(Community Matters) The last grant from the Entrepreneurs Foundation/Austin Ventures HelpHaiti fund was a $163k matching grant to Concern Worldwide/Fonkoze to restore livelihoods through income generation activities in the Tabarre camp – a defined community of 500 families. A study carried out by Concern Worldwide and Fonkoze in the Tabarre Issa Camp and in the surroundings in October 2010, revealed that 90% of residents were involved in petty trading before the earthquake and around 45% of them lost their entire equipment or inventories required to generate incomes. They have since depended on agency aid and support from relatives. Very few people had restarted income generation activities due to the lack of capital and being unable to undertake appropriate actions. Today we received a progress report which includes:
320 beneficiaries were initially selected by the team to participate in the entrepreneurship /microfinance program. The community reduced the list to 250 beneficiaries, rejecting 70 beneficiaries who did not meet the criteria as originally presented by the team.
One of the major difficulties faced during the selection process was regarding the priority given to women and the most vulnerable people in the camp. A group within the community argued that they were all equally affected by the earthquake and should be eligible for selection. The group violently stopped the process but the project team resolved the situation by holding a meeting attended by the whole community to clarify the criteria, and explain the reasoning and wisdom behind the approach.
In accordance with the project proposal, the project team went through a psychological profile test with each beneficiary in order to make sure that they could really manage a microenterprise. This exercise looked at beneficiaries’ experience in running businesses, interest, aptitude and resistance towards challenges, attitude towards risk, leadership, and experience in taking initiative (social or commercial). The result of this exercise was a classification of the beneficiaries into those recommended to attend vocational training and those suited to undertake microenterprises. From the 250 beneficiaries, 49 were recommended to attend vocational training and 201 to start microenterprises.
On June 1st Fonkoze started training 200+ women to start or expand microenterprises. Fonkoze organized them into 16 groups of 14 people to ensure groups were small enough for participants to learn and receive the maximum benefit. Through the groups established by Fonkoze and also on an individual basis, in June the project team started working with the participants to develop a basic business plan for each business idea. Thirty business plans have been completed. The project team is analyzing the first group of business plans to provide the beneficiaries with seed capital or vouchers to start or expand their business. The 1st disbursement will be done in the first week of July.
The women directed to vocational training have selected computer classes on the use of Microsoft Office software including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access and Publisher as well as studying cooking and pastry.
Community Matters 