The Power of Microfinance in Haiti

Leigh Carter has been working in the name of human rights and the alleviation of poverty through the principles of microcredit and social finance for nearly 20 years, so when she’s asked to describe her most powerful experience, she thinks in terms of recent memory.

How else does one choose from such an extensive list?

As the executive director and founder of Fonkoze USA, the U.S. non-profit organization with a mission to raise funds and awareness for Fonkoze, Haiti’s largest microfinance institution, she travels often to the poverty-stricken country to meet with agents on the ground and clients who are discovering new hope through microfinance and the range of other financial services provided through Fonkoze.

In September she attended a Credit Center meeting with a few donors and clients in the organization’s core Solidarity Group program. Solidarity groups are comprised of five close friends who take out small loans together and support each other to achieve their goals. The Credit Center meetings bring several of these groups together for networking, education and fellowship.

“The meetings might be in a school, in a church or under a tree,” Leigh says, “and those center meetings can be very powerful.”

The collective aspirations and hopes of people making a new life in a country where hope can be hard to find emanates from the group, and song and dance are likely to break out as much as conversations related to new insurance programs to protect loans.

At one point during the meeting Leigh stepped back, struck by a powerful notion.

“I thought to myself, on this day all over Haiti almost 2,000 of these centers are meeting right now, and I get chills thinking about it, do these women know what kind of power that is?”

She notes the number that represents – almost 57,000 women discovering new hope, supporting each other, sharing ideas, excited by the successes large and small they’ve realized.

Political instability, crushing poverty, a complete lack of infrastructure and the aftermath of catastrophic natural disasters are just some of the barriers the people of Haiti face, but the county is not a lost cause – far from it when you hear the passion in Leigh’s voice.

Fonkoze’s work in Haiti, she says, is an example of what is possible through supported microfinance.

“Haiti is one of the hardest places to do any kind of work and that we’re able to succeed in that, just think of what can be accomplished in a country that has a little bit better infrastructure,” she says.

Fonkoze recently announced it’s one of the first institutions worldwide to be certified under the Grameen Foundation’s Progress out of Poverty Index (PPI), it has successfully implemented disaster insurance programs in the aftermath of the catastrophic 2010 earthquake and just last week, delegates from the organization presented at the Global Microcredit Summit in Valladolid, Spain.

Look for upcoming articles on this site where Axiom News will feature the strengths of Haiti’s leading microfinance institution.

To learn more about Fonkoze, visit this link.

If you have any questions or comments about this article please contact 800-294-0051, ext, 24 or e-mail kristian(at)axiomnews.ca.