by providing farm-grown fuelwood
Kafe pa'm
Haiti was once responsible for half the world's coffee production. The objective of this project is to serve our target rural communities by educating and assisting them with improving crop yields, the quality of coffee grown, and access to markets and investments.
With improved coffee harvests, we hope to grow Haiti's coffee sector by bringing Haitian coffee from out target region to new markets and facilitate new purchase agreements between Haitian coffee companies, cooperatives and international buyers.