“I was about nine or ten years old when CRWRC came to my hometown of Pignon,” said 42 year-old Christian Jean-Pierre. The Haitian man now lives in the Leogane area of Haiti, where his path crossed with CRWRC’s earthquake response team in 2011. As he talked with CRWRC staff, his love for CRWRC and the impact that the organization had on his life was easily apparent.
“I am from a blended family of 18 children,” he began. “My own mother had 10 children: five boys and five girls. I also had eight half siblings. My family was poor and their livelihood depended on agriculture.”
In fact, Jean-Pierre’s family resembled many others in the remote, rural community of Pignon. They made their living on a small plot of land and while they worked hard, they still struggled to meet all their needs. CRWRC began working in Haiti in 1975 and came to Pignon soon after.
Christian Jean-Pierre, Haiti
Goat program
Poultry project
Fish ponds
“I was about nine or ten years old when CRWRC came to my hometown of Pignon,” said 42 year-old Christian Jean-Pierre. The Haitian man now lives in the Leogane area of Haiti, where his path crossed with CRWRC’s earthquake response team in 2011. As he talked with CRWRC staff, his love for CRWRC and the impact that the organization had on his life was easily apparent.
“I am from a blended family of 18 children,” he began. “My own mother had 10 children: five boys and five girls. I also had eight half siblings. My family was poor and their livelihood depended on agriculture.”
In fact, Jean-Pierre’s family resembled many others in the remote, rural community of Pignon. They made their living on a small plot of land and while they worked hard, they still struggled to meet all their needs. CRWRC began working in Haiti in 1975 and came to Pignon soon after.
“Many things about CRWRC impressed me during my childhood,” said Jean-Pierre, who remembers being awestruck by the CRWRC staff members’ motorcycles. “CRWRC was the only international organization that came to work in Pignon. The work there was difficult, and there were virtually no roads, yet CRWRC was there.”
The first CRWRC programs in Pignon involved an emphasis on community health including vaccinations and child growth monitoring. There was also an emphasis on agriculture.
“The agriculture leaders from each community were called ‘animateurs.’ They would come to a central conference at the Missionary Church grounds, where there were also good fields for doing demonstrations,” said Mary Both, who worked for CRWRC with her husband, Dick, in Haiti. “There they would learn new techniques in agriculture and how to teach them to others. Then they would take that knowledge back with them to their communities, where the knowledge was reinforced by working together as a group.”
CRWRC also ran an agricultural store in Pignon, which supplied farmers with tools, seeds, fertilizer and some plows that could be used with oxen.
“CRWRC touched the lives of every family in Pignon, including my own, through its agricultural program,” said Jean-Pierre. “In particular, I recall how CRWRC took into its programs people who barely finished primary school and trained them to become animateurs. These newly trained men and women became my role models and gave me the vision to become what I am today. I saw that if I was educated, I could one day get a job, perhaps with CRWRC, and I could ride one of the shiny motorcycles. I can truly say that CRWRC’s presence in Pignon developed my vision for a better future. I realized how people could have a better life through education and hard work. My own life has changed for the better because of CRWRC.”
Jean-Pierre completed his education in Pignon and then went on to complete high school. As an adult, he had the opportunity to study agronomy in the Dominican Republic.
“I now have advanced knowledge and access to improved technology that I am applying in my practice as an agricultural professional,” he said. “However, my initial background in the field came from what CRWRC trained my father and the animateurs to do in Pignon. I am still building on what I learned from these role models as a child.”
Today, Jean-Pierre works as the Director of the Agricultural Department for the Fish Ministries of Christianville in Leogane. He is responsible for an agricultural program that feeds 8,000 school children and orphans. He also provides leadership and management for 21 fish ponds, a poultry project with close to 2,000 chickens, and a goat program. Similar to the CRWRC staff of his youth, Jean-Pierre also shares his learning with others by training community members about fish farming and poultry-raising.
“It is so thrilling to hear that our work planted seeds in the mind of this man as a child who is now in a leadership position teaching some of the same things,” said Both.
“CRWRC was a compass for my life,” Jean-Pierre concluded. “The name CRWRC still rings in my ears and it is truly an extraordinary organization!”