Lucienne is a 34-year-old woman who lives with her husband and their four children in a house in Nan Lagon, a neighborhood just a short walk from the center of Gwo Moulen. She joined the CLM program in April.

The couple had once been more prosperous than they are now. They are farmers, and they would use the sales of the crops, especially their beans, to manage their more important expenses. It was, for example, enough for them to build a nice home, which they covered with roofing tin.

But the yields have been decreasing steadily. “The last time we had a really good harvest was when my youngest, my six-year-old, was still nursing. Harvesting was so much work, we had to hire people because I couldn’t help.” Since then, they’ve had very little to show for their farming. “This year, we planted three cans of beans, and didn’t harvest enough to make a meal.”

Lucienne has kept her family going for years with small commerce, even without means of her own. She has depended a sòl, a kind of savings club common in Haiti. Members make regular contributions, and every time there is a scheduled contribution, one member takes the entire pot. In Lucienne’s sòl, the contribution is currently 500 gourds — a little less than four dollars — and they make contributions on Wednesdays and Saturdays, the days of the large market in downtown Laskawobas.

Lucienne has been able to use the group because they have always been willing for her to take the pot first. That way, it works as an interest-free loan. She just has to show them that they can always count on her to pay it back. That is to say, she cannot miss paying when it is the other members’ turn to collect.

But her ability to keep that commitment has enabled her to keep her commerce going. She buys produce in the neighborhood, bringing it down to Laskawobas for sale on market day. While down in Laskawobas, she buys products that are available down there and carries them back up to Gwo Moulen for sale. She does not have a pack animal, so she carries her merchandise both down and up the mountain on her head. “When I get home, I am so tired, I can’t even walk into my house. I just sit on the rock in the front yard.”

She used the investment funds that CLM provided to buy livestock. She didn’t have any. She was able to buy two goats and a small collection of poultry. There was enough left over to buy a piglet, though she had to take one that has not yet been weaned. It made it cheaper, but it means that it will take more time for it to start producing for her.

She likes having livestock because she says it gives her a way to take care of a problem if one comes up. “If one of my kids or my husband needs money for something, I can sell an animal.”

She likes being part of her CLM savings and loan association, too. Each week, she can buy up to five 100-gourd shares. At the end of its 52-week cycle, members can have saved as much as 26,000 gourds, or about $200. Lucienne hopes to have saved nearly that much. Because the association’s members take out loans that they repay with interest, she should receive more than what she has saved.

She has an idea what she’s like to do with the money. A decent horse now sells for about 50,000 gourds. If the livestock she has now produces well, she might be able sell some animals to add enough money to her end-of-cycle pay out to afford one. If not, she can buy other animals with the money from her pay out and work to increase their value until she can buy a horse. Not only would a horse make the trips up and down the mountain easier, but it would greatly increase the size of the load she could make those trips with, allowing her to transform her business into something larger than it can be now.

With the youngest of her four children already six, she was surprised when she discovered that she is pregnant. Another woman might say that her pregnancy and her time nursing a new baby will interfere will her activities, but Lucienne does not think so. “I can find people to take my merchandise up and down the hill on market day.”

Clenie’s home is just across central Gwo Moulen from Lucienne’s. She and her husband live with their youngest son and a granddaughter. Her husband, Lucien, farms, both their own land and sometimes for their neighbors, and Clenie manages a small commerce.

A small commerce in Gwo Moulen usual means hiking down to the market in Laskawobas and up again. Clenie buys beans or corn. Sometimes charcoal for cooking. She can take loads down the hill thanks to a mule that she bought with a loan that she got from the local credit union. There is a small one in Gwo Moulen. The loan was for 60,000 gourds — about $460 — and the mule cost almost 70,000 gourds. She was supposed to pay the loan back in just six months. Although itt took her a little longer than that, she finally repaid it all.

But having the mule made a big difference. Clenie explains that, in Gwo Moulen, “if you don’t have a pack animal, you have to work to buy one.” It is hard to build a livelihood without one because the main markets are not close by. But in the dry season, things are even worse. Fetching all the water that a family needs can become an all-day proposition without an animal that can carry multiple jugs each trip to the spring.

