Things we do for a project:

  • Work at the grassroots to fit a project to the community it serves.
  • Document environmental and cultural resources and evaluate their implications for a project and the community it serves
  • Facilitate community-based planning.
  • Master plan for sustainability (improvements that endure)
  • Bring together a team of sponsors and specialists to work collaboratively with local people.
  • Program a project to set goals and benchmarks.
  • Create budgets, programs and action plans.
  • Communicate ideas and results to raise awareness, promote solutions, and secure funding.
  • Coordinate with the efforts of others - public, private, and non-profit sectors
  • Manage outcomes and measure their effectiveness in reaching goals.

Our work in Haiti

Since 2002 we have been working in collaboration with a town, a Haitian N.G.O., U.S. nonprofits, Haiti's government, and private business on a spectrum of different projects to improve the lives of its citizens. In all of them Partner for People and Place plays a supporting role to Haitian leaders, Haitian professionals, and Haitian workers.

A free Haitian school, Centre St. Barthelemy has been built to the highest standards with local labor. It is fully electrified by solar energy and linked to the Internet. Its roof harvests rainwater for irrigation; its solar pump lifts pure water from a deep aquifer; its waste is properly disposed; and its 600 elementary students learn with Montessori teachers and laptop computers in bright, well-ventilated classrooms.

Nearby, a health clinic nears completion, with solar electrification, pure water supply and proper waste disposal. A community advisory board orients it to local needs - health promotion, pediatrics, dentistry, ophthalmology and, chronic illness.

In the town of Terrier Rouge we operate a Haitian nonprofit business, Jatropha Pepinye, to support the cultivation of Jatropha curcas, a plant that provides a cash crop to farmers, and oil for value-added products like biodiesel and soap. It is one of the only suppliers in Haiti of this plant, which is the feedstock of renewable liquid biofuel. The business itself - a tree nursery - provides jobs and training to local residents and field trials for Jatropha research.

In a related project we are developing alternatives to traditional charcoal-making using sustainable forestry and high-efficiency energy conversion. We see renewable fuels as part of the effort to re-green Haiti, which is almost totally deforested.

PARTNER FOR PEOPLE AND PLACE provides planning and technical assistance for humanitarian and environmental projects on the frontline of poverty. We work with poor communities and the organizations that serve them to improve people's lives and enhance their environment. Together we tackle the problems poor people face by creating solutions that are appropriate to who they are and where they live.

TWO LANDSCAPES

Our work is based on the concept that any place in the world today is made up of two landscapes that are one - an ecological landscape, governed by biophysical processes, and a human landscape, governed by the lives and culture of people. The two are interwoven, which means the problems of human poverty and environmental collapse do not exist in isolation nor do their solutions. We view problems of health, economy, environment, and education as interconnected, and our solutions are integrated to match. For example, to educate children means making sure there are good jobs for them to grow into - education and economic development hand in hand.

PROJECT DEVELOPMENT IN CONTEXT

Every project has a point of beginning but we develop it in a comprehensive way - we follow the arrows in our holistic circle to build cumulative community results and diminish the chance of unintended consequences.

VIDEO OVERVIEW OF OUR HOLISTIC APPROACH