HAS Haiti Timber Re-Introduction Project (HTRIP)

The HTRIP Model: A Ripple Effect

The HTRIP model includes outreach, training and technical assistance, building the self-sufficiency of the communities with which it works. After entering into cooperation with a community, HTRIP assists local farmers to plant a parcel of 100-200 trees in remote mountain communities. This "demonstration plot" will serve as a teaching tool during the ten-month education cycle that follows. Up to thirty community members participate in this education program each year, which also includes literacy training. HTRIP's technicians help each community to build a small tree nursery, voluntarily staffed by project participants. When they graduate from the program (and receive a certificate from HTRIP for their efforts), they each plant a parcel of trees on their own land in emulation of the demonstration plot. The next season, HTRIP enrolls another group of thirty program participants and the cycle begins again.

HTRIP is committed to building local capacity, and the project trains local community leaders to direct education sessions in collaboration with HTRIP's own agricultural technicians. Understanding that the desperate condition of the Artibonite Valley's mountain communities is not only related to economics, HTRIP maintains a literacy training program with environmental themes in the communities where it works. Most importantly, HTRIP realizes that without local responnsibility and ownership of all agroforestry and reforestation activities, these tree parcels will never reach maturity. This is why the HTRIP educational cycle exists--to give communities ownership of the knowledge involved in planting and maintaining trees. This is also why HTRIP's communities own all the trees that are planted during the program, and the land on which those trees are planted are also community owned and maintained.