Without assets other than her mule and with little investment in her small commerce, Clenie qualified for the CLM team’s EP program, a new approach for families wealthier than those who qualify for its traditional program but who might be at risk of falling into ultra poverty. She received funds to invest in her business, some coaching, and membership in a VSLA.

Clenie received 25,000 gourds to invest in income generation, and she wanted to use most of it to buy livestock. She initially planned to buy goats and turkeys, but to to save 5,000 gourds of the money to invest in commerce. When she thought about what 5,000 would be able to add to her business, however, she decided it made more sense to add to her animals, and she purchased a small hog. She will fatten it up until she can sell it.

She is excited to now have a range of different animals. Different animals can serve to help with different kinds of expenses. “Each has a role. You can have a problem that makes you lay hold of one of your turkeys. Another kind of problem just needs a chicken.” She hopes that she will be able to increase the value of her animals, especially the goats and the pig, until she can sell some of them to buy a cow. For her, owning a cow is a first step towards buying land, and she would like to have a plot somewhere down the mountain.

She also used the program to fulfill another wish. She had long wanted to have a latrine. “I don’t know if it was just laziness, but we never got around to it.” When she saw the latrines that the program was helping poorer members install, she decided the time had come. She found out what materials she needed, and she and Lucien acquired them. Then he dug the pit. They called the mason who the program had brought to the area over to her house. When he told her that she’d have to pay him herself, she answered that she understood that. And now she has her own latrine.

We wrote about Rosemitha a few months ago, shortly after she had first joined the program. She’s a single mother. She and her baby both live with her mother, who is also a member of the program. Her baby wasn’t planned. She reports that she was raped as a ninth grader. But she now seems to be organizing her life around how she can take care of her boy.

She received money to install a latrine in the yard she shares with her mother. It is the very first thing that she mentions when she’s asked how her life has changed since she joined the program.

The second change she cites has little to do with CLM. By the standards of Gwo Moulen, she’s pretty well-educated, so the local school director hired her to teach first grade. She asked her case manager whether it was okay for her to take the job, but the CLM could not have been happier.

She likes the work. She spends her afternoons studying the Haitian government’s program for first grade, and the school’s principal is generous with advice. He held a first teacher training for the staff at the beginning of the year, and Rosemitha says he plans more through the year. The post pays just 5,000 gourds per month. That’s less than $40. And Rosemitha knows that it is not a lot. “But it is better than sitting around and not doing anything.”

She received 23,000 gourds to invest in economic activities, and she used all of it to buy livestock. She bought two goats, a pig, a turkey, and a chicken. The pig died shortly after she bought it, but she’s confident she’ll be able to replace it by the end of December, and she’s determined to do so. Like Clenie, she likes having different sorts of animals. Both for the reason that Clenie cites — the need to have assets with different values that you can sell to address different size needs — and because having different kinds of animals reduces risk. If one sort has problems, the other might be unaffected.

She likes participating in her savings and loan association. “It’s teaching me to save. If you try to put money away at home, you can decide to spend it.” She is not able to buy five shares — the most the rules allow — every week, but she buys some every week. She doesn’t yet know what she will do with the money she’s saved, but she suspects she’ll want to buy more livestock.

She just took out her first loan from the association. It was for 3,000 gourds, and she’s using the money to start a very small commerce. She has bought kasav, a Haitian flatbread made of manioc, and peanuts to make peanut butter. She plans to sell kasav bere, flatbread spread with peanut butter, an inexpensive and popular snack.

She has a clear plan for the next few years. As soon as her boy his weaned, she wants to return to school. She’ll go down to Laskawobas on Mondays, and come home on Fridays. Her baby will stay with her mom, who seems pleased at the prospect of Rosemirtha getting her education back on track.

Guerdline Jean is what the CLM team calls a “special case.” In the language of CLM, that means that our team did not initially find her by going through the lists of community members living in poverty that we typically compile at a neighborhood meeting. She did not appear on any list. She was not mentioned at the community meeting because she wasn’t really part of the community. But while our staff was in the neighborhood, looking for everyone on the list, they came across her. At the time, she, her partner Anténor, and their first child were staying with Anténor’s younger sister. Chatting with Guerdline, our team heard her story, and they added her to our list.

