Earthquake Releif is clearly a priority at this time. ORE is continuing its primary work of improving environmental, agricultural and economic conditions in rural Haiti, but is also currently mounting an earthquake recovery initiative in the wake of the recent national disaster, a 7.2 earthquake 5 miles from Camp Perrrin, ORE's location. we've been conducting a survey of the needs in the whole area with a wide radius around Camp Perrin. We are looking at ways to help the wounded, remove rubble from people trapped, bury the dead, provide temporary shelter to survivors, supply food where it is needed and pure drinking water. ORE is focused on efforts to bring relief to the population and offer all available assistance to reduce suffering. Our development projects involve high revenue tree crops, improved seeds (never GMO seeds, never hybrids), cash crops and marketing programs - which successfully increase crop yields and farmer income, produce nutritionally rich foods, and to protect the environment. As Haiti emerges from its current period of unrest, these programs will play an important role in long-term recovery.
Contact numbers: +509 37 92 1718/ +1 412 608 7518/ +1305 396 6138/ +33 769 33 65 23.

ORE a pour but principal l’amélioration des conditions écologiques, agricole et économiques liées aux milieux ruraux d’Haïti, mais en ce moment nous demarrons un programme pour aider les survivants du tremblement de terre du 14 aout. ORE se concentre sur les moyens d'aider la population en fournissant des abris temporaires, de la nourriture et de l'eau potable et toute autre assistance disponible pour réduire la souffrance du peuple Haïtien. Nous continuons egalement nos projets de développements qui incluent la culture d’arbres à revenus élevés, la culture et la distribution de semences enrichies (jamais OGM, jamais d'hybrides), la production de cultures de rente et la création de programmes de marketing – visant à l’augmentation des rendements et des revenus, à la production d’aliments riches au niveau de la nutrition, et visant à la protection de l’environnement. Parmi les efforts de rétablissements actuels, ces programmes joueront un rôle important dans le redressement à long terme du pays. Lire la page d'accueil en français >>

Donate to ORE
Your donations to ORE will have a real and lasting impact from those suffering from the earthquake - a 7.2 earthquake 5 miles from Camp Perrrin, ORE's location. We are looking at ways to provide temporary shelter for survivors, supply food where it is needed and pure drinking water. There is also the educating poor children, reducing poverty and improving the environment in Haiti. Every gift goes straight to the people you want to help. As a US 501(c) Non Profit organization with over 25 years of Haitian-based activities, we are able to keep our costs to a minimum ensuring that your gift goes directly to those with the greatest needs.

Horrifically Strong Earthquake hits the South of Haiti on August 14th

 

 

Donate now

If you would like to support ORE's Earthquake Recovery Program - offering shelter, food, drinking water, clothes and much more - please click on the link at www.oreworld.org/donate Anything you may care to give will go directly to those in need.

Contact numbers: +509 37 92 1718 / +1 412 608 7518 / +1305 396 6138/ +33 769 33 65 23.

 

 

We have posted some interesting relief activity photo on our updated ORE blog site: Visit ORE's blog

Earthquake 2021 banner

ORE in Camp-Perrin miraculously has all its buildings standing and functional
we are importing tents, providing medical assistance, pure drinking water
and producing 100 tons of corn meal for the hungry.

 

 

Nimi Finnigan writes about the recent earthquake

Dear Friends,
This was supposed to be a celebratory video. For over 30 years, ORE, a grass roots organization has dedicated love, time, and effort to helping Haiti. It was (and is) a love story between my parents and this island. It was (and is) their sole life mission to help the environment, help and promote education, and support Haitian communities in any way possible. Out of their love story and vision, the NGO grew. We count hundreds of farmers and communities as our family. Together, we've been blessed with the opportunity to implement many programs in Haiti: reforestation on a large scale, planting millions of fruit trees, nutrition (including biofortified food staples to prevent malnutrition), and education.

