Organizational Strengthening

Every rural community is different. Each has its own resources, its own challenges, and its own vision. The Model Community Initiative, while giving structure to process and outcomes, is flexible enough to allow each community to develop individually. Some communities’ first priorities are agricultural; they want to harvest more from their gardens. In these communities Limyè Lavi’s agricultural technicians hold peasant trainings to teach skills that improve the soil and decrease erosion, start plant nurseries, or teach how to make germination beds. There are other communities whose highest priorities are schools and education. They benefit from Limyè Lavi’s educators who organize teacher trainings, and implant strategies to increase parental participation and student motivation. Still other communities want to create collective enterprises, so Limyè Lavi helps them increase local production and earn more money through collective business strategies. Limyè Lavi isn’t partial to one idea over another, recognizing that each solution must arise from the people themselves.

Exchange visits between communities involved in the Model Community Initiative are a dynamic way for each community to share their progress and process with each other. These exchanges are a sp
ace for community members to explain what they are doing, the results they are getting, the difficulties they encounter. They are opportunities for communities to learn from and support each other, increasing the solidarity within each community and between communities participating in the Model Community Initiative. Through these approaches, each community develops individually, all the while achieving the same outcome of strengthening communities and thereby attaining the ultimate goal of countering the reasons people send their children into the restavèk system.