At the time, she and Anténor had nothing of their own. They had no livestock, no land. When they weren’t staying with his sister, they were living in a rented room. Guerdline would buy food on credit to make their meals, and she’d pay what she owed when Anténor occasionally got construction work or work in someone’s field. They could not depend on having food to eat every day.

When she’s asked what has changed since she joined the program, she is quick to respond. “Everything.”

The cash stipend helped her take a small, first step. “I got 500 gourds every week, so I did not need to buy on credit so often.”

She used the first payment of the investment funds that the program set aside for her to buy two goats. One had two bucks, and the other had a doe. She has five, and the two older females are pregnant again. She plans to let the two bucks get bigger until she can sell them and buy two additional females in their place. And she has a plan for all those goats. “When I have enough, I will sell some to buy a cow or to make improvements to my house.”

She had wanted to use the second payment of her investment fund to start a small commerce, but she was pregnant at the time, and she couldn’t hike around with her wares. She did not see herself as someone who would be able to sell from her home. “If you sell out of your home, neighbors are always asking to buy on credit. Then they don’t pay.” So, she used the money instead to buy a sheep and a couple of chickens. The chickens died, but the sheep had its first lamb, and it’s pregnant again.

Most interestingly, Guerdline also has a pig, which she purchased since she joined the program. She explains that she purchased the pig out of money she saved over time from Anténor’s earnings. So, an obvious question presents itself: Why couldn’t she buy something like that pig before she joined the program? CLM has had nothing to do with what Anténor earns. Guerdline’s answer is clear and telling: “I never knew how to do it.” She explains her answer. “The advice I get helps me see what I can do.”

The couple also bought a house near Guerdline’s parents. “Anténor wanted to move away from his family.” The house and the land it’s on will cost 150,000 gourds, or just over $1,100. But the seller was willing to wait as Anténor sells the land he has in his family’s neighborhood. He’ll then use that money to pay for their new place.

The new house is outside of the area where the CLM team is working right now, but it is close enough that the team can still arrange regular home visits. Guedline takes a motorcycle taxi back to her old neighborhood once a week so she can participate in her VSLA. The ride costs her 150 gourds, but it is worth it. “It gives you a way to save money.” She walks home, but she pays for a taxi to get there to avoid the penalty her group assigns to late arrivals.

Because she and Anténor already owned a home, they did not need to buy home repair materials. Guerdline is not ready to go back into small commerce, and she plans to use her construction money to do so. Her child is now old enough that her mother can babysit when Guerdline goes out, and the older women is happy to do so. Guerdline is planning to buy the sorts of household goods – curtains and bedlinen – that Haitian families like to buy in the last months of the year to prepare for the New Year’s celebration.

Widlande Ruphen lives along the rocky stream that runs through the middle of Grankwa. She and her partner, Orvens, live in a small how with their two young children. Widlande’s younger sister sometimes stays with them as well.

Widlande has been struggling to walk since 2018, and she isn’t sure why. She can hobble along, but she’s unsteady on her feet. It isn’t pain. It’s weakness. She has trouble with her balance. It has kept her close to home for all that time, so the pressure has fallen onto Orvens to be the family’s sole earner. He’s a hardworking farmer, but the couple does not have their own land. He farms as a sharecropper, giving half of every harvest to the land’s owners.

They were living in a rented room and, as Widlande says, they would eat when they had food. They had no livestock, and Widlande had no business of her own at all.

Widlande joined CLM, and she asked the team to buy her goats. She was able to get three with the money available. One of the three died, but she was able to replace it. The three goats are yet to reproduce, but Widlande remains hopeful. At the end of her VSLA’s 12-month cycle, she was able to use her pay-out to buy a pig and a couple of chickens. So, she is starting to accumulate a small measure of wealth.

She has also started a small commerce. She began by purchasing fish from merchants, who bring it to Gwomòn from Gonayiv. But it has to sell fast to stay fresh, and she found it didn’t always sell well. And since she can’t get around, she was restricted to selling in her own neighborhood, where people are already inclined to want to buy on credit. And it was hard to say both because they were her neighbors and because the fish could go bad.

