FTKDG, Gan Bad (Grand Bad)

Gan Bad is a community that is working to build roads by hand through the mountains, with community collaboration and the traditional konbit.

Gan Bad is a rural community that lies along the Grand Riviere du Nord. It has approximately 8,000 people, and is a largely agricultural community that used to be a significant producer of coffee and cocoa, and still relies heavily on agro-forestry.

There are 5 different community organizations in Gan Bad who have different activities and domains, but which have all united around one priority: building roads into parts of the community that have been isolated and cut off. Every Friday, the community assembles to give small contributions to allow work to happen the next day (donating tools, food, or small amounts of money; every Saturday, the community calls konbit (a traditional rural labor exchange) and more than two dozen people (young and old, men and women) assemble to do back-breaking work, chipping away at the mountainside to make a road. This coming together around a common goal has also persuaded these organisations to become a Federation, called Federasyon Tet Kole pou Devlopman Gan Bad (the Federation of Putting Heads Together for the Development for Gran Bad). Their vision is to have the road continue 18 kilometers to reach St Raphael, and their broader vision is for a sustainable, self-reliant community.

This community can teach others how to truly mobilize using the traditional forms of konbit and oganizasyon peyisan to accomplish community priorities. They have experience in strategies for building community roads, and how to avoid the erosion of roads in the mountains. There is also a lot of knowledge in the community on reforestation, and specifically coffee and cocoa cultivation.