You have been writing about this for years. In your localization research, in your work with Gwoup Konbit and Concern Worldwide in Cité Soleil, in what you helped build with Roots of Development and what FCHLD published last month on the $125M fund flow. The argument is clear: Haitian communities know what they need. External organizations that substitute their own judgment extract value even when they intend to give it.
SAKALA is not an answer to that argument. It is an example of what the argument produces when someone actually builds it.
Here is the checklist. You already know what to look for.
| Localization Criterion | SAKALA |
|---|---|
| Founded by | Daniel Tillias. Haitian. Cité Soleil. 2006. Never left. |
| Staffed by | 160 youth across 10 active sites. Zero expat managers. Zero. |
| Owned by | Cooperative structure. Youth hold 40-51% ownership from Day 1. Not after 5 years. Not after an evaluation. Day 1. |
| Sustained by | Self-financing from Month 5 of operations. Never needs external funding again after initial activation. |
| Accountable to | Blockchain-tracked transactions. Every dollar from diaspora subscriber to youth producer is traceable. Not by an auditor who visits annually... by anyone, in real time. |
| Documented by | 147-document Universal Franchise Launch Playbook. Operational manuals in Kreyol. Not personality-dependent. Replicable without Wesley, without any external advisor. |
| Decision-making | Site-level cooperatives elect their own leadership. No central board override on production decisions. |
| Site | Department | Youth | Primary Activity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cité Soleil / SAKALA HQ | Ouest | 25 | Moringa, hydro nursery, composting, beekeeping |
| Cité Soleil / Sarthe | Ouest | 10 | Moringa nursery, masketi |
| Limonade / SONJE AYITI | Nord | 30 | Medicinal plants, moringa |
| Quartier-Morin | Nord | 20 | Moringa, cassava |
| Grande Rivière du Nord / Bonamy | Nord | 20 | Moringa, fruit trees |
| Grand Bassin | Nord | 15 | Moringa nursery |
| Milot / Fedanoir | Nord | 10 | School garden, moringa |
| Limonade / Bois de Lance | Nord | 10 | Moringa nursery |
| Plaine du Nord / OZONE | Nord | 10 | Moringa, community garden |
| Pestel | Grand'Anse | 10 | Community school garden |
Moringa nurseries are operational at 8 of 10 active sites. This is the anchor crop: drought-resistant, grows in degraded soil, produces leaves (nutrition), seeds (water purification, oil), and powder (export-grade superfood). Youth already trained in drying, packaging, and sales through Dan's UN-funded Job Power program.
Confirmed partners on the ground:
Site 0 is SAKALA HQ in Cité Soleil. 7 Michiko, 3BB, Route Nationale #1. Two adjoining lots, roughly one acre. Dan converted it from a garbage dump 20 years ago. Today it has classrooms, a library, athletics courts, showers, an eco-san toilet, moringa nurseries, 500+ recycled container gardens, a shade house, an art shed, beekeeping operations, and composting facilities.
It serves 250+ children and youth daily. And it is being reconfigured so that every existing structure takes on a production role:
| Existing Space | New Production Function |
|---|---|
| Classrooms | Indoor hydroponic facility. Wall racks + vertical systems. 2,500 plants cycling every 30-60 days. |
| Shade house | Charcoal staging area. Bamboo-based briquette storage and quality control. |
| Art shed (FatraKa!) | Packaging and assembly center for Harvest Box products. |
| Outdoor areas | Moringa polyculture. Rabbit hutches. Bamboo soil remediation plots. |
| Storage buildings | Processing hub. Moringa drying, packaging, quality control. |
30 rabbits are on site. Rabbit protein has the highest feed conversion ratio of any livestock appropriate for urban Haiti (6:1 vs 8:1 for poultry). Breeding cycle: 30 days gestation, 8-12 kits per litter. The youth manage the hutches.
