In Haiti, the goal of our Foundation for Democracy is to create an opportunity for dialogue and democratic participation by the population. The cooperative we founded, which now has more than 12,000 members, makes credit available at a low interest rate to the poorest sector and enables members to buy food at about half its market price. There are many similar, small-scale cooperative initiatives around the world, offering a seed of hope for the next century. We can become dispirited in the face of globalisation, growing economic polarisation, environmental degradation and the misery one quarter of the world's population are facing each day. Radio Timoun is their radio station.
Children are the reporters, the announcers and the technicians.
I listen every day to hear what they have to say. They interview children in the prisons and broadcast stories from the General Hospital, calling on the government to improve health care for kids. This radio station is another seed of hope for the 21st century. You and I, as citizens of the world committed to fighting poverty, should tend these seeds where we find them, shelter them when hostile and changing conditions threaten their very existence, and plant them in other places where they may take root and bear fruit to nourish the world. As we are nourished today by the fruits of solidarity and hope.