Our Story

Beginnings

Roots of Development was founded in 2007. Roots’ original mission was to assist communities in the area of Gran Sous, the third communal section on the island of La Gonave, Haiti, as they developed and carried out projects to improve their lives. Soon after Roots’ founding, APDAG, The Peasant Association for the Development and Advancement of Gran Sous, was founded and became Roots’ first local partner.

During this period, our American employees worked directly with our Haitian employees and local communities, helping to shape projects and guide implementation while building communities’ long-term capacity. All of the projects supported by Roots were guided by our philosophies of Development without Dependency, community-led development, and sustainability of impact–but because foreigners were directly involved in their development and implementation, they weren’t as effective as they could’ve been. 

By 2013, we had reached more than 17,000 island residents through these efforts. However, we realized that, to strengthen and make our work even more community-led, the organization needed to be fully Haitian: registered in Haiti and staffed entirely by Haitians.

Rasin Devlopman 

Rasin Devlopman was founded in 2017. Rasin Devlopman (Roots of Development in Haitian Creole) is a Haitian registered, Haitian staffed organization based on the island of La Gonave. Its mission is to improve quality of life on La Gonave by strengthening the capacity of community leaders and locally elected officials on the island and supporting community-led development initiatives.

Over the course of the next several years, Roots passed the day-to-day management of projects to Rasin. We focused on strengthening Rasin’s organizational capacities to handle more management, administrative, and operational responsibilities. Rasin built a strong team of employees and a network of community leaders across the island, expanding the work Roots has started from just one communal section to eight of a total eleven. 

Today, Rasin has total oversight over its program La Gonave, from project design to implementation, and, every year, Rasin grows its work beyond expectation, scaling and evolving in new ways to better serve and assist the citizens of La Gonave. 

Our shared values and belief in community-led development are baked into Rasin’s DNA, and every training, workshop, and project implemented or supported by Rasin embodies and seeks to further those values. Read more about Rasin’s work. 

A New Roots of Development

After the creation of Rasin Devlopman, Roots reinvented itself. We were no longer an implementing organization–instead, we were a partner, funder, advocate, and advisor for Rasin. Our mission became to support and promote community-led development, both in and outside of Haiti. 

With Rasin fully managing the program on La Gonave, Roots was able to focus on larger, longer-term goals–like the La Gonave Community Leadership & Development Center. A dream of the Rasin staff and their network on the island, the Leadership Center would be a 10,000 square-foot facility dedicated to Haitian-led development. The land for the center was purchased in 2021, the architect hired in 2022, and the first phase of construction began in 2025. 

Roots also was able to dedicate time towards learning advocacy in the US. We launched the Development without Dependency Knowledge Hub in 2024, a home for the research and writing we do with our partners. We became more involved in the Movement for Community-led Development, co-chairing the MCLD Hill Advocacy Working Group and authoring a chapter on the Roots to Rasin transition for Community-led Development In Practice. 

We also pursued new collaborations with other US-based organizations. We partnered with Ayiti Community Trust on constructing the La Gonave Community Leadership & Development Center and worked with the Haitian Foundation for Democracy and American University to host the Haiti: From Crisis to Catalyst symposium in 2024. 

Gwoup Konbit 

In 2024, Roots and Rasin officially welcomed Gwoup Konbit as the third member of our partnership. Gwoup Konbit, a Haitian social movement founded in 2021, is built on the principles of konbit–a historical, Haitian term for mutual solidarity and collective action. Read more about Gwoup Konbit. 

Roots, Rasin, and Gwoup Konbit work together to make each organization the strongest it can be–Rasin as a community-based implementer, Gwoup Konbit as a network builder and trainer, and Roots as a funder, knowledge broker, and advocate.