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.
With so much sad news surrounding Haiti, we are happy to share some positive reports from our work in the South. With Quixote Center’s support, our partners with the Haitian Christian Community Development (DCCH), part of the Caritas network, launched the Socioeconomic Recovery of the populations of 3rd municipal section of Les Cayes in January 2025 reaching 100 farming families.
On September 4th, 2025, Amnesty International convened, and Quixote Center co-sponsored, an academic conference to bring together experts and advocates from Haiti and the US and explore solutions to the multiple crises Haiti faces today.
Opening remarks from Congresswoman Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick emphasized the importance of Haitian-led solutions and recognized global responsibility for the trafficking of guns and drugs flooding Haiti.
Insecurity in Haiti continues to escalate. Haitian women and girls are particularly vulnerable as many are victims of extremely violent sexual assaults by gang members leading many families to flee to rural areas for refuge.
While the gangs continue to terrorize the population with gunfire, kidnappings and extortions, people do the best they can to take care of themselves and their families. There is a huge amount of fear, particularly in the capital Port-au-Prince where merchants and businesspeople are more exposed to the risk of being kidnapped for ransom. Students avoid wearing their school uniform to avoid unwanted attention and nobody dares to stay out too late.
Haiti has turned to the privatized military industry to take on criminal gangs that have been fuelling a crisis of violence and hunger throughout Port-au-Prince and around the country. The Haitian government signed a contract this year with Erik Prince, a private military contractor and founder of Blackwater Worldwide, a company notorious for its privatized military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
June 26th, 2025 marked the halfway point of the Quixote Center sponsored pilot project initiated by our partners with DCCH in the villages of Gouin and Saint Helene located in the commune of Les Cayes in the Sud Department of Haiti. While most of the attention about Haiti has been focused on the gang-controlled capital, Port-au-Prince, and the Artibonite region, in other parts of the country and in most rural areas, life goes on.
In April, our partners at LaChandler Parish in Gros Morne reached out to Quixote Center to ask for emergency assistance to respond to an influx of displaced persons and deported migrants. Deportation flights to Haiti from the United States resumed in April 2024 and continue to this day.
The humanitarian situation in Haiti continues to worsen as its people suffer from a crisis of violence and hunger, fueled by weapons and ammunition trafficked from the US. Due to the rescission of Temporary Protected Status for Haitians set to take place in August 2025, many more Haitians who are in the US legally are at risk of being deported back to Haiti which does not have the infrastructure or resources to resettle them.
On May 2 the United States Department of State designated Haiti’s most powerful gangs, the Viv Ansanm gang coalition and the Gran Grif gang, as foreign terrorist organizations and “specially designated global terrorists.” Gran Grif is the most powerful gang in the Artibonite department, which is the location of the commune of Gros Morne and Quixote Center’s long term partners.
Our partners with the Haitian Christian Community Development (DCCH) have many years of experience in implementing economic development programs in Haiti. They know better than anyone the pitfalls of poorly implemented projects that create a state of dependency rather than empowering the local communities to sustain their livelihoods and build a dignified life.
More than half of the people in Haiti are facing severe hunger, with at least 8,000, specifically among those displaced and living in tent camps, facing starvation. Gang violence killed 5600 people in 2024, with more than one million people displaced. The violence, death, hunger and displacement are a result of weak U.S. gun laws and weak enforcement that enriches manufacturers and dealers and enables illegal gun trafficking across the Caribbean.
