Let's Build Gonave, Haiti!

The countdown to La Gonave is coming up.  During my trip there, I will be teaching 4 adult student apprentices about beekeeping.  The goal is to have them at the certified beekeeper level before I leave the island.  We also will be installing 2 or 3 hives. The observation hive may come in time for our partner to bring it with her to the island.  If that is the case, we will install the hive there at that time.  We do know that the $1,500 hive has been awarded to our partner not-for-profit.  This is the first observation hive to ever have existed on La Gonave, and possibly the entire country of Haiti! Since we lost the grant for the pollinator park, we will be teaming up with the same not-for-profit an reapplying for the grant.  This could allow us to continue down the path of having a pollinator park soon on the island soon!  We are extremely excited about this project and are already finding ways to do more with less funds.  We decided t...

I mentioned in a previous blog that the island of La Gonave needs some sort of fire and rescue department.  Also the need of a coordinator that would be responsible of keeping the island departments in shape.  The first part of starting a fire and rescue department is to start a rescue squad. The island of La Gonave could be potentially fatal with respect to ravine falls, children and adults being lost, collapsed buildings, fire, flooding, and individuals being trapped in crashed vehicles. A search and rescue squad would be a volunteer group that could help handle these potential issues.  While they would not be able to stop large fires, they would be able to handle small fires that start.  The startup cost of a rescue squad would be by far cheaper than a fire department.  The advantage of getting the rescue department up first is that these individuals would be trained to handle on-call response calls and train in the above mentioned issues. We all know h...

Well the new year is starting and one of the things that was recommended to me was that the island of La Gonave doesn't have a fire department or a Emergency Medical Service.  This isn't a surprise, and something that we have somewhat looked into.  We contacted a international a not-for-profit group to help in this process.  The group has helped Haiti before with setting up a fire program.  While all of this was on the mainland, I felt that we can possibly see if this group would be interested in helping the island of La Gonave. Our concern is how can the program be successful.  Will the program last?  One cause for concern is that the departments in Haiti fell apart.  So how can we make the fire department on La Gonave work overall.  The agency that has worked in Haiti before trained the firefighters and even assisted in getting gear and equipment.  There could even be a way to help pay the firefighter salaries.  One important step i...