UCOODEPSA, St Michel

St Michel is known as the klerin capital of Haiti, but it is also a place rich in mangos. UCOODEPSA has embarked on an initiative to transform mangos (and other local fruits) to provide sustainable livelihoods and protect the environment.

St Michel has always been an agricultural area, but because of problems with the roads, it has always been dificult to transport products to market. Also, there were many mango trees that were not of commercial value, and many farmers were cutting down mango and other trees for charcoal because they saw no other value in them. UCOODEPSA began in 2004, when a group of farmers frustrated by the lack of productivity and profitability of their efforts decided they would have better luck pooling their resources and acting together as a cooperative.

 After receiving training from a national organisation called PRODEVA on grafting fruit transformation, UCOODEPSA began offering grafts of valuable trees to their members. They began transforming fruits with basic methods until they partnered with Oxfam to establish a more modern transformation center, which now allows them to purchase fruits from local farmers at a large scale. They transform mangos into dried mangos, liqueur, wine, juice, and other products; they have other offshoot organisations transforming tamarind and citrus. 

The operational costs of the center are all financed by the profit the cooperative makes off of the products. It has a few dozen employees during the mango season, the vast majority of them women.