One village at a time in Haiti

The Boca Grande Hope for Haitians Committee raises funds to build self-sustaining villages complete with schools and water-treatment facilities in Haiti.

• A local, slice-of-life story from a Monitor correspondent.

On the west coast of Haiti, about 60 miles northwest of the capital, Port-au-Prince, retired businessman Ben Scott has helped deliver what he calls a “new lease on life.”

Mr. Scott helped to raise $600,000 to build the Boca Grande Friendship Village, a self-sustaining village that includes about 60 homes, a village school, a water-treatment facility, and a five-room vocational school. It also boasts 750 newly planted fruit trees, a community garden, a chicken house, and a cattle farm.

Food for the Poor, based in Florida, coordinated the construction. Scott serves as chairman of Boca Grande Hope for Haitians Committee, which raised the funds. The committee’s next project, Scott says, will be a village for 40 Haitian families now barely surviving on seasonal agriculture in Michaud, not far from Port-au-Prince.