We started with a few Minnesota friends who had been to Haiti. Volunteering with other organizations and participating in minor one-time projects they noticed these relief projects didn’t address larger issues or seem to foster sustainable change. They met together after their travels, to discuss working towards supporting long-term impact, work that would help Haiti become a truly developed country. The small team got connected with Neil Van Dine, a water engineer who had moved to Haiti in 1989 in his 20s and has never left, committing to Haitian-led solutions that will result in development and infrastructure growth.

Prior to meeting the Minnesota group, Neil had worked with private investors in Haiti, drilling wells and bringing clean water to thousands of people on the Central Plateau of Haiti. But Neil saw that just drilling wells was not enough. Although many more people had clean water, they were not very involved in the creation of the wells and took little ownership and responsibility for their repair and maintenance. He saw almost 50% of the wells were either broken or contaminated after 2 years of installation. Haitians waited for NGOs to come fix them as they went back to getting water from streams and rivers, that were often contaminated as well. If this was going to change, then there needed to be new ways of working with the people to bring social change. From this experience, Neil vowed to create clean water systems where the people in Haiti would become responsible for their repair and maintenance, not making them dependent on foreign aid.

The Minnesota group saw Neil’s vision as just what they were looking for. Haiti Outreach was formed as a 501(c)3 in May 1997 with the following guiding principles:

• Our Vision is for Haiti to become a developed country, with sufficient clean water, food, shelter, sanitation, medical care, and educational and economic opportunity for everyone.

• Our mission is to collaborate with the people of Haiti to build and maintain community-initiated projects that advance their development.

Shortly after its inception, Haiti Outreach hired its second employee, Roge Michel, Director of Community Development. Roge and the Haitian team developed a revolutionary four-point model of community development that included community desire and participation, community responsibility, and a transparent economically based maintenance program. For Haiti to become a developed country, projects needed to be more than just temporary relief, supported from outside the country. Programs needed to be community-led and developed so that the people themselves would become responsible for their own sustainability.

Since our start, we have created clean water wells and water systems for over 275,000 people! More recently, we have helped with more complex town water systems and have created the first pressurized system in Haiti that operates 24/7! Funds collected from newly installed meters based on usage are collected monthly for transparent system management and maintenance.

Haiti Outreach has spread this work to various parts of the country, and incorporated local and national government officials, as well as the national potable water and sanitation agency DINEPA. They have also shared their model with other NGOs in Haiti, and with the Rotary based HANWASH non-profit organization in particular, which has partnered with Haiti Outreach on several on-going community managed clean water and sanitation programs.