Kore Lavi: School Feeding Program How to Improve Program and Lower Costs

This report is based off of fieldwork conducted between May 29th and August 9th in Haiti of Jade Womack, a Master’s student in Applied Economics Management at Cornell University under the Cornell-CARE collaboration. The author, or referred to as “researcher,” was interning on behalf of CARE USA in CARE Haiti as a Research Fellow for the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future at Cornell University. The findings of this report do not represent the views of CARE USA, CARE Haiti, or Cornell University and should be considered solely the work and views of the researcher. The researcher investigated the School Feeding Program in Thomassique and Cerca La Source which was part of the SO2 component of the Kore Lavi Program–a USAID sponsored program enacted by CARE Haiti. The report includes detailed information on the demographics of vendors, agriculture in Haiti, profit margins, cost reduction calculations, vendor perceptions, and recommendations. The researcher had two guiding questions, the first as to what could be improved in the program, and the second on how to reduce the cost of the program. The researcher interviewed vendors from 3 of the participating 6 schools: NGE, PDR, and RiO which are all in Thomassique region.