When Haiti makes the news, it is almost always because of a tragedy. For many people, it is the earthquake that struck in 2010. For others, it is the images of armed gangs controlling entire neighbourhoods of Port-au-Prince. More often than not, Haiti appears in the headlines only when something devastating happens.
That is understandable. Over the past fifteen years, the country has endured such a long succession of crises that they can seem almost uninterrupted. And yet Haiti's story did not begin with an earthquake. Nor with a hurricane. Nor with violence.
It began with one of the most extraordinary struggles for freedom in modern history.
At the end of the eighteenth century, the French colony of Saint-Domingue was one of the wealthiest places on Earth, thanks to vast sugar and coffee plantations. That wealth, however, came at an unimaginable human cost: hundreds of thousands of African men and women were enslaved to sustain it.
In 1791, they rose up. After more than a decade of conflict, Haiti declared its independence in 1804, becoming the first republic founded by formerly enslaved people and the first independent nation in Latin America and the Caribbean after the United States. For millions around the world, Haiti became proof that freedom could be won, even when it seemed impossible.
That hope, however, came at an enormous price.
The great powers of the time viewed the new republic with suspicion. France demanded a massive indemnity as the price for recognising Haiti's independence, forcing the country into a debt that took more than a century to repay and drained resources that could have supported its development. Political instability, coups, dictatorships, foreign interventions and fragile institutions further shaped the country's difficult path.
As if history had not already asked enough of Haiti, geography added its own challenges. The country lies in one of the world's most hurricane-prone regions and is highly exposed to earthquakes. Decades of deforestation and soil degradation have made floods and landslides even more destructive. Here, history and nature have often seemed to work against one another.
On 12 January 2010, the world's attention turned once again to Haiti.
A magnitude 7.0 earthquake devastated the country, claiming more than 200,000 lives and destroying homes, schools, hospitals, roads and public buildings. Millions of people were affected by one of the most severe humanitarian disasters the Caribbean had experienced in decades. Just months later, a cholera outbreak deepened the crisis, causing thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of infections.
It seemed impossible that things could get worse.
Yet they did.
In 2016, Hurricane Matthew devastated southern Haiti, wiping out crops, homes and infrastructure. In 2021, another major earthquake struck the country's southwest, followed only days later by Tropical Storm Grace, which made rescue efforts even more difficult. That same year, the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse triggered a profound political crisis, while armed gangs steadily expanded their control over large parts of the capital and other urban areas.
Today, Haiti faces one of the most severe humanitarian crises in the Western Hemisphere. Millions of people struggle with food insecurity, hundreds of thousands have been displaced, and access to essential services remains limited for much of the population. International organisations continue to describe a country marked by political instability and violence that affects urban communities in particular.
This is the Haiti that reaches our screens. But it is not the whole story.
Because Haiti is not only Port-au-Prince. And its countryside bears little resemblance to the images most of us see on the evening news.
Far from the areas most affected by violence, thousands of farming families continue doing what they have always done: cultivating the land. Every season they prepare their fields, sow, harvest and work to provide food and income for their communities. It is quiet, patient work that rarely attracts international attention, yet it remains one of the country's greatest strengths.
This is where Treedom's story in Haiti begins.
We started working in the country in 2012, while reconstruction after the earthquake was still underway. Since then, Haiti's challenges have often become even greater, yet our work alongside local farming communities has continued.
These may seem like small actions when compared to the scale of Haiti's challenges. But Haiti's history teaches another lesson as well: lasting change has never begun with a single grand gesture. It has always begun with countless people refusing to give up. Perhaps that is the best way to understand Haiti today.
Not as a country without hope, but as a country where hope remains something people choose to cultivate, season after season. Much like a tree.