The Foreign Service Journal, December 2015

28 DECEMBER 2015 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL of the De La Sol Haiti cooperative. Based in Plaisance in northern Haiti, De La Sol Haiti was founded by a visionary mother-and-daughter team from Ala- bama with an altruistic streak. This NGO has worked with farmers for more than 10 years, exploring vanilla cultivation and develop- ing a cacao business. Beginning in the summer of 2013, 20 to 50 pounds of cocoa per month were shipped from the mountaintops of Plaisance to Taharka in Baltimore, thanks to an agreement born out of this IVLP visit to our city and a lot of innovation and hard work in Haiti. This unique partnership continues to work out well. Taharka won Baltimore Magazine ’s “Best of Baltimore Award” in 2013 for their high-quality ice cream. With enormous effort and perse- verance, De La Sol Haiti invested in a cocoa processing facility that grew into a working export service. This facility employs 13 Haitian farmers and is rapidly expanding today. This is significant in a country where unemployment stands at between 80 and 90 percent. These chocolate exports pay for antibiotics and youth education, saving lives. Taharka and De La Sol Haiti jointly won the 2014 Citizen Diplomacy Award fromGlobal Ties U.S. This agreement also demonstrates how effectively a State Department initiative can collaborate with local community- based organizations like ours. Working together, we grow partnerships across borders, while striving to educate and connect businesses both here and abroad. Small-scale farmers and business people facing tough market conditions are the immediate beneficiaries. In the end, consumers and would-be entrepreneurs in Baltimore and Plaisance, Haiti—two areas in which first and second chances and opportunities are few—have proof that their Representatives of Taharka Brothers Ice Cream and De La Sol Haiti accept the 2014 Citizen Diplomat award in Baltimore, Maryland. prospects can be uplifted in our increasingly globalized world. In fact, they can taste it. Janine Branch is the senior manager of professional exchanges and program development at the World Trade Center Institute in Balti- more, Maryland, and played a key role in the Taharka Brothers Ice Cream–De La Sol Haiti cooperative development. Soft Power Against Apartheid BY DANWHITMAN I had my first International Visitor Leadership Program experi- ence in 1969. At the time, I was a French language interpreter on contract to assist Télésphore Yaguibou, then an IVLP visitor and a mid-level foreign ministry official from Burkina Faso (Upper Volta in those days). One evening that summer, while walking with me across a bridge over Rock Creek Parkway, he announced: “Mon cher Daniel, I would like to come back here one day.” He returned the following year as Upper Volta’s ambas- sador to the United States. Over the past 46 years, I have had the pleasure of traveling across the United States more than 50 times with IVLP participants and also worked with them in my role as a Foreign Service officer in the seven countries in which I served. I believe in the program. For those seeking a reason for its existence, allow me to offer my experience with participants from South Africa during the late 1970s. Profound change was imminent, but few saw it coming. I interpreted for French- speaking African leaders, who were joined by South Africans, during their visit to the United States. The U.S. embassy in Pretoria was pushing the transformation envelope in those days, though quietly. One of the U.S. government’s principal tactics to fight apartheid at the time was inviting students and professionals from South African’s majority black population to the United States in significant numbers, cracking open the seemingly unshakeable clouded glass ceilings. In doing so, our diplomats outsmarted apartheid every day for about 20 years. Bringing emerging South African leaders to America involved tact and skill. The apartheid regime worked hard to COURTESY OF GLOBAL TIES U.S.