Day 3 – Haiti

(Community Matters) Left my friends from Concern Worldwide this morning and joined new friends from Fonkoze.

Breakfast with their CEO Anne Hastings who I feel like I already knew from numerous telephone conversations and emails since the earthquake. Anne was quite upset by the devastation around our hotel.  The Montana was a popular new hotel, retail development just outside our doors.  It was completely flattened during the earthquake, including the loss of hundreds of guests – two Anne’s friends.  She hadn’t seen the site before today.

I didn’t know contracts for the heavy equipment stationed in Haiti were being held up because USAID hasn’t received Congressional approval yet.  While lots of rubble is still left, much has been removed through the cash for work programs & other funded contacts. Nevertheless, if what’s reported is the reason for the holdup, it’s pretty pathetic.

Anne noted that Concern has long been a major supporter of Fonkoze, especially funding their small credit programs in rural areas for the very poor.  We also discussed a Gates Foundation grant for mobile banking; I promised to connect her to Roy & Bertand Sosa as Fonkoze is in the process of evaluating mobile carrier options and technology.

Carine Roenen, until recently with Concern, is their new Foundation ED.  She picked me up for the day’s tour – another extraordinary day, literally over the mountains and through the river . . .

We left Port au Prince, headed north to the Mirebalais where we met an individual borrower (Enersa) who’s assembling and selling solar powered LED street lights, some with cell phone chargers at the base.  Jean Ronel Noel has a mechanical engineering degree from Montreal and returned to Haiti to launch this business – impressive, he’s hoping to scale but needs equity and more credit.

Then to the Mirebalais Fonkoze branch where we connected with the branch manager and a credit agent.  And, the credit agent took us even further north into a most rural of area which reminded me of Vietnam’s Mekong Delta region.  We literally drove through a river which seemed quite perilous.  Then through deep, mud rutted roads, to arrive at a Center meeting.  Fonkoze’s has over 41,000 microfinance clients (solidarity loan program) organized in groups of 3 to 5 women, further clustered into 1,800 Centers of 5 to 10 groups.  Each Center can be no further than 2 hours by motorcylce from a branch, since the credit agents ride motorcycles to meet with the Centers every two weeks.  It might have been my most honored moment ever to have attended a center meeting today.  These women are remarkable.  These from Mache Kana region mostly purchase fresh fruit which they sell in Port au Prince, then purchase foreign goods to sell in Mirebalais and their home regions.  As a group they borrow from USD $75 to $800, amortizing biweekly until their loan is repaid.  Most also save USD $1 to $3 every two weeks which they mostly use for their children’s schooling and housing.

The meeting broke up just a wee bit early because of rains. We had to dash because the river becomes unpassable. Once we were in safe territory, the credit agent told us that the river is where bandits would try to hijack him, knowing he’s traveling with money.  However, since everyone in the region knows each other, the women notify him when suspicious people are lurking about and send their husbands to escort him safely when there’s potential trouble.

Fonkoze also has over 200,000 small savers and a number of individual borrowers with loans from $900 to $100,000 USD. Enersa is one of these borrowers  So is Louis St. Anie, a charismatic woman we met after lunch.  She started a business with USD $3, selling tooth paste and now runs a robust “store,” selling all sorts of “corner convenience store” items, helping supporting her 6 children and their children.  She’s a fiesty woman who told me “a woman is a woman and you can tell everyone about that.”

Fonkoze has set up their own “Kiva” site so individuals can loan or invest in their individual customers – it’s at Zafen.org

I’m staying alone at the Wozo Plaza Hotel in Mirebalais tonight.  Friends from Partners in Health are picking me up in the morning so I can tour some of their projects in St Marc.