Filed under: Bateys, Dominican Republic, Personal Revelations | Tags: Batey, Carnival, Development, Dominican Republic, Failed State, FONKOZE, Haiti, Peace Corps
Before getting here, I was nervous. It was really a combination of things. First and foremost, there was my job, a job I would commit to for at least two years, yet about which I was short on details. Then there was Haitian Creole. Could I really pick it up in two-months like I told myself I could? Then there was the mystery of Haiti.
Haiti had fascinated me from afar while I was in the Dominican Republic. It was a country I was forbidden from experiencing while with the Peace Corps, yet a country that was consistently sending its people my way. Poor and hungry, Haitian peasants would wash up in my Batey looking to find reassurance in a feeling of Haiti and maybe a little solidarity among our Haitian-Dominican population. They found a slice of Haiti. But as for solidarity, we were all out of that.
In my Batey, I heard stories about Haiti – mostly ugly tales – from the adult sons and daughters of aged Haitian immigrants. They themselves had never gotten to know the country from which grandparents or parents had fled, for economic more than political reasons, but they knew they were happy on the outside.
While in my Batey on the Dominican side, Haiti was a dark, gloomy place of misery, suffering and helplessness. It was one big tragedy. Haiti was full of bad people using Voodoo to do bad things to good people. A place where petty jealousies led one neighbor against another, poisoning livestock or even family members to get even.
Is this Haiti? (more…)
Filed under: FONKOZE, MICROFINANCE, Videos | Tags: Development, FONKOZE, Haiti, MICROFINANCE, Reaching Vulnerable Clients, Ti-Kredi
While it is often claimed that microfinance reaches the world’s poorest, there are few microfinance institutions (MFI) that actually live up to the hype. Reaching the poorest is difficult and costly; it’s tremendously challenging.
Fonkoze is unique in the microfinance world for its uncompromising commitment to reaching the poorest, most vulnerable sectors of society. This is what motivated me to come to Haiti and seek them out.
This video is a compilation of some footage I shot on my way to visit with potential clients for Fonkoze’s Ti-Kredi or “little credit” program – the lending program aimed at Haiti’s near poorest sectors. It took just under two hours of hiking to reach these families and the video should make apparent their isolation.
The home visits consist of an informal interview to better understand the living situation of potential clients. Home visits are carried out on a community by community basis, with a 30% sample of potential clients visited and interviewed.
ENJOY!
Filed under: Bateys, Dominican Republic, Personal Revelations | Tags: Batey, Dominican Republic, Economics, Haiti, Mass Media, Peace Corps, Xenophobia
I lived in the Dominican Republic as a Peace Corps volunteer from September 2006 to November 2008 – 27 full months. The Dominican Republic shares the diminutive island of Hispaniola with Haiti. The DR is a lower-middle income country with a GDP per capita about ten times Haiti’s $600 per day. Not a rich country, but a land of milk and honey relative to Haiti.
Nevertheless, in my 27 months, not once – not once – did I hear about how many Dominican-made goods Haiti consumes; about the sheer quantity of goods that literally pour over the border. It was not until I arrived in Haiti that I was able to see the extent to which Dominican consumer goods dominate the Haitian market and so boost the Dominican economy.
Mind you, this is no small piece of news to stumble upon. The Dominican press and politicians of all stripes rarely let an opportunity pass without excoriating Haiti and Haitians for provoking all the DR’s woes. They are the perpetual scapegoat for the failures of Dominican politicians and the Dominican state. Socially, Haitian immigration into the DR is portrayed as a threat to the Dominican social-fabric; economically, they are blamed for taking menial jobs and driving down wages, while being an oversized strain on the national budget. “Haitian” is actually an insult. (more…)
Filed under: Living in Haiti | Tags: Carnival, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mango Season
Two of my favorite seasons are starting. One will only last a few days; the other lasts a few months. The first is Carnival and the second is Mango Season – capitalized, because it deserves it.
Carnival is a week-long celebration and allegedly “the only time Haitians forget how hungry they are.” That’s a little bleak. I prefer, Carnival is such a massive, essential celebration that “some presidents have been thrown out of office for not holding it.” Democracy in action.
Haitian National Palace
Mango Season, on the other hand, is like Carnival in your mouth every time you bite into that sweet mango meat. And, not to be outdone by Carnival, Mango Season provides a free, easily accessible source of Vitamin C to rural Haitians all over the country. And it won’t take your money, accidentally spill beer on shoes, or steal your camera.
