For almost a hundred years, Haiti has been under direct American control, either by an army of occupation or by way of puppet dictators. Now, hungry and living in the vilest conditions, perhaps, in the world it's dying for lack of sanitation. The earthquake is only a part of it.
Dear Make Poverty History Supporter,
These are hard words to write. Every minute of every day, a mother dies in childbirth or pregnancy. 24,000 children under 5 years old die every day.
These are staggering figures, made all the more tragic because these women and children are dying needlessly. Simple, low-cost, tried and true interventions could prevent most of these deaths. We know that, because we take them for granted in our world. It explains why 1 mother in 7,300 dies in childbirth in the industrialized country, while 1 mother in 22 forfeits her life in Africa.
You can do a lot of things to fight world hunger from Canada, but one thing it’s difficult to do is obtain hands-on food production strategies that fit some of the world’s hungriest southern climates. Given this reality, a number of socially conscious Canadians have flown south to Florida. There, between the balmy tourist beaches and the exotic wetlands lies ECHO, a 50-acre farm that trains international aid workers in effective, low-cost strategies for growing food and beefing up nutrition.
“In order for ECHO to be effective as a demonstration tool for missionaries and development workers going abroad, it must be set in a tropical climate, something Canada doesn’t have,” explains David Prins, a Lacombe, Alberta native who is spending the year as an intern at ECHO. “From an agriculturalist’s perspective, ECHO is a gold mine. There are literally hundreds of species of plants, and almost as many systems for cultivating those plants in to learn about.”
