and provides them with the assets to get started. Most choose livestock, but they can choose merchandise to start a small commerce as well. Before the CLM program, Ytelet had


been a farmer. But without means of her own, she was only able to work as a sharecropper, planting seeds she had bought on credit. Her debt to the landowner and the 100% interest she was paying for seeds ensured she was never able to get ahead. The CLM program gave her the means


to rent land outright and to buy seeds with cash up front. Soon her farming became profitable. For the last harvest before she joined, Ytelet had planted four cans of borrowed beans. Her harvest had been reasonable, at about thirty cans. However, fifteen cans went to the landowner and eight to the man who lent her the beans. Six months into her membership in


CLM, Ytelet planted 12 cans of beans, which she purchased with cash up front on a plot she rented for 1000 gourds. She put away 40 cans at harvest, even after using some to pay her field hands. Ytelet also received livestock, enabling


her to build wealth with which to invest. She increased the scope of her farming and added a profitable business buying and selling beans. She also sold her goats’ young to buy a horse, which enabled her to carry more merchandise to market.


3


ACCOMPANIMENT Despite everything that CLM could


offer Ytelet, she would have had a hard time moving forward on her own. Her case manager was a critical part of her success. Case managers meet with members of the program once a week for 18 months. For Ytelet, her case manager’s importance was especially clear. He brought her to the hospital when she was on the verge of death. He showed her how she could transform her farming into a profitable business. Accompaniment is important for


many of the women who pass through the program. Training can show them the path to a better life, and assets can make walking the path feasible. But setbacks are the rule, rather than the exception, for the poor. Without adequate emotional and strategic support, a single setback could cause a woman to fail. Case managers also help participants learn the habit of planning and looking ahead, which is critical if they are to change their lives.


A BRIGHTER FUTURE Ytelet graduated from the CLM program in 2012, and four years later her progress continues. She moved from Zaboka, where she grew up, to Regalis, a market town across the mountains with better schools for her children and better vending outlets for


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the beans she sells. She hikes back to Zaboka regularly, because she still farms there, but her own harvests are now only one part of her growing business. Not every CLM graduate is as


successful as Ytelet, but over 95% who finish the program require no further subsidies. With no jobs in the Haitian countryside, especially for women suffering extreme poverty, self- employment is their only option. They are entrepreneurs by necessity. Ytelet makes decisions every day,


as she moves her resources between her fields, her livestock, and her bean business. She strategises constantly about ways to maximise her profits and increase her net worth. She is surely an entrepreneur, and an admirable and effective one. n


Connect with other readers & comment on this article at www.livingnow.com.au


Steven Werlin has been a faculty member at Shimer College, in Chicago, since 1996 and the Communications and Learning Officer for


Fonkoze’s CLM program for two years. He’s been living and working in Haiti since 2005. His latest book is ‘To Fool the Rain – Haiti’s Poor and Their Pathway to a Better Life’.


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