By Nikki Stolberg, Founder/Exucutive Director
A few days ago we sent a newsletter out to a select group of people explaining a threat we had against New Roots. For safety reasons, we didn’t share the intimate details on social media.
When you work cross culturally, it is inevitable that you will be faced with differing cultural views that drastically affect the way you operate. Some times these differences can cause big problems and hurt feelings. We are constantly faced with one such difference, and it aggravates Nick and I as well as our community at large. I’m not sure there will ever be anyway to overcome this difference no matter how much we try or how big New Roots becomes. Let me explain more.
New Roots mission statement is to help end generational poverty in the village of Chiron through education, nutritional assistance, and job creation. Simply put, we are trying to attack poverty from every angle (financial, mental, spiritual, academic, etc) to try and raise one small community out of poverty. This would be a lot easier if the causes and solution of poverty was as simple as finances. However 12 years on the mission field in Haiti has taught us that it’s far more complicated than that. So much of poverty is actually the emotional and mental side of things.
Since starting New Roots back in 2016, we have created 50 jobs in our village. Whenever we have building projects we are able to bring on quite a few day laborers for weeks or months at a time, growing our impact even more. We also help cultivate the land and buy corn from more than 100 local farmers, which again, adds to the local economy. As a result, all these individuals now have the ability to take care of their families, to build or repair their homes, send their kids to better schools, provide nutritious meals, pay for hospital bills, etc.
In addition, many of our employees have started their own business. Many have bought motorcycles that they have turned into taxis. They hire their brother, cousin, or neighbor to operate them, providing said person with a job. Others have started up commerce businesses, selling goods or food on the side of the road. They often pay others to run these businesses for them while they work at New Roots, creating yet more jobs. When our employees repair or build their homes, they hire local masons and day labors to do the work. In addition, many of our employees support their extended families and community financially. They pay for their nieces and nephews school fees, cover hospital bills for neighbors, etc.
From an American perspective, I see so much trickle down happening in the local economy. Although our 50 employees are a small fraction of the 300 or so adults living in our village, we see the programs benefiting everyone. Driving through the village, we see so much physical change that has occurred in just six short years. In addition to jobs, we’ve created some pretty amazing programs for the youth, if I must say so myself.
Based on this, all of Chiron must love us right? Everyone must be so thankful for the work we have put into bettering their lives? We must live in complete harmony with our community. Surely everyone in Chiron can see that even if they aren’t directly employed by New Roots, they are still benefiting. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Many people in the village have thoughts and opinions that are highly shaped by their own cultural views.
In Haiti, its completely acceptable to take someone who is lower than another person and raise them up to the level of the next guy. No one bats an eye if we help someone who is really, truly poor, as long as we only bring them up to the same level as others. However, if we try to raise that person above someone else, then we have a problem on our hands. We hear almost daily about how much we do NOT do. About how many people still do NOT have jobs.
The problem is that our 50 employees, although investing a lot of their own time, energy, and money into bettering the community, are slowly rising above others. This causes tensions among them and a lot of jealousy. Culturally, they would prefer us to change out all of our staff every few months so that everyone has an equal opportunity to work. This would raise everyone up to the same level at the same time. We make a conscious effort to do this as much as we can with our day laborers and some of our butcher shop positions. Nick and I are 100% hands off in choosing employees for these positions. We let our leadership pick who will work. They rotate through people in the village as often as they can to give everyone their share of development.
However, as Americans, we realize this just isn’t possible for every position. We can’t just take anyone off the street who has never worked before or touched a computer and have them do accounting. We can’t take someone who has never driven even a Moto and expect them to drive a tractor. There are so many factors that go into raising chickens, and we’ve been working on teaching animal husbandry to our staff for years. There is so much math and research that goes into making a batch of chicken feed and skills that go into butchering chickens to our standards. We clearly can not just rotate out the positions every few months to an uneducated, illiterate population. Our organization would be a flop in no time at all if we did so. We have spent YEARS pouring into our staff, training them, and teaching them how to operate New Roots. It’s because of this dedication that our family can be gone for a few months and things can still operate in our absence.
With tensions high throughout Haiti right now, and cost of living skyrocketing, people all across the nation are taking to the streets. They are blocking roads and demanding money for people to pass. Typically these things happen in major cities or heavily trafficked roads. It’s rare for it to come to our village. Yet the past month we’ve seen it from every road leading into Chiron. People have cut down trees and laid them across the roads. They wait for cars or moto’s to come and demand money to pass.
In the past, the biggest fear you had was them throwing rocks or bottles at you if you didn’t pay. Today, everyone and their brothers have guns. Specifically, the local roadblocks are targeting New Roots employees. As our employees explain they are just trying to get to work, and often remind those blocking the way how much they have personally done for the community, they often are told that “New Roots only hires a few people.” According to the blockers, we aren’t actually here for the entire village. They demand that our leadership give them jobs.
For years we’ve had the local trouble makers DEMAND we give them jobs. Once a few years ago they even surrounded our walls and shot bullets into the air when Nick said he would not be forced into paying ghost wages (paying people who don’t work here just so that they will leave us alone). We have tried at times to hire each of these men for legitimate jobs we have available. Many have taken turns working on various projects we have, but have a poor work ethic and say that they don’t like this type of job. Some even run and hide while on the clock anytime a police officer comes by because they know there are many warrants out for their arrest. We have one man who has been demanding we hire him as a security guard for years, yet we and the whole community knows he’s the main person who steals from us, therefore there’s no way we would ever hire him to do security.
In the past week there have been direct threats to New Roots as well.
As you can see this is big hurdle that we try to overcome. We try our best to honor both cultures whenever we can, while also ensuring that we use our donation money wisely. We celebrate each time we are able to create a new job. Each time we find the perfect position to fill it. Each time we see our employees and their families make a step out of poverty.
A few years ago, a friend talked to me about celebrating the “Inch-Stones.” In American culture, we know about striving for and reaching milestones. However, for many, we aren’t capable of calculating a mile at a time. Instead we need to focus on each and every inch achieved. Our goal is to raise an entire village out of generational poverty. Nick and I aren’t under any belief at all that this will happen quickly.
The people who work for us today will never truly be out of poverty. Their kids, having the benefits of their parents working, will move slightly further down the path, their quality of life improved by measurable amounts, but realistically, will still spend most of their lives living in poverty as well. However, it’s our employees grandkids who we hope will see the true benefits of our work and our sacrifice. That third generation, will grow up hopefully so much further ahead than the generations before them. They will have healthy development in utero, be born into a life where they aren’t worried about living through the day, and have opportunities their grandparents never could have dreamed of.
Although these cultural differences are discouraging, and some days we just want to scream “CAN”T YOU JUST BE THANKFUL FOR WHAT WE HAVE DONE?” we know that our efforts are truly making a difference. We know that lives are drastically being changed.
We will celebrate each and every inch-stone and continue to do everything we can to put all of Chiron on a path out of poverty.