The What If? Foundation, in partnership with members of the Ti Plas Kazo community of Port-au-Prince, has been providing hot, nutritious meals to hungry children in Haiti’s capital for over 11 years. Each child who comes to the food program receives a heaping plate of fresh vegetables, rice, beans, and sometimes meat or fish.

The food program was launched on a Sunday in March, 2000, when 200 children came to the St. Clare’s rectory for a hot meal of rice, beans, vegetables, and meat. The next week, almost 400 children showed up, and the program gradually expanded. After the 2004 coup d’etat, the program started serving meals 2 days a week. By March 2006 it had expanded to providing meals five days a week. In early January, 2010, the food program team was serving up to 1,500 meals/day, every Monday – Friday. Then the catastrophic earthquake struck on January 12, 2010. The food program stretched to prepare and serve over 750,000 meals to hungry children and some adults in 2010. (Click here to read more about our earthquake relief efforts.) While the cooking team was still serving an average of 3,000 meals each weekday in January 2011, the number of children and adults coming to be fed gradually decreased in ensuing months. By September 2011, when the food program had to relocate to a new, temporary location, the cooking team was serving an average of 1,000 meals each weekday. (More information about the relocation of the food program is included below.)

Our Haitian partners continue to do all they can to support the local economy and agricultural self-sufficiency in Haiti. They buy all the food and supplies for the food program locally, from farmers and small distributors. They also launched a Haitian Rice Initiative in 2010 which aims to have as much of the rice used at the food program be Haitian grown as possible. Unfortunately it has remained very difficult to find Haitian grown rice in the capital, much less in the large quantities needed for the Food Program, due to the cholera epidemic and other food production challenges. Our partners continue to buy as much Haitian rice as they can from local markets and to search for sources from which they can purchase larger quantities of it in the future.

Food Program Relocated in September 2011

In September 2011, our Haitian partners received word that they needed to move the food program out of the rectory building where it had been housed for more than 11 years, as the new priest of St. Clare’s wanted to use the rectory for other purposes. Thankfully, the cooking team quickly and effectively worked together to come up with a plan for relocating the kitchen that ensured children would continue to be fed. They moved most of what was in the rectory kitchen, including the 7 huge stoves, into a shelter they built on the side of a cook’s house about a mile away, near the property we purchased in 2010. They then set up a system for transporting the food to an area next to the property, where they have built simple tarp shelters under which the children are able to sit to receive their meals. Despite the challenges of the move, the food program continues to serve an average of 1,000 meals each weekday. Some 800 meals are served, along with packets of drinking water, to children seated under one of those shelters. There is usually enough food leftover to then feed about 200 adults under the other shelter.

“The best part of my job is seeing the faces of the children,” said Luxama, one of the cooks for the food program, when a visitor spoke with her. After noting that the day’s meal would be the only meal of the day for many of the children she added: “They’re so excited when they have a chance to actually eat something.”

The commitment and hard work of our Haitian partners has allowed the food program to continue uninterrupted for more than 11 years, through hurricanes, an economic embargo, a coup d’etat, and then the earthquake of January 2010. And the What If? Foundation continues to be the only source of financial support for the food program. We are so grateful that the generosity of our donors has allowed us to help so many in and around the Tiplas Kazo neighborhood through difficult times. Your donations are needed to ensure we can continue to provide critical food and educational opportunities to the children in Haiti.

Visit our gallery to see photos of the food program, and read our blog for the latest news.

The following shows the food program in action:

What If? Foundation founder Margaret Trost reflects on a 2009 trip to Haiti and the food program: