Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere, with 80% of the people living on less than $2 per day. Even before the earthquake, access to clean drinking water, adequate housing and health services was non-existent for most Haitians.

Since 2006, CHF has developed a relationship with the well-respected Haitian micro-finance organization Fonkoze. Fonkoze provides Haiti’s poorest people with the tools they need to lift themselves out of poverty.

After a devastating hurricane in 2008, Fonkoze offered support to some 25,000 Haitians who lost their homes and businesses. Many of these same people have lost everything once more. And once again, Fonkoze will work to ensure that their livelihoods can be re-established.

Once the immediate relief and recovery efforts have been completed, and the cameras are gone, Canada’s CHF and its partner in Haiti, Fonkoze, will be there.

Many of Haiti’s poor will have lost the few assets they owned. In partnership with CHF, Fonkoze will provide them with access to credit and other support, helping the most vulnerable feed their families and re-establish their lives.

To learn more about CHF Fonkoze and access updates on the earthquake’s impact, visit www.fonkoze.org.

To contribute to CHF's Haiti Emergency Fund, click here.

Travel the world and learn about the strength and resilience of the individuals CHF works with — from small farmers growing improved crops to earthquake survivors rebuilding their lives, from grandmothers caring for their AIDS-orphaned grandchildren to women and men raising and selling livestock.

Everyone is welcome! Most events feature refreshments or music, as well as the opportunity to bid on one of our exclusive framed photographs.

Ottawa

Friday, February 5 – Saturday, February 13, 2010

Exhibit launch: Friday, February 5 at Atomic Rooster on 303 Bank Street
Featuring live performances by Vera, Ornaments, and the Face of Jam
Starting at 8:00 pm, featuring silent auction, photo exhibit and a door prize for a chance to win 2 full-day Bluesfest Passes!

Photo exhibit runs Sunday, February 7 – Saturday, February 13
Xpresso Café and Bar at 102-179 George Street

Calgary

Sunday, February 7 – Saturday, February 13, 2010

Exhibit launch: Thursday, February 4 from 5:00 – 9:00pm
Art Central – lower level, 100 – 7^th Ave SW

Photo exhibit runs Sunday, February 7 – Saturday, February 13
Calgary City Hall Atrium at 800 Macleod Trail SE

Vancouver

Exhibit Launch: Monday, March 15 from 6:00 - 11:00pm
Raw Canvas at 1046 Hamilton Street                                                                           Featuring a silent auction and more!

CHF began working with FACT in 2004 in Zimbabwe, one of the countries hardest hit by HIV/AIDS with infection rates as high as 40%. The resulting loss of labour has had a devastating impact on families’ ability to produce food crops, care for livestock and generate income.

To counteract the effects that HIV/AIDS has had on rural communities, CHF and FACT are helping households rebuild sustainable livelihoods. One of the project initiatives is to provide families caring for AIDS orphans with chickens, livestock and guinea fowl, a new source of nutrition and income.

“Working through local organizations makes projects much more successful and much more sustainable,” explains Matt Stenson, Program Officer for Africa. “Local partners such as FACT know the ins-and-outs of Zimbabwe. They know the people, they know the systems — so in that way it’s more effective than it otherwise might be.”

FACT is currently supporting CHF’s Mozambique project through its affiliate organization, Kubatsirana.

For Jenny Mafundo, the answer was two days.

Jenny has HIV/AIDS. And like many others in Zimbabwe living with the disease, she is struggling to stay healthy, grow enough food to feed herself and her two young daughters, and earn an income to buy medicine and pay for school fees.

It is an enormous burden onher slight shoulders — a burden repeated with terrifying regularity across a country in which 25% of the population are living with HIV/AIDS. 

It is, however, a burden that CHF and its local partners in Zimbabwe, the Family Aids Caring Trust (FACT) and Southern Alliance for Indigenous Resources (SAFIRE), are trying to help balance.

Jenny is taking part CHF's project in Zimbabwe, which works with vulnerable households, like Jenny’s, helping them to grow nutritious food to feed their families and find new ways of earning an income.

In March 2008, Jenny was provided chicks, and now has a growing flock of chickens, some of which she intends to sell to buy maize and medication. She has also received two goat kids from her neighbors.

Jenny originally became involved with the project through FACT’s home-based care program for people living with HIV/AIDS. She receives almost no help from the government to treat her disease. She can get antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) for free, but only at the main hospital in Mutare, the only hospital still operating in the area.

She cannot afford transportation and so the trip means a three-hour walk along an unshaded dirt track from her small farm in Dora. She is often too busy or too tired to make the trip.

Twice a week, Jenny receives visits from Tambudzai Zengeni, her home-based care volunteer. Tambudzai brings toiletries and medicine that are supplied free to caregivers. She explains that she will also clean, collect firewood for Jenny or wash her clothes.

“As a volunteer,” she says “I do what I can to make life a little easier for my clients”.

Jenny explains that while she may not be eating sadza every day, she is doing better than many people living with HIV/AIDS in Dora. She has a nutritious diet and gets sick less often, is earning money to buy maize and pay for school fees, and has someone she can count on for physical and emotional support.

But Zimbabwe’s people are amazingly resilient, and a little help can go a long way.

Take Gladys Nyatondo. Gladys lives in a tidy compound, 20 minutes' walk from the nearest track in Chitsanza, at the heart of eastern Zimbabwe’s Bvumba Mountains.

She is a mother of two and the main provider for an extended household that includes several orphaned children and her ageing mother, who says she has never known such hard times in her 74 years.

Gladys is a farmer. On her small plot, she grows an astounding variety of crops — everything from garlic to mangoes. She usually grows enough to feed her family for most of the year.

She also raises goats for milk, and chickens for their eggs and meat, to supplement her family’s diet. By Zimbabwean standards, then, Gladys is doing well.

But that does not mean that she is immune from the effects of Zimbabwe’s socio-economic crisis. Since 2006, Gladys has been taking part in a project supported by CHF and implemented by the Family Aids Caring Trust (FACT), a Zimbabwean organization based in nearby Mutare.

The project helps vulnerable rural households find new livelihoods, enabling them to produce different crops, find new ways of earning money, and ultimately make their households more resilient.

With training and seeds from the project, Gladys now grows onions on part of her plot, because, she explains, onions are hardy and easy to grow and there is a market for them in the nearby town.

The money she earns from the sale of her onions is invested in the farm or goes to household essentials, medical care or school fees for her children. “After every harvest, I make sure I invest in something: school fees, tools, chicks. In this way, I have supported one of my children to finish university.”