Through a succession of political turmoil and civil wars, and 2010's devastating earthquake that particularly affected the capital of Haiti, we've been on the ground. In 2010, we took as many school buses to help transport the wounded from the capital to the south, we transformed school buildings into dormitories with beds for those who needed to shelter, we fed several hundred of the displaced, we found new homes and new employment for those who had lost everything.

And yesterday, August 14, 2021, we were hit by another powerful and deadly quake. This time, the trauma was more personal for me and ORE. The 7.2 earthquake hit home. Literally. The south of Haiti where I grew up. The neighborhood porches that I spent my evenings on are gone, the churches that I attended are gone, and the more crippling and paralyzing truth: some that have hugged me for the better part of my life didn't make it out in time before their house came down on them.

We are hurt. We are grieving, but ORE, our farmers and friends are on the ground. Luckily, our buildings still stand (my house, the home my father built is also still standing), and so far, most of are farmers are safe. They made it out of their houses in time. By extraordinary good fortune, the buildings at ORE are intact, which means that we will be able to offer assistance to those in need.

So, now it's time to help: we've started driving through towns and countryside, getting reports and assessing the needs.

As I write this, Eliassaint Magloire, our director in Haiti is making his way through the south assessing the damages and putting together a list of what needs to be done and how are we going to do it.

Here's what we know so far, and what our farmers are working on putting together: there is a need for shelter, medical services and supplies, food, and drinking water.

I will share more and update you on what we find along with how we are putting together these necessities. Our ORE website will also be updated.

Your help in this would be more than a blessing, so please use the link below to support us if you can. Also please share it with anyone you think
would like to help.

I apologize for this long letter instead of a well put together video.

There are some long days ahead, but we will walk through them with courage and faith.

Dr Mousson Pierre's Education Foundation

Those who knew Mousson are determined to continue all the programs and activities that were dear to her, and in particular to respect her dying wish which was that the education program that she had sucscessfully build up over the years should be continued as an Education Foundation. So the Dr Mousson's Education Foundation has been established by ORE. For more details watch the video by clicking below on the photo or the link.

Click on this link to see the 7 minute video on the education program: https://youtu.be/CM-GeTVx3v4"

Mousson's Education Foundation Video

Since the horrific earthquake of 2010, with your ongoing help Mousson's education program began funding over 30 students a year. School fees in Haiti range from $315 to $600 a year, making it impossible for poor families to get a get a good enougheducation to ever hope to get into university.

The key to Mousson's program's success was selecting bright, motivated children and providing education to the same students until they reached university level and became self-sufficient. The results are remarkable, with highly skilled doctors, nurses and agronomists among those who are now important and productive members of the community.

The funds donated for the education program are managed by Nimi Finnigan PhD and Agr Eliassaint Magloire.

How ORE's core projects are helping the people of Haiti

The Organization for the Rehabilitation of the Environment is a small grassroots organization established in Haiti in 1985 to protect the environment and increase local farmers' income. In the design of our development projects, we recognize that all four aspects of Haiti's rural predicament - economic, ecological, nutritional and technical - are inter-linked. By working closely with farmer groups, over the years, we have been able to offer practical help to the rural population in the south of Haiti, the majority of whom depend on agriculture for their livelihood. Economic gains and improved nutrition result from high value tree crops (grafted fruit trees, such as mango, avocado, citrus - and bamboo), improved seeds (including QPM maize, iron-rich beans) and other high-yield staple crops. These are some of our projects and goals.

Aerial view of ORE

Agronome Eliassaint Magloire is the CEO of ORE in Haiti.

We are all deeply moved by the loss of Dr Mousson whose message and mission were to fight to improve the quality of life of those around her. Agr Eliassaint Magloire has ably replaced her as the CEO of ORE in Haiti. He is continuing the same activities that Mousson and he had worked on together for decades - with the same tenacity, courage, and compassion - and this is also reflected by the loyalty and determination of the entire team working at ORE in the south of Haiti. We are happy to see that the program is continuing on its positive course using innovative approaches to helping and supporting local communities. Eliassaint is putting his technical experience into the management of the ORE's core projects funded by the UN development projects, the ministry of agriculture, FOKAL and other donors.