The TapTap Harvest Box is a quarterly subscription. $90. Nine items, all produced by cooperative youth across SAKALA sites. Diaspora subscribers in the US receive a box at home. Or they can redirect delivery to a school, orphanage, or family member in Haiti.
What is in the box:
The box is the revenue engine. Diaspora Haitians (975,000 mapped across 1,420 US ZIP codes) are the customer base. But the transaction is not donation. It is a purchase. Youth grow it, process it, package it, and earn from it. The cooperative retains 40-51% of revenue. No intermediary takes a cut.
Lambi Fund exists to support Haitian grassroots organizations focused on food security and sustainable livelihoods. SAKALA is a youth agricultural cooperative operating across seven departments with active moringa production, composting, and livestock at ten sites. This is Lambi's exact mandate. A Lambi grant would fund site reactivation (15 dormant sites at ~$500 each) and production equipment. We are not asking you to stretch Lambi's mission. We are asking you to point Lambi at something that already fits.
WFP Haiti currently sources from 32,500 local farmers for its school feeding program serving 600,000 students. SAKALA has 160 youth growing food across seven departments. The ask: introduce SAKALA into WFP's local procurement pipeline. Not as a special project. As a supplier. Youth-grown moringa and cassava entering the same supply chain that feeds Haitian schools. If you have WFP relationships from your consulting work, this is a warm introduction that writes itself.
FCHLD's March 2026 report asked: where are the Haitian-led organizations in the $125M fund flow? SAKALA is an answer to that question. Not an organization asking to be included in someone else's consortium... a cooperative that is already producing, already self-financing, already youth-owned. FCHLD wants examples of what Haitian-led development actually produces. We are offering to be the case study. With data, with site visits, with blockchain-verified financials.
The Harvest Box serves the diaspora. But the larger revenue opportunity is institutional: schools, feeding programs, and humanitarian logistics that already purchase food in Haiti. Three pipelines are in development:
| Buyer | Scale | Connection | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Food for the Poor | 700 schools, 184,700 students | Procurement contract for moringa + cassava | Pipeline initiated |
| Summits Education | 39-42 schools, ~10,000 students | Carolyn Mellin (Dan's personal friend) | Warm introduction |
| WFP Haiti | 600,000 students, 32,500 local farmers | SAKALA joins supplier network | Requires introduction |
These are not hypothetical market opportunities. These are organizations that already purchase food in Haiti, already have procurement infrastructure, and already need local suppliers. SAKALA's 10 active sites across 7 departments give it geographic coverage that most individual farmer cooperatives cannot match.
You know extraction. You have published on it. You have watched international organizations arrive in Haiti with good intentions and leave having consumed more resources than they delivered. FCHLD documented it last month: $125M disbursed through UN agencies and INGOs, Haitian organizations conspicuously absent, 30% allocated to cash transfers in gang-controlled areas where diversion is documented.
The research arm behind SAKALA (BARSS LLC) has spent four years quantifying this pattern across 25 cases spanning 200 years and four continents. The finding is a constant: Theta = ~0.80. Elite institutions capture approximately 80% of extracted value regardless of time, place, or mechanism. It holds for colonial Haiti (0.86), for Liberia's maritime registry (0.9987), for US convict leasing (0.85), for private prisons (0.92).
It also holds for the aid industry. When international organizations absorb 70-80% of Haiti funding in overhead, salaries, and logistics before anything reaches communities... that is Theta operating through a different mechanism but producing the same mathematical result.