So, she switched businesses. She began buying cookies and crackers. She also makes and sells gingerbread made with the local molasses. She sells them by the side of the road, across the stream from her home. Her profits are minimal, but they are extremely dependable. When I suggested that such a small business might not even be worth her time, she blanched. “I know I always have something, even if it is only a hundred gourds.

And she has a secondary business that has been helping a lot. She and Olvens bought the small plot they built their new home on. They made only a downpayment, but the landowner has been willing to let them take over the land while they pay off the balance they owe. And in the back of the plot, they found a treasure. The trees there are a good source of djondjon, a mushroom prized by Haitian cooks. Widlande can collect 2,500 gourds or more of it every week, at least during rainy season.

Between that extra income and her good management, Widlande has been able to accomplish a lot. The CLM program gave her 14 sheets of roofing, but she bought eight more by herself to complete the roof of her new home. Then she bought 23 more sheets to enclose her house. She explains why she chose to enclose her home with roofing, rather than stones or wood, which are more common choices. “It’s faster.” And she smiles as she speaks of buying the 31 sheets of roofing one at a time, as she was able to set aside the 750 gourds each of them cost.

Now Widlande is looking ahead. She is hoping that the goats will begin to reproduce. Having some that she can sell can help her achieve other things she would like to do. She wants to own a cow, and she wants money to invest to improve the home that she and Olvens have built. Beyond that, her focus is simple. “I want to send my children to school until they graduate.”

Marie lives in a small house in Gwo Lyann, a neighborhood along the ridge that runs east from Gwo Moulen towards Bwa. Wouj, the market near the top of the neighboring hill. Until 2022, she and her family were living a very different life from the one they live now.

He husband, Prophete, is a farmer, and she both farmed with him and earned money separately through small trading. She would buy merchandise — mostly basic groceries — down in Laskawobas or Bwa Wouj and sell them in Gwo Moulen. She sometimes earned additional income by making sweets that she could sell to school children, who liked them as an inexpensive school-time snack. She also knows how to sew, and though she doesn’t have her own machine, she would sometimes use one at her sister’s house. The couple’s younger children were in school. Two were getting ready to take the national 9th-grade graduation exam.

But one day, she was preparing to do her wash at the water source down below her home. She had been filling five-gallon buckets of water, one after another, because she did not like have to stop to get more water once she started the laundry. She had made hot chocolate for the kids, and sent them off to school. Suddenly, her foot slipped out of her plastic sandal, and she felt a sharp pain in the sole. That pain quickly was shooting up her leg. She fought her way through the rest of her laundry, but when she was ready to hike back up the path to get home, she needed help to get there.

Though she wasn’t sure what had happened, she initially hoped the pain would pass. Going to see a doctor is not a small matter when you live where she lives. There are no roads that lead to Gwo Moulen, the central community in the area, that even a motorcycle can travel. Under the best of circumstances, a healthy young person needs at least two hours to hike up from Laskawobas, where there is a hospital. The hike down might seem easier, but it is steep and rocky in places, so for someone struggling it, too, is worth trying to avoid.

By the time Marie and her family decided that she really had to see someone, she could not walk at all. They made a stretcher for her, and carried her all the way down. She went to the hospital in Laskawobas, which referred her to the larger teaching hospital in Mibalè. There she learned that she had diabetes. Doctors advised amputation, but she and her family decided against it. They couldn’t imagine how she would function at home in Gwo Lyann with just one leg. They carried her back up the hill, and she’s been spending her days sitting just inside the doorpost of her home ever since. Between the loss of all her income and the family’s declining harvests, Marie and her family have spent the years since then just getting poorer and poorer. Prophete earns money selling day labor in their neighbors’ fields, and the school in Gwo Moulen sometimes sends them food from what it prepares for the children at lunch.

