Français    |    Contact

The Pilate Community

Hospital of Hope serves the Pilate community which lives in an area extending from the valley region up into the neighboring mountains. The community is located 50 miles (75 kilometers) from Cap-Haïtien and 16 kilometers from the national highway. This area is traversed via a trail which crosses 7 shallow rivers without the benefit of even a single bridge. The trail is accessible to trucks and 4-wheel drive vehicles except in the rainy season.

Most of this community of 65,000 people live in the mountains. They inhabit a 100 km² territory which is divided into 8 rural sectors. All sectors are inhabited by peasants, toiling on small lots, trying to achieve subsistence level agriculture. The coffee, which is grown rather abundantly in the mountains, is however a most important crop.

Until the late 1960's, peasants sold their coffee crop to a single intermediate buyer who, in turn, sold it to multinational food companies. In 1970 Father Byas founded the Community Development Movement of Pilate (MODECOP). That movement was the beginning of a new local economic development which gave birth to credit unions, a small consumers' cooperative and a coffee growers' cooperative which marketed its own brand of coffee.