Contribute to Long-Term Rebuilding in Haiti

Women Help Re-Build Haiti

It is a fact that women play a major role in re-building Haiti and supporting their families. One of the ways that women bolster their small businesses is though micro-credit projects.

The Women's Organization for the Advancement of the Desalin Commune, located in the Department of Latibonite, asked Lambi Fund to put a micro credit fund at the organization's disposal to help women who are members of the organization get a loan to conduct small business activities. The Lambi Fund agreed to support the women's project because the organization has experience in managing such small credit projects already but also because it has a structure that shows the organization is doing well. In the project plan, the Lambi Fund made a fund of 500,000 gd available for the organization to lead this small project. It will enable 50 women to get 10,000 gourds each. The duration of the loan was foreseen for 4 months with an interest of 2% per month. From the monthly income the organization will add new beneficiaries.

As planned at the start of the project, Lambi Fund managed to provide half of the money (250,000.00 gd), so the project started with 25 beneficiaries in 2022. Before the project started, a management consultant conducted a training for 30 members of the organization for 2 days in order for the organization to properly learn about the project and run it smoothly. 

The theme of the training was: management and accounting of a credit portfolio. In these trainings, the project management structure was set up with different committees, the roles of different committees established, and discussions were held on the project strategy, and on some management tools (project accounting books, loan contract sheets...etc.) The participants (a total of 25 women) had the chance to discuss the importance and reporting techniques in such a credit project.

So far the project is going very well, the beneficiaries have been reimbursed at 100%. In late 2022 we received from them the report of the first cycle of the project. There were already 24 new beneficiaries. The total number of beneficiaries at this time has reached 49.

Today, more than 6 months since the activities started, the project has reached 78 beneficiaries, so 53 new people have already joined!

In order for the women to be able to repay their small business loans, they started all kinds of small business with the money: garden products (maize, beans, etc.), food products (sugar, flour, etc.), beauty products, and shoes, sandals,.. etc. So far the small businesses are doing well. The women are re-paying their loans and have extra money to feed their families and send their children to school. More info next time.

Phase 2 partial implementation

Lambi Fund made available $90,000 USD (8,730,000 gdes @ 97gdes/$1 USD) to small farmers and women’s projects of participating organizations to help them resume their economic activities.  These funds allowed the small farmers to resume production of fast-growing crops, (some of which have already matured and harvested) and some women’s organizations with small trade projects to relaunch their activities by replacing merchandise that was lost during the earthquake. A total of 478 members of organizations benefitted so far from this program: 352 farmers from 16 of peasant organizations and 126 women of 6 organizations.  

Lambi Fund did not raise enough funds last year to satisfy the need of all the requests that were submitted by its peasant/women organizations on the projected budget of the relief plan.  A hard decision was made to support some organizations, and leave the rest for later, as more funds come in.  The Regional Monitor for the South, with his recent program report reminded the Program Director of the remaining essential need for assistance to organizations that did not benefit of the Phase 2 funding.  On the report he reiterated a list of 15 organizations (11 farmer organizations and 4 Women organizations). As usual, Lambi Fund would only assist 20 members per organization i.e. 300 members currently expecting assistance.  Those members will be selected by the leadership committee of each peasant organization.  The cost for providing relief at the same level previously adopted under the Phase 2 plan converts to 5,600,000 Haitian gourdes or $56,000 USD.