ORE has a loyal and dynamic team, with decades of experience in project implementation. The team has a huge advantage in that the majority of the team-members coming from a farming background, with hands-on practical farming wisdom and the ability to adapt project implementation to work under a wide range of different conditions. The team is also headed by a number of speciliased agronomists with all the technical know-how required and an open-minded approach that helps to create a positive reaction from the local communities.

A look at some of our main programs in Haiti

Tree programs
ORE's tree programs have given farmers in Haiti an alternative to deforestation and soil erosion. High value mango, avocado and citrus trees provide a solid income to farmers, and stabilize the environment. Grafting makes it possible to clone commercial varieties and promote large-scale production and marketing.

Quality Protein Maize
ORE is currently producing a high-protein, high-yielding variety of corn to help alleviate malnutrition in Haiti. Quality protein maize, or "QPM", originally developed at CIMMYT in Mexico in the late 1990s, contains nearly twice as much usable protein as other maize grown in the tropics and yields substantially more grain than traditional corn. The benefits of this miraculous corn are becoming more widely known.

Regenerating Plantain and Banana Production
The plantain and banana program is designed to address food security issues in Haiti resulting from the current world food crisis and to regenerate production which has been decimated by the black Sigatoka fungal disease. This epidemic disease has virtually wiped out the bananas (a major element of the Haitian diet) grown by subsistence farmers for the domestic market. In today's volatile climate of increasing distress due to the rising cost of importing basic foods, restoring the country's production of this most valuable food crop to its full capacity is absolutely critical.

Vitamin-rich Sweet Potato
ORE is producing vitamin-A rich yellow fleshed variety of sweet potato to help alleviate malnutrition in Haiti. Sweet potato is a key staple food in the Haitian diet and the 'orange flesh sweet potatoes' is very rich in vitamin A, compared the local varieties. Yields from the new varieties are substantially higher than from traditional sweet potatoes which translates into higher income of farmers. Since 2003 ORE has been working collaborating with CIP, a international research centre and participating in AGROSALUD, the regional bio-fortified food program.

 

Among Eliassaint Magloire's acheivments are the creation of a tissue culture lab which mulitplied rare and valuable bamboo varieties from Hawaii, banana varities from CIMMYT, Mexico, which are resistant to widespread local diseases, and also 'minisetting' the new ultra rapid technique of propagating yams, a valuable cash crop and erosion barrier for hillside farming. He also has for over twenty years been using his technical expertise from his years studying at the University of Florida, to breed (with absolutely no GMO whatsoever) maize varieties. Maize, corn grits are a major staple crop and food source in Haiti. ORE has been produing high performance seed often in in collaboration with CIMMYT, CIAT and Agrosud. The new varieties created by careful (and non-GMO) selection techniques, which are perfect for traditional local farming condition: little or no fertilisers, rainfed production without irrigation, and soils which are often less than optimum. Over the past decades the yields of corn throughout the area have tripled, and with specially prepared ORE seeds yield can reach remarkably high yields. In addition to regular corn, Eliassaint working with CIMMYT has produced, (once again without any genetic modification or GMO), quality protein maize (QPM): whereas regular corn has many but not all of the amino acids required to provide a full protein diets, QPM has complete protein and the same protein value as whole milk - an extraordinary benefit specially for growing children. The list of crop improvements acheived by Eliassaint technical expertise is too long to mention fully here... vitamin enriched sweet potatoes, grafted fruit tress and the highly popular dried mangoes from ORE's facility - to say nothing of his soil conservation and reforestation technique - and the hard work on the Relief Activies after the earthquake of 2010 and the more recent devastation of hurricane Matthew.

The key goals of our development projects in Haiti are to increase farmer income, produce nutritionally enhanced food, and to improve the environment with commercial fruit trees. Practical agricultural training and hands-on technical assistance are essential means to achieve these goals. The three core development projects we have developed to achieve these goals are improved seeds, high value tree crops, and vegetable and tuber crops.