This past Sunday, I was out in downtown Port-au-Prince investigating Haiti’s Carnival, because I wanted to be able to write about it in my blog! The real deal hasn’t started yet, it was only “pre-Carnival” or “pre-Kanaval” in proper Haitian Creole, but I could get a feel for the madness that’s about to be unleashed. I’ve also had the distinct pleasure of enjoying Dominican Carnival, so I’m waiting to let the judging, assessments and comparisons fly.
Dominican Carnival 2008
As for Mango Season, I’ve already had to start carrying floss at all times. Yesterday, while doing home visits, some co-workers and I stumbled upon a veritable mountain of mangoes of all different varieties and walked away with two full, large boxes. And for under $10! What’s the Whole Food’s price on mangoes, again?
Anyhow, a topic for further investigation: it’s purported that Haitian mangoes are far better than their Dominican-incarnation: fact or just plain, old-fashioned mango-chauvinism?
PS None of that bad-Carnival stuff happened to me. Haiti is safe. I’m all good. Come visit.
Filed under: Community Development, On Poverty, Peace Corps, Ultra-poor | Tags: Development, FONKOZE, Haiti, Peace Corps, Ultra-poor
The poorest of the poor are what fuel the West’s development aid to the Rest. They are the faces we see when we are asked to spare the equivalent of a cup of coffee to vaccinate a child or pay to send her to school; it’s this sector that galvanizes large multilateral efforts to alleviate poverty worldwide. Even amongst the “bottom billion,” it’s they that compose the lowest rung.
Yet even with all this attention, many don’t seem to understand the depths of deprivation and injustice that the poorest of the poor have endured and how it affects their psyche and hence our development projects.
The poorest are timid, they lack self-confidence and they lack self-esteem. Besides not having productive assets, besides not having land to harvest, besides not having a formal education, besides being consigned to a general lack of opportunity, they often carry broken spirits. History, both across generations and in an acutely personal sense, has mistreated them. (more…)
Filed under: FONKOZE, MICROFINANCE, Ultra-poor, Videos | Tags: Chemen Lavi Miyò, FONKOZE, Ultra-poor
This is a brief video of Fonkoze’s CLM graduation (Chemen Lavi Miyò – “Pathway to a Better Life”). This is a program for Haiti’s ultra-poor women. It is not a traditional microfinance program and does not include a credit component. It is instead an 18 month intensive program where each woman is transferred productive assets like goats or chickens, given business and life-skills training, constant accompaniment and support from a Fonkoze case worker, and a small $7 a week stipend to help maintain economic stability. The program aims to radically improve not just living standards but each woman’s state of mind.
These are Haiti’s poorest women. Before the program begins they are literally women with broken spirits. Many have resorted to begging to feed their children. They often lack a male partner and none have any form of small business or productive assets, including no land to harvest. In self-evaluations, each woman invariably rates herself and her living situation as a one out of ten; they are on society’s lowest rung.
This program breathes new life into these women; it gives them hope and rejuvenates their broken spirits. It helps them overcome the fatalism that keeps them thinking they have no other options in life but to suffer this most acute form of poverty.
Here we have 50 women from Lagonav, a small island province a few hours from Port-au-Prince. Fifty out of 50 women successfully graduated and the data illustrates their leap out of extreme poverty. They have stable incomes, small thought they may be; they send their children to school; their health has improved; they have regained their self-respect.
Make no mistake, these women are still very poor, but the fire that a life at the bottom, that fear and failure had extinguished, is again burning in these women as they promise to “never go back” to extreme poverty.
Filed under: Living in Haiti | Tags: FONKOZE, Haiti, Living Abroad, MICROFINANCE
My first 21 days in Haiti. With each week has come a new adventure, a three or four day trip to a new part of the country to check on the progress of Fonkoze’s two programs aimed at Haiti’s poorest (Ti-Kredi for the very poor, and CLM for the ultra poor).
These trips into the field allow me to see how each program is carried out at the community level (the “village level”). It is here where a project or a program either succeeds or fails. It is somewhat ironic that an organization’s near-lowest rung employees, the credit agents or more generally in the development world, the facilitators, are its most critical determinants of success. But across the board, whether public health or microfinance, this rule of thumb holds true.
These trips also give me a better picture of Haiti’s rural poverty. Thus far I’ve been based in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s overflowing capital city, and these rural respites are my only chance to escape. Logically, though nevertheless surprising to me, rural poverty in Haiti shares many characteristics with rural poverty in the Dominican Republic, my fullest case study on the matter. The only significant difference is the absolute lack of infrastructure – roads, health clinics, schools, etc. – that conspires against Haiti’s poor. (more…)