At the beginning of June, Marie joined the CLM program.The couple began receiving their weekly cash stipend, and that has helped a little with daily expenses. When it was time for Marie to receive the funds earmarked for her to build income, she and Prophete made a plan. She gave him the 15,000 gourds, and he bought two goats in the central market in Laskawobas. After paying for their purchase papers, the ropes to keep them tied, and a cheap meal to give him the strength to hike back home, Prophete returned with 600 gourds that the couple used for two very small, young hens. They are now waiting to receive the balance of the investment fund. Members generally receive the funds in two payments. Marie and Prophete already have a plan. They would like to add a pig and a turkey to their collection of livestock.

And Marie is thinking about how to get back into to commerce as well. She thinks she could sell groceries out of her home. She’ll just need to depend on Prophete and others to hike off to do her buying. But she thinks that will take more cash than she has right now. On the other hand, she could re-start her business making and selling sweets with much less. She imagines that 5,000 gourds would be enough, and she is now considering a loan from her VSLA as a way to get started.

Marie lives just east of Gwo Moulen, and Rosemitha lives just west of it.

Rosemitha and her mother, who is also a CLM member, have been living there since her father died and her mother moved in with another man. Rosemitha is her mother’s youngest, and her stepfather raised her his own child. “Our relationship has always been good, and I think it always will be good.”

She was a schoolgirl, getting ready to take her 9th-grade graduation exam, when she was raped by a man visiting from the Dominican Republic. He immediately went back to the D. R. She was three months pregnant by the time she took the exam. She passed the exam, but gave up the idea of continuing in school in order to care for her child.

She, her mother, and her stepfather all earn money in their neighbors’ fields. A day of work pays 200 – 250 gourds, less than $2. There are five of them in the home, plus Rosemitha’s baby, because her mother is raising two of her brother’s children. “When there’s food in the home, we have plenty to eat. But we live with whatever we have.” When they can make enough helping others farm, they can use some of the cash they earn to plant their own fields as well. That helps a lot. But everything depends on the days of field labor they are able to sell.

Things have gotten a little bit easier since she and her mother joined the program, but not a lot. While they have been receiving their stipend, they are reluctant to spend very much of it. “If someone comes along to help you,” Rosemitha explains, “you have to help yourself as well.” They buy food with some of the stipend, but they try to save some of it as well. After six meetings of her VSLA, Rosemitha already has 2,700 gourds saved. And she has come to see that she could have been saving all along. She could have worked to put away even a small portion of her earnings from farmwork. But the VSLA has made it easier. “It pressures you to save.”

She used the first portion of her investment fund to buy two goats and a turkey. They are the animals, she says, that are easiest to care for. She hopes to buy more poultry with the balance of her investment fund when she receives it. She would like eventually to start a small commerce, too, but she wats to wait until her baby less dependent on her being there to nurse.

Murlande Mauralien lives in Fon Pay. She and her older sister, who is also a program member, each have their own small house in the yard that belongs to their parents. She lives with her husband Claudet and the couple’s two children.

Murlande has always been the family’s most consistent earner. Claudet takes small jobs around the neighborhood when he can find them, and those jobs can bring in more than Murlande’s work does, but only when he can find them. Murlande goes to downtown Bonbadopolis every market day, where she sells laundry products: soap, detergent, bleach, etc. She buys what is now about 5,000 gourds worth of product when she gets to market, and sells it by carrying it around the market with her, calling out her wares.

She’s been running the business since she had her first child, and she thought of the business model herself. “When you are bringing up a child, you look for a way.”

She had a serious problem to overcome. She had no business capital. So, she would go from one of the larger merchants to the next, asking them to sell to her on credit. She would bring them their money at the end of the day. It would increase their sales effortlessly if they could trust her. For her part, she’d make a little profit that she could spend on groceries that she’d take home at the end of the day. But she could never get ahead. There were just too many expenses to manage with very little in earnings.

She joined the CLM program, and things have started to change. She has been part of a savings group, and has been buying five 100-gourd shares at every weekly meeting.

This is extraordinary. While it is true she has already received 2,000 gourds in cash stipends, it is hard to imagine her simply saving all of it, and even if she did, she’s already bought more than 2,000 gourds of shares. When asked to explain her success, she says two things. First, that she never had a way to save. But she also points to the training that she’s received from program staff. “They taught me to focus on the profit I make and what I should do with it.”

