Trusting in a Community's Talent

Levo’s Haiti Leadership, Gil Augustin and Dunerose Bienamie

I get up and start every day with a single-minded mission… to end hunger.

I recognize the audacity of that objective, and I know the hubris that it implies.

I am not the first privileged white man who thought that they had the answer to the world’s problem.  And I admit that when I was a teenager and starting an organization to accomplish that mission, I was due fair criticism for my noblesse oblige.  I was going to do it, because I thought it was going to have to be me who did it.

Barely had I launched this effort when I realized a critical flaw in my mindset and by the time Levo International was formally incorporated, one of the hardwired values in the corporate DNA was that it wasn’t going to me, but we who did it.  More explicitly, Levo was founded on the idea that communities should lead community development.  Of course, we at Levo did not invent this idea, but I have witnessed that the actual practice of community led change is still very rare.  Americans of privilege struggle to separate poverty from capabilities, but without the trust that this practice requires, development efforts can do as much harm as good.

Levo recognizes the ability of every human to solve problems.  We trust that this is true, and we act as if it is true, and we prove that it is true.  Levo’s Haiti operation is a wonderful example of this truth.  Without the partnership of an organization familiar with the community, Levo’s work would not have gotten off the ground, and without our trust in local community members, it wouldn’t have continued to grow.  Dunerose Bienamie, a local resident of the village of Sylvain, received basic instruction in the operation of hydroponic growing systems in early 2018.  Ever since she has carried the Levo operation on her back.  She has done everything from basic operations, to community outreach, to training of university students, establishing a pricing strategy and recruiting and training new team members.  She has made simplified hydroponics (an idea we were repeatedly told wouldn’t work in Haiti) a reality in the Central Plateau.  In 2020, Levo hired Gil Augustin, a local agronomy student, to be our Program Coordinator.  Over the past year and a half, Gil has worked hand in glove with Dunerose and trained a team of men on the construction and installation of Levo’s hydroponics.  Gil handles all the management of the team locally.

Because of this trust in local community talent, Levo was able to expand its programming in the middle of a pandemic and has begun a Haitian led recovery and development program in the area of that country recently affected by back-to-back magnitude 7.2 earthquake and hurricane.  Our U.S. team provides technical expertise and logistics and capacity support, but it will be locally designed and delivered solutions that bring permanent food security and economic growth to 25,000 people over the next year or two.

This trust-based model means that Levo’s impact per dollar is significant.  It also means that our global growth is sustainable.  I work all day, every day for global food security, and when I end each day, I am heartened, knowing that we will do it.

Christian Heiden, Founder, Director of Innovation