Quixote Center’s work in Haiti prioritizes systemic change. Our theory of change has three aspects:
Quixote Center partners with the Montfortain Fathers for a variety of projects in the Gros Morne area. Historically we have supported the Jean Marie Vincent Formation Center, which houses a tree nursery, a model instructional garden and multiple classrooms for training small-scale farmers. With our support, the JMV Center also maintains the Tet Mon model forest, a reforestation project that is the only one of its kind in the region. The JMV team holds formation sessions on reforestation and tree maintenance for local leaders, schoolchildren, and agronomy students.
Quixote Center also partners with the Montfortain-led LaChandle parish to support displaced people who fled to the Gros Morne area as a result of internal violence or deportations. With our support, the parish has sponsored programs to keep children in school and provide child-safe spaces to prevent gang recruitment. We have also provided cash assistance for the parents so that they can start small businesses and stabilize their income.
DCCH, a member of Caritas, partnered with Quixote Center in 2023 to conduct a needs assessment among rural communities around Les Cayes to identify investment priorities. After consulting with hundreds of community members through interviews and focus groups, together we designed a project that provides targeted investments in agroecological training, animal care, and women empowerment through microloans and small business ventures. In 2025, we launched the Socio-Economic Recovery Program as a scalable and replicable pilot project working with 100 rural families reaching up to 1000 people. This community-led initiative aims to improve their income and food security while building resilience and eliminating dependence on outside assistance. DCCH distributes seeds and livestock as loans where recipients return the same quantity of seeds and the first offspring to the program for redistribution. In 2026 we included an additional 100 families.
Read the final report from the 2025 pilot HERE.
Climate change is real. In Haiti, subsistence agriculture remains a primary livelihood in rural areas. Unpredictable cycles of drought and flooding quickly turn promising harvests into devastating loss.
By Father Wilnes Tilus, Executive Director, DCCH
Lately, the entire world has been bearing the brunt of climate change. In some countries, the land is literally burning, destroying forests, homes, and public infrastructure. In others, it's volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, hurricanes, and even tsunamis. Faced with humanity's mismanagement of the land, nature is striking back.
Haiti is also bearing the brunt of it.
The US administration has unleashed ICE into the streets of Springfield to target Haitians who had their legal status stripped away. Many leave immigration check-ins with ankle monitors. Haitians are so far the only group to be humiliated that way, and it is also the first time these devices are deployed on non-criminals.
ICE also detained pastors Adrien and Dumano, two Haitian leaders who have lived in the US for over a decade and who provided essential spiritual and mental health support to the community.
There is sunshine, nice rivers and great drinks
Underneath the trees, you'll always find great shade
Where you'll find a gentle breeze to keep you cool
Haiti, is a country dear to me
Excerpted from a 1925 poem by Othello Bayard
This July, with support from Quixote Center, the Caritas Committee of Lachandle Parish in Gros Morne, Haiti, organized a three-week summer camp for children in the community, many who have been displaced by armed gang violence in Port-au-Prince and the Artibonite region. When school is out for the summer, it is prime recruitment time for armed groups. Creating safe community spaces for children is essential. And so, Camp Caritas was formed.
The plan was for 100 children. By the third day, 129 children were attending and by the end of camp that number had grown to 153.
Strengthening the Solidarity Economy Model in Southern Haiti
Newtown Action Alliance Lunch & Lobby on the ARMAS Act
March 2nd, 2026 at 12:00pm & 8:00pm EST
Watch the recording of this virtual event HERE
Click HERE to see our most recent fact sheet on illegal weapons trafficking to Haiti.
Fifty years ago Bill Callahan and Dolly Pomerleau founded Quixote Center with a dream to be a progressive faith-based center for challenging injustice. Our founders were influenced by liberation theology and animated by a commitment to solidarity with the vulnerable and
marginalized, within the Catholic Church and in society. They dreamed the “impossible
dream” of a world more justly loving, armed with the faith that their love and persistence
could make impossible dreams come true.
In Haiti and the throughout the diaspora, May 18th is a day filled with music, dancing, parades, religious services, and cultural events. It’s Haitian flag day, a national holiday and day of celebration, but its significance is far deeper than a day off work and a time to party. Schools often hold ceremonies, and communities gather to celebrate Haitian heritage, identity, and pride.
Last year our government brutally dismantled USAID, sending shockwaves around the world. The world's largest foreign humanitarian aid provider is reduced to a few remaining programs, including the successful HIV treatment and prevention program PEPFAR, now run by the Department of State. At a cost of less than 1% of the US total budget, many diplomats considered USAID an effective soft power strategy that consolidated alliances across the globe.
The people of Haiti are suffering. Violent criminal gangs perpetrate kidnappings, sexual violence, murder, and child trafficking. Over half the country is facing extreme food insecurity and 1.4 million people are internally displaced. For comparison, Haiti is about the size of Maryland, so it would be like 11% of the population of Maryland displaced and without homes.