When she was ready to receive her first transfer of business assets, she could have chosen to invest in her business. She could switch to buying merchandise with her own money or add more merchandise beyond what she gets with her credit. But she didn’t. She plans to do that when she receives the second part of her transfer, but with the first she bought two goats. She hopes they will produce offspring and that eventually she’ll be able to buy her own plot of land.

Guerta Augustin lives with her husband Talus and five of their six children in Bwa Nèg, in Bonbadopolis. She has two older children from a previous relationship. Her oldest daughter is married, living with her own husband, and her second lives with Guerta’s mother. But neither lives far, and Guerta sees them both often. Guerta sent one of her girls, a twelve-year-old, to live with her sister-in-law when that woman became pregnant with her first child. The woman asked Guerta to send her niece to her. She needed help. Guerta understand’s the woman’s need, and she is happy about the way she treats Guerta’s daughter, so for now just the seven of them are at home.

Talus was once the main earner in the household. Guerta describes him as a hardworking farmer, and he would farm their own small plot of land, but he’d also work also for their neighbors. But he broke his arm badly, and though the break healed, he can no longer do heavier tasks. He gets fewer, smaller jobs working for others even as the couple’s own crops have been decreasing. Guerta’s income became more and more important to the family.

She’s a weaver, making sleeping mats and other products out of the leaves of the latanyè, a variety of palm that grows like a bush, low to the ground. More important for her income than sleeping mats, are the saddles she makes, mainly for donkeys and motorcycles. These saddles are used mainly to load five-gallon jugs of water for trips to and from the water sources scattered around the area. The saddles are important for local life, and there is always a market for them. Most are sold even before they are finished. But they involve a lot of work. With her household chores to do as well, she needs three to four days to produce just one. And even the larger ones, for motorcycles, sell for just 400 gourds, or about $3. Those for donkeys, for only 250.

Home itself is a problem, though. They used to live with Talus’s parents, but his siblings were consistently unkind to Guerta. The couple was made to feel unwelcome, so they had to move away. Without a home of their own, they talked to a man who had abandoned his late parents’ home to move into the one he built with his wife. They asked whether they could use the parents’ empty house. The man agreed, and they have been living there for four years, but the man’s wife and his siblings have never been happy about the arrangement, so Guerta would like to move as soon as they can. “Even if we have to build on land we can farm, I want to have my own house.”

As much as Guerta needs to increase her income, you might expect that she’d use the first investment funds that the CLM program would transfer to her to create a small commerce. But that isn’t what she did. “I can’t have a commerce without a home.”

She decided to buy goats instead. “I wanted to buy goats because I didn’t want the money to just pass through my hands.”

And she got lucky. The day she went to market with her case manager, she found someone selling a mature nanny with two young female kids, not quite weaned. She was able to buy all three.

Within a few months, and with a little luck and a lot of attention to her animals, she could have three fertile females reproducing at once. She and Talus have already begun assembling the lumber they will need to build their home, and the goats may quickly help them buy the rest that they lack. But her real plan for the goats is to use them to take care of the regular expenses she encounters, school fees and the like.

She hopes to be able to start a small commerce once she has a home to put merchandise in. But she has another transfer of investment funds due to her, and her case manager might need to talk with her about the sorts of businesses she could try even before she has a place at home to store any wares.

Rosena Derima lives in the hills of northern Bedeyenn, the smallest of the four communes in Haiti’s lower Northwest. She was living with three daughters and a grandchild in a small, leaking, straw-covered shack. Her oldest daughter left the granddaughter with her shortly after the girl was born, and then she disappeared. “I haven’t heard from my daughter since. I guess I’m the girl’s mother now.”

Before she joined the CLM program, she fed the children by doing laundry for other families in the small nearby community of Dame or in one of the larger towns farther up the road to the north, Ma Wouj or Jan Rabel. She could make about 250 gourds, which is now just under $2, for a day’s work. If she was lucky, she would get two to four days of work in a week.

