Who is Turtle Tree?

Turtle Tree is a charitable, non-profit foundation registered in the Netherlands. The foundation was created in March, 2007 to initiate and support economic projects in impoverished, rural communities. For now, 2009 and 2010, we are focusing on three projects in different regions in Haiti.
Our goal is to create income-generating economic activities in partnership with the groups we work with. We offer no hand-outs. The partnership has to work towards real economic sustainability; meaning, at one point the sales of the produced goods have to cover the costs of producing and selling these. But we will donate our time and our funds to jumpstart the process that leads to real economic sustainable growth.
This approach will hopefully result in a new model of small-scale economic development. Turtle Tree’s board, with its background in media, documentary filmmaking and journalism, is interested in documenting and reporting the results. What we do right – and what went wrong — will be made public. We invite you to read up, once in a while, on our News!

What do we do?

We work with groups of poor, unemployed people in rural areas, regardless of how they are organized and what their abilities are. We develop with them the best suitable product that can be handmade by them, that can be exported by us and that will have added value because of the design, the eco-friendliness and the functionality of the product.

In the projects we have become involved in, we have started with an analysis of the possibilities for the group or community that has asked us for help. Are there any local artisans who could take the lead and become the teachers of the craft needed to make the product? Are there locally grown materials we can use? Last but not least, is there a local reliable organization we can partner with in starting production here?

The second step: to come up with a product that could be exported and that makes optimal use of the existing natural and human resources in the coomunity. Then, of course, there is design, making prototypes, doing market research and many other preparations.

The third step is to provide training to the group in making the product.

The fourth step is to market the product and to generate a positive cash flow for the new enterprise. At the same time we will start planning a curriculum with the group of makers and artisans that will assist them in becoming an independent, worker-owned, registered co-operative.

All this is easier said than done. Wat we have seen happening in reality is a development that is rocky and conflictual for all parties involved. It is Turtle Tree’s belief that determination and consistency on our part – staying power — is what will finally overcome the constraints of tradition and win over hostile elements in a community.

Why this approach?

Often, the question comes up why we are not focusing on improving agricultural output, since the population in these rural areas are almost all subsistence farmers. Haiti’s agricultural production has steadily declined over the last two decades, for several reasons that are beyond the scope of this introduction. But, with all the development aid that is given to boost agriculture in developing nations — while the West continues at the same time to subsidize their own farming corporations, making it difficult for developing agricultures to compete — it is impossible for any subsistence farmer in Haiti to pay for school for his children or obtain a minimum of healthcare for his family by merely cultivating more crops. And in every developing country we see the same phenomenon: an increase in the supply of crops leads to diminishing returns. In other words, the more crops a farmer is able to grow, the less money he receives per unit. So the question facing every NGO that sets out to improve the economics of an impoverished area is: what kind of economic activities could provide an income for rural communities, including the subsistence farmers.

What is needed are economic activities – outside the urban centers — that add value, generate income and create a home market for the farmers. Artisinal productivity may never be the final answer but could result in products that can be exported. And if we want to generate employment of any scale, we should be prepared to design products that can be sold to Western customers. For example, our projects in Labrousse and Vallee de Jacmel – in collaboration with the Industrial Design department of the Technical University Delft in the Netherlands – brings design to the existing weaving techniques in order to produce products for the baby market.

In our approach to our first project in Haiti, Fanm Veret, the Women of Verrettes, we envisioned revitalizing the culture of cotton will provide the farmers with a cash crop, it will generate jobs for young and elder people in cleaning and processing the cotton and, finally, it will give the women’s group a local material to work with and this will allow them to make competitively priced textile products. (see also our concept paper). But in order to jumpstart production, we organized workshops with the women learning them to felt with wool and have started marketing the McSock, a handfelted sleeve for MacBooks and iPhones. Although the verdict is still out if importing wool can bring sustainable development, it has allowed the Women of Verrettes to start production at a much faster speed than if they had waited for the much longer cycle of growing and processing cotton.

For more information about this and other projects that are based on this approach, please visit our Projects.