FIDA/pcH carries on Betsy Wall's father's work in Haiti, with fundraiser Thursday

Forty years after her father Jack Wall, a former Niagara-on-the-Lake resident, moved to Haiti to ramp up his work with the Foundation for International Development Assistance (FIDA), Betsy Wall continues to build on his efforts to boost productivity in what she calls “The Pearl of the Antilles.”

Betsy will be back in Niagara-on-the-Lake this Thursday, Sept. 5 for a 40th anniversary fundraising dinner at the Trevor Falk Farm on Lakeshore Road. She will be joined by special guests from what is now known as FIDA/pcH who will talk about the impact the organization has had in the country that sits in the Caribbean just south of the Bahamas. 

The eldest of six children, Betsy grew up at Jack’s feet, going everywhere with her father, who ran group homes and later, in the early 1960s opened a seniors home in the London area. Jack made his first trip to Haiti in 1960. Seven years later, a teenage Betsy accompanied him on her first trip to Haiti, a weekend sojourn.

“He was enthralled with the country,” enthuses Betsy. “The fellow who took us there was with Grace Children’s Hospital. He wanted Dad’s help to raise money to inoculate everyone up to 20 years old against tuberculosis. Dad loved the idea because it seemed impossible.”

Jack was enthusiastic about the project, so much so that while he was on a plane travelling from Ottawa to Toronto he raved about it to his seatmate. By chance, he had been sitting beside the president of World Vision, Bernard Barron, who found Jack’s enthusiasm contagious. 

Betsy explains that Jack then began the groundwork to create the organization called  International Child Care. He became the founding president and working with Grace Children’s Hospital continued the crusade against TB. 

But in the late 1970s, after many visits to Haiti which took Jack and Betsy to all corners of the country, her father began to realize that the solution lay not in inoculation but instead in helping out the people who had their hands in the soil. 

“He was a problem solver,” she says of Jack, who passed away at 97 in 2022. “He wanted to get to the bottom of it. He felt that a country that couldn’t feed itself would always be poor. He came to the board of ICC and told them ‘We need to invest in agriculture.’ They disagreed, so he started his own organization.”

FIDA was officially formed in 1980 to bring the Mennonite concept of the cooperative to Haiti’s agricultural economy. Four years later, at 60 years old, Jack and his wife Anne moved to the country to “equip the poorest of the poor to become masters of their own destiny.”

By that time Betsy was living in Parkhill, Ontario. She had started an advertising company, opened a group home for troubled teens, gotten married and begun raising two children of her own. She didn’t join her parents in Haiti, but Jack kept working on her, urging her to join the organization.

In 1999. she was finally brought into the fold when Jack surprisingly announced at a board meeting that he was resigning from FIDA and his daughter was taking over. Taken completely by shock, Betsy agreed to, as long as Jack would stay involved. 

“When I started we did two significant things first,” Betsy says. “One was to recognize and address the psycho-social challenges that limit the country’s potential to advance. That included the twin demons of fear and mistrust, the most significant obstacle there. There was also the powerful leader syndrome, where they stand behind a leader despite his faults. And they have an unrefined sense of success.”

The marketing professional also decided to re-brand FIDA within the country as productive cooperatives Haiti (pcH).

“My parents were livid,” she says. “But Haitians resist words like ‘hope’ and ‘vision’ and they mistrust outsiders. So we registered as a Haitian organization, a resource bank for men and women who wanted to be shareholders in a cooperative. My parents eventually got over it.”

Next came an innovative and comprehensive adult literacy program, funded early on by the Canadian International Development Agency, now known as Global Affairs Canada.

“The majority of schools in Haiti are private,” explains the FIDA/pch executive director. “Haitians value education highly, but they have to pay for it. In the Haitian schools they are taught by rote in French by teachers who may have a Grade 5 or 6 level themselves. It’s not effective.” 

Betsy adds that FIDA/pcH does not build schools. The students, or ‘participants’, learn in ‘centres’ sourced out by members of the cooperative. Teachers, called ‘monitors’ in Haiti, are trained and tested by FIDA/pcH staff. The curriculum is in their native Creole, comes with graphics, and includes important education in the principles of the cooperative. 

Today, FIDA/pcH has 30 staff members, all Haitian. These include agronomists, technicians and educators who work with almost 20 cooperatives. 

Wall usually spends half the year in the Caribbean, but hasn’t returned since since she left in late February. Three days after her flight, gangs took over the airport. 

“I’ve been through it all,” says Betsy about the violence and unrest there. “We know we have to be strategic, we realize we have to know exactly what we can do and when.”

Thursday’s NOTL event is an important one in FIDA/pcH’s annual goal to raise $1.5 million. It has its roots back in Jack’s ICC days when local resident Bill Andres used to host a backyard barbecue. And FIDA/pcH continues to have board members from NOTL. 

The event that beings at 5 p.m. will include dinner and a live auction hosted by Joe Pillitteri, and a chance for diners to purchase one of the many intricate pieces of art made out of old oil drums by Haitian artisans that will be there.

Fifty-seven years after her first visit to the country Betsy Wall remains committed to the advancement of its people. And she remains equally committed to the values and visions of her late father Jack, who only had a Grade 8 education and remained sickly for much of his life. Betsy says his commitment to giving back was born when he lay in bed with pneumonia as a young man, pledging to dedicate his life to helping others if he could just survive.

“He taught me not to judge people, that we are all one,” says a clearly in awe Betsy, who had begun to write his life story. “Since I started writing I’ve talked to so many people, many in Niagara, and it’s been such a great experience hearing what people say about him.”