Yéle Cuisine

STATUS: launched October 2007 / ongoing

Establishing women’s associations to cook and sell food to the public in order to subsidize meals for children in Cité Soleil, Bel Air and other slums.

NEED: Chronic malnutrition is widespread and affects 42 percent of children under five, killing 28 percent of this same age range according to the United Nations World Food Programme The net result is that every single hour a Haitian child dies before reaching the age of five, simply because he or she does not have enough to eat

Two-thirds of those capable of working in Haiti have no formal job. With 80 percent of the population living below the poverty line, even those lucky enough to have some sort of small job are not making a livable wage. The lack of jobs hits Haiti’s women the hardest by preventing them from generating an income so they are unable to feed and support their families.

RESPONSE: In response to both the lack of jobs and the lack of food for children, Yéle Haiti, the Government of Canada, the United NationsWorld Food Program, the Haitian Ministry of Education and the Bureau de Nutrition et de Développement (BND) join hands to launch sustainable development food service ownership businesses throughout post conflict regions in Port-au-Prince and its surroundings. This job creation program involving community associations is called Yéle Cuisine.

Yéle Cuisine sells food at market rates and provides food to local children in schools, orphanages and hospitals. There are two test Yéle Cuisines that are open in Belair and Cité Soleil – two of the leading post conflict zones in the capital of Port-au-Prince.

The program is preparing to open a total of 10 Cuisines employing associations of fifteen women each totaling 150 women who will be trained and become women entrepreneurs preparing approximately 5,000 plates a day throughout the ten kitchens. About 1,000 of those meals will be donated to children and 250 plates will be used for marketing purposes and exchange of services (for example, providing security). Additionally, each woman will be entitled to one plate per day for themselves. The objective of the Yéle Cuisine project is to create jobs for women, provide them with a sustainable income to support their families, and offer a service to the community.

Partners:

Centre de Gestion des fonds locaux de la cooperation canadienne en Haiti Interamerican Development Bank (IDB)

United Nations World Food Programme (WFP)

Sponsor:

Photo: Wyclef Jean and Petra Nemcova, founder of the Happy Hearts Fund, visit the Yéle Cuisine in Cite Soleil in November, 2007