When four hurricanes pummeled southern Haiti in August, our friends in the Grande Anse River Valley were hit hard. Elderly Haitians told us that in their whole lives they’d never seen the river that high. When it receded, it took most of the crops with it. This not only means the valley will have less food this Fall, but that farmers have no seed from the harvest to do their next planting (which would normally be in January). It also means they have no crop to sell, which means no money to buy needed household items or to pay for their children to attend school. New Life for Haiti is addressing this emergency through greater support of the schools, but also by starting a new program called Pwa Pou Lavi (Beans for Life). Beans for Life will buy beans in bulk and loan them to the farmers for their January planting. At harvest time, the farmers will pay back the beans with a little “bean interest”, which will increase the size of the bank, so to speak, and hence the number of people we can loan beans to next time around. Our thanks to staff member Joline Moore and to our Haitian friend Velix Plaisir for working out the details for Pwa Pou Lavi!