Meet Joane Charles!
Our new part-time Haiti coordinator.
Late last year
Just Haiti reached a major milestone in our development as an organization:
we hired staff in Haiti!
Joane Charles is our new part-time Haiti coordinator.
A licensed and very experienced agronomist, Joane will take responsibility for grower trainings, technical assistance and monitor coffee quality. She will also assist new associations with the registration process and help to coordinate between associations. Finally, she will handle the logistics of organizing Just Haiti-sponsored visits to the growers we work with.
I had the pleasure of working with Joane directly during my visit to Haiti last month. Not only did she do a great job of organizing our visit, she also has a great rapport with the growers as a respected expert in coffee production.
She knows coffee, and the coffee sector in Haiti, and she knows how to communicate that to the producers.
Joane is going to be a huge asset to our organization.
Like any small business, Just Haiti reached a growth point: we needed to expand our staff capacity in order to meet our goals for expanding our work.
Working with more grower associations requires greater oversight and technical assistance, and that
cannot be done by volunteers. The plan is that Joane's salary will be paid out of coffee sales, from the percentage that Just Haiti keeps to cover our own costs.
Unfortunately, our growers do not yet produce enough coffee to cover it. We find ourselves in this situation:
we need staff in order to grow, but we need to grow in order to pay staff. We took the risk and hired Joane first, with a plan to find a way to make up the budget shortfall for a couple of years, until coffee production and sales go up.
We welcome your contributions to help make up the shortfall.
As always, we are grateful for your support!
Kim and the Just Haiti Team
|