When her daughter-in-law was kicked out of the rented home she shared with her four kids. Rosena felt she had no choice but to invite them to join her, even if it was hard to imagine when everyone would possibly sleep. Now there are eleven in their tiny home.

She was anxious to start a business when she joined the program, so she used 750 gourds of the money that she received as her cash stipend, and she bought a sack of cooking charcoal. Charcoal production is one of the main sources of cash income in the Northwest. She borrowed a neighbor’s donkey, and she brought the charcoal for sale to Jan Rabel. She made a profit of 250 gourds.

When she had first spoken to her case manager about how she wanted to invest the business capital that the program would provide, she told him that she wanted to sell charcoal but also to buy and sell goats. As soon as she came back from her first experience selling charcoal, however, she changed her mind. “You can’t lose money with charcoal. Wherever you find profit, that’s where you have to stay.” 

So she decided to throw all the 15,000 gourds she would get from her first CLM transfer of cash entirely into charcoal. She bought 20 sacks, and she has been bringing them to market two days a week as quickly as the she can. They sell well, and she has been managing her money carefully, always making sure that she can feed her kids but also that she can buy shares at the weekly meetings of her savings and loan association. 

She even saved enough to buy a piglet from a neighbor whose sow had a litter. She got the piglet relatively cheaply — it cost just 3,500 gourds — because she paid before it was weaned. Now she’s waiting to take it home. A lot of pigs in her area died of Teschen disease in the last few years, and she knows that raising pigs is risky, but she decided to try anyway. “A pig can take me out of the hole I am in so quickly. If mine has a litter, there could be six or eight or ten piglets. That’s a lot of money.”

The thing most limiting her charcoal business right now is not having her own pack animals. Bringing charcoal to the market any other way would be too expensive, but her neighbor’s donkey can take just two, so that means it could take five weeks to sell all her charcoal. She will need to think about buying less merchandise next time and investing some of her capital in something else. But, for now, she is excited about how things are going. “I am not going to tear up my hands doing people’s laundry anymore.”

Alicil Fatil lives a few minutes away from Rosena. If you ask her, she’ll say that she is a mother of eight, though one of her eight children died very young. She gave away four of the others to be raised by other families because she could not take care of them. “I see them when I want to. They don’t live far. And they are all in school. I think they are doing well.”

She lives in a well-made cinderblock home with a good tin roof. But the house does not belong to her. She doesn’t even pay rent. It was built by a charity that worked in the area. It belongs to woman who’s since passed away. There was no one in it, and Alicil’s husband Ebert asked the late owner’s son whether he, Alicil, and her kids could use one of the rooms until they could find a place of their own. That was four years ago. “I am thirsty for my own home,” Alicil says. “When you live in someone else’s place you feel hemmed-in.” She shrinks her body noticeably as she says it, as if to demonstrate her problem.

She and Ebert now live in the home with her three remaining children and two of her grandchildren. Ebert is not father to any of them. But she likes the way he treats them. “Anyone would think that he’s their father. If I had known him at the time, I wouldn’t have had to send the other children away.”

Before they joined the CLM program, Alicil earned income by working in her neighbors’ fields. She’d generally make about 100 gourds for a half-day’s labor. Ebert contributed by making charcoal out of trees on his family’s land. But things had been getting harder and harder, because Ebert was becoming less and less healthy. He simply could not do all the hard work he was previously able to do.

When Alicil received her first cash transfer, she bought charcoal just as Rosena did. She bought a first sack, and when she sold it she bought another. She kept saving part of her profit to add to her capital, and soon she was buying four sacks at a time.

When she received business capital from the CLM program, she invested some into her charcoal business. This time, she bought a tree and hired some men to turn it into charcoal for her. She also invested part of her capital in the purchase of a goat. “I wanted a goat so that if something happens to my business I will have something I can sell to get started again.”

And Alicil has a goal. She is working hard to save money in her savings and loan association. She hopes that, by the end of the year, she’ll have saved enough to buy a donkey.

Rose André. lives in Hat, a farming community between the Artibonit River and the road that runs east out of Laskawobas towards Beladè and the Dominican Republic. She lives in the same lakou, or yard, that she was born in, sharing her house with her two younger children and a grandchild. Her brother and sister-in-law live with their children in a small house less than 20 feet away. Rose André’s oldest child lives and works in the DR, and her second child lives with the girl’s father.

