Haiti Gets New Female Superhero Named Tanama

Thony Loui (orange shirt) was joined by students from Ecole Jean-Paul II yesterday in Port-au-Prince
to mark the launch of Tanama, who appeared as a life-size cutout. Photo credit: SFA/Thomas Noreille.

Actually “supershero” is the gender-correct term for this badass Haitian comic book character who emerged yesterday from a cocoon after a women farmer-led campaign to plant enough trees to revive her. Ok, this is part of the plot of Tanama Origin, the first in a series of comics in which this shero encourages children and youth to plant trees, support smallholder farmers and become agents for gender equality. 

Tanama is the creation of Haitian comic book artist Thony Loui, who developed the story line to reflect the real-life experience of the Smallholder Farmers Alliance (SFA) and their members who plant trees and provide targeted support to women farmers. “Incorporating social issues is how I started as an artist,” said Loui, who went on to explain, “I developed my first superhero as part of a program at New York University to help increase awareness of less commonly taught languages like Haitian Kreyòl.” Loui credits his own handicap of being colorblind for helping to make him sensitive to the challenges faced by others.

The Tanama Project, which is anchored by the comic book series (in Kreyòl, English and French), also includes a classroom-based educational initiative and a range of collaborations in which Tanama serves as an ambassador for organizations whose missions align with hers. Two of these collaborations were announced today, one focused on Haiti and a second more broadly for the Caribbean. 

#SHE_BUILDS, a new organization harnessing the power of women as change makers, enlisted Tanama to launch their 2020 campaign to promote and highlight tree planting in Haiti. The SFA pledged one million of the trees they will plant this year with Haitian farmers to that end, noting that these same trees are part of Timberland’s recently announced international goal to plant 25 million trees in the next five years.

The Haitian #SHE_BUILDS campaign is, in turn, part of the Caribbean Tree Planting Project being led by the Caribbean Philanthropic Alliance together with regional and national partners. As announced today, Tanama is will serve as ambassador for this new regional initiative. On June 5, World Environment Day, Tanama will announce the total number of Caribbean countries and territories that have signed on by then and the projected number of trees that will be planted in the region by June 2021.