APADD, Demontreuil

In Demontreuil, a farmer's organization called APADD is working to give farmers access to training, seeds, tools, and micro-credit, while investing what they can earn back in their community.

Demontreuil is a community in the commune of Jacmel, with 600 people who call it home. It is a largely agricultural community which cultivates corn, sugarcane, citrus fruits, coconuts, and yucca. In this agricultural community, a farmer's cooperative called APADD (Association for the Development of Demontreuil) was formed in 1997 to help the community become more self-reliant.

APADD works with the farmers to give them training and to give the farmers access to tools and seeds; some of the seeds and seedlings they distribute include tomatoes, apricots, peppers, and plantains. They partnered with local authorities who managed to help the cooperative gain access to a John Deere tractor and corn mill (donated to the authorities by the Canadian Embassy), which the cooperative has been managing for 4 years now. The cooperative works on environmental preservation, road reparation, and other social projects. Every meeting, members contribute 5 gourdes to ensure that the cooperative has funds to keep up its oeprations; APADD also runs a community micro-credit fund for farmers and people running small businesses, and the small profit from this goes to community projects, like paying school for children who can't afford it.