Increasing Food Security and Promoting Public Health

The expected intermediate outcomes for this project include: increased application of concepts of food security, both by academics and professionals as well as community members; increased environmentally sustainable revenues for households and especially women, in the fourth section of the municipality of Saint-Marc; and increased access for women and children living in the town of Saint Marc to sufficient, safe and nutritious food.

Results achieved as of the end of the project in October 2018 include the following: strengthening the capacity of the State University of Haiti in the areas of food security allowed for (1) the training of 177 students in medicine (including 50 women) and 10 district health unit professionals who now apply the notions of food security and nutritional health in their practices; (2) 16 health structures now offering nutritional health services, which were provided to 61,089 individuals, including 26,827 pregnant and breastfeeding women and 34,262 children under the age of 5; (3) 78 women having received training in women’s leadership; (4) an increase of revenues by 30 % (an increase of approximately CAD$355) from the sale of beans being noted for at least 483 farmers (including 178 women) compared with mid-project in 2015, and this achievement occurring in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way; (5) an average adoption rate of 56 % of best agri-environmental practices being observed, compared with approximately 0 % at the beginning of the project; (6) an observed decrease of households with high food insecurity, which was at 7 % at the beginning of the project and was at 4.2 % by the end of the project; (7) a decrease in the number of children (aged 6 to 59 months) with global acute malnutrition, from 3.7% at the beginning of the project to 1% at the end of the project being observed in the commune; and (8) 270 tonnes of sorghum seeds resistant to yellow aphids distributed to 62,500 Haitian farmers (25 % of which were women), which enabled the planting of approximately 30,000 hectares (approximately 25 % of the total area of sorghum planted per year before the aphid’s arrival) and saving the national sorghum production. These results enabled a sustainable and sustained increase in the food security of the population, particularly women and children, in the Commune of Saint-Marc.