St Louis Canal

In October of 2016, Hurricane Matthew hit Haiti with a Category 4 punch, with sustained winds of 119 km/h.  The Commune of St. Louis de Sud was devastated.  Seeing the damage that was sustained in the Commune, Magistrar Edwin Ceide vowed to protect the people and property of the community.  

Gathering a group of professionals, they designed a Canal to skirt around the largest portion of the community, serving a population of approximately 30,000 of the communes 62,000 residents.  

The St. Louis canal is over 1.4 km in length, moving storm water from the uplands down to the waters of the Caribbean.  While the government of Haiti had committed some funds for the construction of the Canal, the devaluation of the gourde and instability in the country have left the Canal underfunded - and now unfunded and uncompleted - with a short fall of $30,000 USD needed for completion.  

Approximately 800 m of the Canal have been completed.  Without funds to pay for an excavator, the people dug a portion of the canal by hand; but there are no finances available to pay for the cement to make concrete and build the walls.  

Construction in Haiti is nothing like construction in the US or Canada!  The rocks are broken with a chisel and hammer, laid by hand, and cement added one trowel or shovel at a time. The cement is made with local sand sifted through a screen, mixed with cement and water carried from a village well.

The village is coming together to build the canal, to protect the village from the storm water that flows through the village during each rain.

Many hands make light work, but it takes more than hands to build a canal. Someone has to buy these bags of cement, and the workers need to be fed and paid for their hard work.

Hurricane season 2020 is here.  The storms of July (including Isaias) missed Haiti, but the impending storm season will pound the village of St. Louis de Sud.  With the Canal uncompleted, the most vulnerable population - those closest to the sea - will face flash floods and damage from the upcoming storm season.   Flooding and maleria from standing water will devastate the residents of the La Saline portion of St. Louis, if the Canal is not completed!  

Please help us to finish the St. Louis Canal, and to protect this valuable and vulnerable community.