COPAIMAR, Marmelade

Marmelade is the bamboo hub of Haiti, and has been since an initiative with the Governments of Haiti and Taiwan in 2000. But now the community of Marmelade has taken on a bamboo transformation center (and more) and is sustaining it themselves. 

Marmelade has always had bamboo, coffee, and citrus, but they were almost without any commercial value, which was discouraging farmers from continuing to cultivate these plants which  are valuable for soil conservation  and reforestation. President Rene Preval, being from this community, advocated for an initiative that could help the farmers of Marmelade transform their natural products into commercial goods. He got the help of the Ministry of Agriculture and the Taiwanese government to invest in helping to create an agriculture transformation center in 2000.

 The center was built on 3 principles: organisation (the first step of the initiative was to help all the local agricultural cooperatives organise themselves into associations and networks), production (working with local farmers to encourage them to plant bamboo, citrus, and coffee by providing them the seedlings and the training), and transformation (transforming bamboo into furniture, coffee into an exported good, and citrus into juice). They also have an eco-tourism retreat within the bamboo center. 

The Taiwanese spent 10 years working with the center, but since 2010 the center has been running independently of government and Taiwanese financial support (although from time to time they come with technical support or new bamboo varieities). It is administered entirely by the residents of Marmelade, and the two mayors of Marmelade are incredibly involved in the day to day functioning of the center.