Support for the humanitarian relief programs following Hurricane Matthew and the 2010 earthquake made it possible to assit hundreds of thousands of people. After hurricane Matthew we were able to assist a large portion of the population in the South and Grande Anse departments of Haiti to decover from the devastation. ORE is providing pure drinking water, helping to repair homes and offer food and shelter to those most in need. In order to ensure there will be food and income in the future we supplied seeds to farmers who had lost their crops and their seed stocks. The seeds distributed were various vegetable seeds, and also improved seeds bred by ORE in Haiti. All our seeds are naturally bred, open population, never GMO, never hybrids. They are bred using age-old traditional methods to select for higher yield so that the improved seeds perform well even with low-fertilization and rainfed conditions. The improved seeds include high yield local corn seeds, QPM quality protein corn (originally from CIMMYT in Mexico), high yield sweet potatoes, vitamin A rich sweet potatoes, high yield sorghum and bean seeds.

We would like to give our heart-felt thanks to all the volunteers who gave so generously of their time, and all the donors who personally contributed their gifts to make this all possible. God bless you all.

After the 2010 Earthquake: A small credit program was launched in May 2010 to enable many women, generally heads of families, to start up small businesses as vendors working from their homes, in the market places or in the streets of Port-au-Prince. A simple system was developed to identify the most suitable products for them and help estimate appropriate inventories so as to make their ventures worthwhile.

As the program evolved we started to offer credit for education as well as commercial activities, so as to help cover the expense of school fees – as another important step towards giving the evacuees autonomy. Our efforts may appear insignificant, but they have given many families a sense of dignity, a sense of moving forward – which are essential to maintaining hope.

We are still focusing on a small group including 12 women involved in small businesses and 100 children in the educational credit program: 30 at the university level, 70 in schools. The credit varies from $125 to $400, school fees averaging $250 per students, including books and uniforms.

Biofortification of staple food crop: our crop breeding program which has been on-going since 2004 is focusing on enhancing the nutritional content of Haiti's major staple crops: breeding crops for better nutrition. By improving the nutrient content of staple foods it is possible to help resolve several factors that contribute to malnutrition in Haiti. This is a highly sustainable approach. Nutritionally improved varieties will continue to be grown and consumed year after year, even if government attention and international funding for micronutrient issues fade.

ORE is also involved in variety of activities designed to improve the quality of life in rural Haiti. These include protection of drinking water systems, promoting schools and low cost housing projects in areas threatened by environmental degradation.

More income for families, biofortified Foods for Improved Nutrition, improving agricultural production and protecting the environmental. Read more about ORE's programs >>

ORE was initially established as a Haitian NGO ORE-Haiti in 1985 and a year later a non-profit organization was set up in Florida, ORE-USA. The two organizations have similar aims: to improve environmental, agricultural and economic conditions in rural Haiti.

ORE Haiti is a non-profit NGO established in 1985. The organization has implemented numerous programs funded by USAID, the European Union, IADB and UNEP making a significant impact on the economic and environmental conditions in the south of Haiti. Its mission is to improve environmental, agricultural and economic conditions in rural Haiti by promoting high revenue tree crops, improved seeds, and marketing programs. As a local organization, we have been able to gauge the needs of local farmers and adapt solutions to their way of life.

ORE-USA was established in 1986 in Florida as a 501(c)(3) Nonprofit Organization - ORE Inc, P.O. Box 326, Boca Raton, Fl 33429-0326, USA. The US based non-profit organization, has maintained a collaborative role, seeking funding support for program activities in Haiti, but does not directly execute overseas activities. The program activities are implemented by ORE-Haiti.

Read more ABOUT ORE >>

ORE has been working in Haiti since 1985

Take a look at what people have been saying about us

Mousson Finnigan CEO ORE Haiti
Dr. Mousson Pierre Finnigan, CEO of ORE Haiti, was among 15 women selected
for the national first award of 'Femmes de Mérite' en 2009.