With violent gangs on the streets and an unstable government, Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry resigned on April 25, and a transition council took power. The country’s transitional council appointed former Sports Minister Fritz Belizaire as the new prime minister on April 30. The transitional government cannot be renewed after February 2026, when national elections are planned.
“We are excited to see the formation of a new government,“ missionary Nick Stolberg told The Epoch Times. ”Each time a new leader has taken power during our time in Haiti, it has brought in a renewed sense of national pride and hope for a better tomorrow. We will pray that this team learns to work together, compromise, and put the country first.”
Mr. Stolberg is the founder and CEO of New Roots in Haiti and lives near Cap-Haitien, Haiti, with his wife, Nikki, and their four children.
“I’ve been on the list with the Department of State for the past month, and they’ve given me plenty of options to leave,” he said. But conditions are not as bad in his region, and they want to stay and continue the work of New Roots, which focuses on economic development.
They moved to Haiti in 2010. While many missionaries serve for one week or one year, the Stolbergs believe that they can best serve by calling Haiti home. They have gained much insight into the country over the past 14 years.
Mr. Henry was not elected or appointed by Haitians, and that never sat well with the people, according to Mr. Stolberg.
“He had an opportunity to lead, but in his tenure, we never saw him lead anything. The government had been run into the ground, and he was essentially an illegitimate dictator,” Mr. Stolberg said. “In many senses, the Haitian people should be commended for organizing a popular uprising and bringing in a new government.”
He called the announcement of a new, Haitian-appointed transitional government a huge win for the country, specifically because it has an end date. Mr. Henry’s leadership never had an end date. This next leadership will have a limited term, and that encourages the entire country to work together to form a new round of elections, he said.
What Haiti Needs
Economic development is what will change Haiti, Mr. Stolberg said. When missionaries go to Haiti, they typically build churches, schools, and medical clinics.“If you go to church in Haiti, people are praying for jobs,” he said. “They’re not praying to build another church down the road. There are lots of churches. There are lots of schools. We don’t need any more schools.”
Most schools charge tuition, making classes out of reach for many kids. But some people are willing to sponsor a child and pay for his or her tuition.
“If you want to sponsor a kid to go to school—great. At 18, they’re going to be unemployed like everybody else,” Mr. Stolberg said.
“We need to invest in roads, power, schools, basic infrastructure that will allow economic development in ways that were never before possible. This was the vision of late President Jovenel Moise and is one of the elements that New Roots Haiti works for every day.”
Mr. Moise was assassinated in his home in 2021. Mr. Henry took his place. Haiti has a long history of unstable governments, plus numerous strikes by hurricanes and major earthquakes.
Today, 50 percent of all food in Haiti (including 80 percent of its rice) is imported; two out of three Haitians live on less than $2 per day, and 70 percent of the population is unemployed, according to New Roots.
Diane and Gary Heavin of Texas, who founded the Curves fitness franchise, have been sending nearly 1 million pounds of food per year to Haiti since the 2016 hurricane.
“Unfortunately, this has been a challenge the past couple of years with all the gang violence and uproar in the country,” Ms. Heavin told The Epoch Times in an email. “Many of our shipments were stolen in transport in Haiti.”
They have also used their private aircraft to support New Roots in various ways.
In 2016, New Roots started an educational farm. It employs people, creates markets for local products, and teaches local farmers a holistic way to farm. The farm’s main focus is pasture-raised chickens. It also raises pigs, cows, corn, and soybeans.
“They are heroes in my book,” Ms. Heavin said of the Stolberg family.
The entire life cycle of a chicken is a potential job creator. New Roots buys chicken feed now produced by neighbors’ farms, and it pays workers to process chickens into a boneless, skinless, frozen chicken breasts, among other things.
New Roots is building an economy locally, using local raw materials. It now employs more than 50 people. Hundreds of farmers in the area benefit from the organization’s economic activities.
New Roots has two tractors used to help local farmers with cultivation. Without access to this equipment, farmers were previously cultivating their land by hand. The use of tractors has increased production on these farms.
The chicken feed used to be purchased from the Dominican Republic. The main component of chicken feed is corn, which local farmers know how to grow, but in Haiti, there was no market for it until New Roots opened a feed mill and started buying corn from local farmers.
It also has a delivery service. New Roots supplies private customers, restaurants, hotels, orphanages, and schools with chicken, delivered five days per week.
Changing Haiti
Last year, President Joe Biden introduced the “Processes for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans” program, allowing people from these countries to enter the United States for two years. About 154,000 have left Haiti to live in the United States, and that is a problem for Haiti, Mr. Stolberg said. The program is killing Haiti’s middle class.“Haiti’s best, most educated workforce—people who run businesses, doctors, police officers, bankers; people who can be successful in the U.S.—are leaving. Hundreds of Haitians are boarding planes,” Mr. Stolberg said.
“The State Department is saying we need to help Haiti by reinforcing their police department. That’s the worldwide stance on how the world is going to help Haiti. At the same time, they built this program that has allowed thousands of police officers to leave the country and come to the U.S.”
Families are sending their best, most educated to the United States, he said, because they have the best chance of succeeding stateside and sending money back into Haiti.
While he doesn’t want to minimize the opportunity for Haitians, he sees trouble ahead.
“Years from now, I truly believe that we will look at this expedited brain drain of Haiti and the absolute disaster that it has left for Haiti,” Mr. Stolberg said.
Another thing that has changed the culture in Haiti is access to cellphones. When Mr. Stolberg moved there in 2010, few people had cellphones or internet access. Now, most people have a phone and access to the internet. They watch TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, and for the first time, they can compare their country’s condition to that of others.
“In the past five years, Haitians have realized more of what they don’t have than they ever have in the past. They were in the dark before. Now, they know,” he said.
There are many good people in Haiti who just want to thrive, according to Mr. Stolberg.
“Even during the worst of situations, there is always hope, there is always goodness, and sometimes, we need a little reminder,” Ms. Heavin said.
