FUTURE TILAPIA FACILITY
In my next several blogs I would like to give a brief outline outline of the vision that is starting to unfold for us in the Project Help-Haiti Partnership. It has always been my belief that it is often the small to medium size organizations that get the majority of the work done on the mission field. That isn't to say that the big boys don't add a significant contribution to what gets done, I have great admiration for the efforts of Samaritan's Purse and World Vision's efforts here in Haiti. Yet it is organizations like ours who have established through a long view approach to planning and transformation a grass roots base of support. This has allowed us to acquire local and national acceptance and respect as part of the communities where our multi-site operations are located. It is this long term commitment and longevity (1967) as a government recognized mission organization that has allowed us to be just as successful maybe even more so than the big operations who move on to the next disaster and media hot spot so quickly.
Another reason we can hope for success here at PH-H is that we have recognized the need for building partnerships inside and outside the country. This is allowing us to go outside our traditional Church of God denomination to build our funding, our manpower and our expertise needs. This has been so evident as we receive inquiries from organizations, denominations and individuals who want to partner with us in our efforts here in Haiti. Several of these inquiries have now moved on to developing partnerships like that with the Original Free Will Baptist denomination , Harvest Connection and Mt. Olive College.
It is hoped that by as soon as August we will be starting Phase 1 of our agricultural project with these partners. The plan for 2010 is to develop a Tilapia farming enterprise by building a series of 4 x 12 foot concrete tanks in the unused 45 x 120 foot former poultry barn. Some very new technology that is having great success in Asia will be applied in this operation. One of these is the application of what is called the NANO BUBBLE aeration system. This new technology also has great potential in water purification and keeping our food sources safe. The fish we would raise through this new technology would grow quicker (to the market in less time) and have less mortality than the present methods. Our fish would be available for sale from our farm to entrepreneurs at wholesale so they can market them as fresh fish in the local markets and to processors who would sell them as frozen fish in grocery stores.
The nutrient rich waters from our tanks would be used as a source of fertilizer in our demonstration test plots, our gardens and our shade houses where we start vegetable seedlings and nursery stock. We also have proposed the construction of a hydroponic greenhouse where vegetables will be grown without soil in nutrient enriched water.
This is the vision we have for agricultural projects that we hope to start implementing yet this year. In the next blog I will outline the plans we have for implementing in Jan. 2011. This is a massive project and certainly one that PH-H could have never attempted without partners . In late June we will be gathering at a summit at Mt. Olive College in N. Carolina to present our vision at an open forum in hopes to take this from the visionary / planning stage to reality.
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