Pervasive charcoal trade getting major rethink in Haiti

Pungent wood smoke wafts daily across the hinterlands of Haiti’s southern peninsula, where villagers stack smoldering wood beneath dirt mounds to make the charcoal that nearly all the urban households in the country use to cook every meal. For decades, authorities and development workers have denounced such rural charcoal makers for stripping the nation’s forests, sending topsoil to sea and helping make Haiti the poorest country in the Americas.

Bringing hope and healing to Haiti

As I sit to write you about my recent trip to Haiti, I am not sure where to start. The devastation I saw from Hurricane Matthew was huge but the picture that immediately comes into my mind is of the young mom with a 12-month-old babe and a three-year-old boy whom I met.

French foreign minister visits Haiti city devastated by

France’s foreign minister has visited a Haitian city devastated by Hurricane Matthew two months when the Category 4 storm’s center tore through the impoverished country’s southwest. The French Embassy in Port-au-Prince says the purpose of Jean-Marc Ayrault’s visit to Jeremie on Sunday was to express France’s solidarity with its former colony as affects areas struggle to recover from Matthew’s Oct. 4 passage.