Since 2007 the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) joined efforts with the Batey Relief Alliance (BRA) to distribute tons of the Breedlove dehydrated lentil blend food product to thousands of food insecure and earthquake-affected people living in Haiti’s Southeast Department border communes of Anse-a-Pitres, Thiotte, Belle Anse and Grand Gosier and the Dominican Republic’s sugarcane “batey” communities and urban and rural barrios. Click HERE to view video.

BRA’s regional intervention, for which USAID has funded and provided technical assistance, through the generous support of the American people, benefit those in critical nutritional need, including households caring for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHAs) and orphans/vulnerable children (OVCs) impacted by HIV/AIDS, earthquake-related internally displaced people (IDPs), pregnant/lactating mothers and children, and the elderly.

More than 15 local USAID and BRA partners, including the Dominican Ministry of Public Health (SESPAS), Haiti Ministry of Health, and Clinton Foundation’s HIV/AIDS Initiative and dozens of community health promoters are part of the distribution campaign to educate targeted communities about health crisis and nutritional deficiency prevention techniques.

The Food Security program complements two other important BRA initiatives: providing temporary food assistance to more than 7,000 farm workers and their families involved in a new USDA-funded agricultural/cooperative development; and providing food supplements to 62,000 children receiving multivitamins and anti-parasitic medicines and to PLWHAs receiving antiretroviral (ARV) treatment and potent medicines to fight opportunistic infections.

Prior to the January 2010 devastating earthquake in Haiti, the UN World Food Program classified the country as a low income food deficit country with an estimated 2.4 million food insecure residents. Haiti relies heavily on imported food (48 percent), with international food assistance comprising five percent of the national food supply. 24 percent of the population is chronically undernourished. Meanwhile more than two million (27%) of the Dominican’s 8.9 million inhabitants are undernourished. Dominican authorities recently estimated that approximately 65,000 children under the age of five (8% of the population) suffer from chronic malnutrition. These children and the most difficult living conditions can be found inside the bateyes and in border regions along neighboring Haiti.

For more information about this program, please contact BRA at bra@bateyrelief.org, or USAID’s Cognizant Technical Officer, Ben Vogler at bvogler@usaid.gov or 202.712.1809. You may also visit BRA’s website at www.bateyrelief.org or USAID’s at www.usaid.gov.