Haiti Development Institute

The Haiti Development Institute (HDI) is a legacy of the Haiti Fund, a five-year fund founded at The Boston Foundation following the devastating 2010 earthquake, to provide long-term support to human rights and reconstruction efforts in Haiti. We are a Haitian Independent institution committed to community centered development.

For too long, aid and development have failed Haiti; instead of building local capacity, the foreign capital distributed largely supports donor-driven initiatives. As a result while the nonprofit sector provides tremendous value to rural communities, it is unable to meet the growing poverty gap due to their deteriorating fiscal health, insufficient leadership, piecemeal technical skills, poor collaboration, limited innovation, and unhealthy competition for funding.  This problem is compounded by the fact that, the largest investments in the country are being made without significant local knowledge, advice, and support, which dramatically widens the capacity, information, and collaboration gaps across all sectors. Furthermore the lack of transparency, accountability and regulation of philanthropic activities has led to an overall decrease in international investment dollars in Haiti, due to perceived rise in corruption and misuse of funds. The creation of this institute follows 6 years of interviews, conversations and relationship building with local community-based organizations, international organizations, funders and development experts; all leading to the same conclusion that Haiti needs a mission-driven institution committed to sustained and tailored, development to shore up philanthropic investments and development efforts. 

HDI is built on the belief that an integrated approach to development is necessary to usher in real social change in Haiti. We know that local leaders, civil society organizations, and social entrepreneurs have the potential to bring about transformative changes to benefit local communities and engender systemic change throughout the country. We operate in Haiti by acting as a major investor in non-profits, a philanthropic advisor, convener and civic leader, and an open-sourced warehouse for data and research.