Lambi Fund of Haiti - Rescources

Key Haiti Statistics

The Lambi Fund partners with rural community organizations in Haiti, providing funds, training and technical assistance to develop successful, sustainable enterprises that benefit entire communities. —Data Source: UN Human Development Report 2008

The Lambi Fund of Haiti works with remote rural communities, which are often the poorest areas in the country. As this graph illustrates, the majority poor in Haiti survive on just a fraction of the nation's relatively meager income, many earning less than $2 a day. —Data Source: UN Human Development Report 2008

For historical, cultural, and economic reasons, women have traditionally had less access to education and good employment opportunities than men. This reality is reflected in the income data shown here, which indicates that women earn just over half of what men earn on average. Women's historic disadvantages—their restricted access to resources and information and their limited power in decision-making—make them most vulnerable to the impacts of poverty, unemployment, and climate change. —Data Source: UN Human Development Report 2008

Due to their socio-economic status, women and girls are often the ones responsible for obtaining water in rural Haitian communities. Instead of spending hours walking to a far away water source, women can spend more time on sustainable activities and girls can attend school when a potable water source is located in their community. Read about our programs to empower women in Haiti —Data Source: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Low income, unemployment, poverty and lack of potable water lead to negative health effects, particularly among children, as illustrated by the adjacent chart. —Data Source: UN Human Development Report 2008, Malnutrition and Stunting Data from WFP

Poverty and its effects cause many Haitians to seek income from available natural resources. The sale of charcoal is the main source of income for 9 percent of the rural population. The charcoal comes from cutting trees, which accounts for the vast majority of the biomass noted in the adjacent graph. By empowering rural people to find alternative sources of income, and working with communities to reforest the mountains, we are changing the underlying causes of deforestation. —Data Source: UN World Food Programme

Though forest cover estimates from this decade vary from 1% to 4% of total land, there is no dispute about the fact that deforestation has been going on in Haiti for decades and has wiped out a significant share of the country's forests. The result of this deforestation is that Haiti's rural areas are far more vulnerable to mudslides and flooding from hurricanes. That's why Lambi Fund is working with grassroots partners to plant more than one million trees in Haiti. Read More.

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Poverty, gender inequality, lack of access to clean water, deforestation, and climate change are all connected. That's why the Lambi Fund is attacking the problems at their roots, working with community organizations to achieve sustainable incomes, reliable food sources, and clean water. This means girls can be educated instead of fetching water. It means trees are planted to protect thriving farms instead of being cut to support economic subsistence. It means lasting progress toward a better future for Haiti, and its most vulnerable people. More about our programs.

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The Lambi Fund strives for sustainability by fostering empowerment and self-reliance among our partner organizations. In this way, we are creating a new, positive feedback loop in Haiti, where secure income, food sources, and water lead to empowerment of women, greater education for children, and a culture of reforestation that will provide long-term protection from hurricanes, and help reverse the underlying causes of climate change. Watch our videos from the field to see how this process works.

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