SAKALA was designed with this constant in mind. The architecture makes extraction structurally impossible:
| Extraction Vector | How SAKALA Blocks It |
|---|---|
| Intermediary capture | No intermediaries. Diaspora subscriber pays; cooperative youth receive. Blockchain ledger makes every transaction visible. |
| Management extraction | Zero expat managers. Site cooperatives elect their own leadership. No external board can override production decisions. |
| Ownership dilution | Youth hold 40-51% from Day 1. Written into cooperative bylaws. Cannot be reduced by future investors or board action. |
| Grant dependency | Self-financing from Month 5. No renewal cycles. No program officer gatekeeping. Revenue comes from trade, not grants. |
| Knowledge extraction | 147-document playbook. Operational manuals in Kreyol. If every external advisor disappears tomorrow, the cooperative runs. |
| Data extraction | Cooperative owns its own data. Production records, financial flows, and customer relationships belong to the youth, not to a platform or a donor. |
CNN Hero 2019. HELP Fellow. Founded SAKALA in Cité Soleil in 2006. 20 years of uninterrupted presence. Built 25 sites across 7 departments. Navigates gang dynamics through two decades of community relationships. Your friend. You know what he has built.
BARSS LLC. Forensic economist. CNHRR US Support Committee (Secrétariat Technique). 25 cases documented across 4 continents. Designed the cooperative franchise architecture, financial models, and Harvest Box logistics. Haitian-American. Based in Delaware.
In Port-au-Prince now. GI-TOC and Mercy Corps pipeline. 20 months of daily Haiti monitoring. Connected to community-based research through your network and Gwoup Konbit. Presenting at WB Spring Meetings April 15.
Sandy Darity (Duke/Howard). Thomas Craemer (UConn, Russell Sage). Ambassador Louino Volcy (Haiti to France). Réginald Surin (Sogebank, former PM Economic Adviser). Marlene Daut (Yale) — who introduced us both to IJDH.
You already have the Financing Gap PDF and the GitHub Pages portfolio. Below is the full library structure. Every playbook, every blueprint, every financial model is built and accessible.
| Document | What It Contains |
|---|---|
| Universal Franchise Launch Playbook | 147 documents. Complete operational manual for launching a SAKALA site anywhere in Haiti. Production protocols, training curricula, cooperative bylaws, financial templates. In Kreyol. |
| TapTap Harvest Box Business Plan | Full investor-grade plan. Unit economics, subscriber projections, logistics, dual-state US launch strategy (FL home delivery + MA coop pickup). |
| Site 0 Conversion Blueprint | Room-by-room transformation plan for Cité Soleil HQ. What exists vs. what $5,046 transforms. Every line item costed. |
| Gold DRIP Acceleration Model | 10-year financial projection. 344 franchises, 4,472 youth, $13.1M gold reserve, $223/quarter member cashout by Year 8-10. |
| Transparency Protocol | Live camera feeds, public dashboards, blockchain audit trail. How every dollar is tracked from subscriber to producer. |
| Diaspora Data Profile | 975,000 Haitian diaspora mapped across 1,420 ZIP codes. 1,604 churches identified. 27 Datawrapper charts. Market targeting for Harvest Box launch. |
| SOIL Joint Research Proposal | Compost + agriculture integration with Sasha Kramer's operation. Confirmed partnership. |
| Rabbit Production Playbook | Breeding protocols, feed conversion ratios, hutch construction, veterinary schedules. Operational at Site 0. |
| Bamboo Charcoal One-Pager | Soil remediation + clean fuel production. Replaces deforestation-driven charcoal with bamboo-based briquettes. |
| Institutional Funding Portfolio | Full pitch package for institutional funders. Financial projections, impact metrics, cooperative structure. |
All documents available on the GitHub Pages portfolio you already have. If you want a specific document sent directly, just ask.
| Metric | Without Jessica | With Jessica |
|---|---|---|
| Annual Revenue (Site 0) | $59,000-90,000 | $109,000-290,000 |
| Lambi Fund Grant | $0 | $10,000-50,000 |
| WFP Procurement | $0 | $20,000-100,000/year |
| FCHLD Visibility | None | Case study in funder network |
| Institutional Credibility | Diaspora market only | Diaspora + institutional + funder |
| Dormant Sites Reactivated | 0 (no capital) | 15 sites, 150 youth |