For the past three years, she has been sharing the house with Renold. They couple does not have children together, but Renold has no other children and Rose André likes the way he treats hers. “”He’s nice to them and he helps them.”

Before she joined CLM, she and her family were getting by mainly through farming, planting manioc and sweet potatoes on rented land and planting plantains right around their house. Hat is fertile and wet, so folks with access to farmland can profit, and that means that she and Renold could usually find farm work, even just day-labor, to earn a measure of cash when they needed it. She herself mentions their need to buy beans.

She had tried to start a business. She borrowed money from a community association and bought cheap housewares, like buckets, washbasins, and other plastic items, at the international market in Elias Piña, inside the Dominican border. She would bring her merchandise to various local markets — Mibalè, Kolonbyè, Laskawobas, Kwafè, and Mache Kana — and hike around calling out and selling her wares. But her household expenses were too much for the business to support, and the money she invested slipped through her hands. “I didn’t have any of my own money in it. I had to pay back some every month. And also pay for the kids’ school and feed them every day. The money disappeared.”

Since she joined CLM, Rose André has been working hard to learn to sign her name. The photos below are from Rose André’s CLM information book, where she signs for her 600-gourd weekly stipend. On the left, she was signing with a thumb print, but now she writes her whole name.

And she has also started to make a plan. The team has begun transferring business assets to members of her cohort, and Rose André knows what she would like to do when she receives hers. She wants to start by buying a large female goat. “They say I should buy two smaller ones, but if they are small they can take time to have their first kids. A big female can begin to produce right away.” She explains that she will receive 23,000 gourds to spend on assets, and she figures she can get the sort of goat she’d like for 10,000 gourds.

She will use the rest of the money to go back into business selling housewares. “It will hold up this time because I will have mine own money in it. I can borrow money to make the business larger, but most of the money I won’t have to pay back.”

She has a clear way of saying how she’d like her life to change as she moves forward in the program. “I want to be able to feed us with my own money. I don’t want to have to ask the merchants to sell me food on credit anymore.”

Wideline is excited to be part of the CLM program. “It is a family that’s formed. If I have a problem, I can call Makenson. He’s there for me.” Makenson is Wideline’s case manager, and she likes his weekly visits.

She lives in Hat now, but she comes from Flande, an area west of downtown Laskawobas on the road to Mibalè. “When you’re the woman, you go where your husband takes you.” But she and her partner have neither farm land nor their own home. Right now, they rent the place where they live for 10,000 a year. That’s about $75, which might seem like very little for a twelve-month rental, but it was a lot for her and her partner, Roro, to assemble.

She used to support her family with a small grocery business that she ran out of her home. She sold basic foods, like rice. But keeping her kids fed and paying for their school ate away at her capital until she had no business left at all. She also used to plant vegetables, like okra, that she could take to the market for sale, but she lost access to the land she was farming. After that, she had to support her family with whatever she could earn working in her neighbors’ fields.

Like Rose André, she has been thinking about what she will do with the investment capital the CLM program will provide, and like Rose André she wants to invest both in goats and in commerce. She plans to use some of the money to get her food business going again, but she also wants to get into regular market trading. That means going to the market with cash to buy and then sell whatever seems profitable.

But she’s most excited about what a goat can do for her. “If I have one goat, and can eventually have two. Keeping goats can help me to have a place to live, to pay for school, and to handle my problems.”

Gwo Moulen is an agricultural community along the north side of the ridge that separates Laskawobas from Savanèt in Central Haiti. It is a long way from downtown Laskawobas, a long way even from Pouli, the closest that any kind of road comes to the place. Getting to Gwo Moulen means a hard uphill hike that takes a couple of hours.

Roseline was born in the area, but she moved down to Pouli as a young girl. After meeting her husband Simon, she moved back to Gwo Moulen to be with him. They now live in a small home with their two young children, ages seven and four, on land that belongs to Simon’s family. They have not yet been able to send the kids to school. They can’t afford to. But, what is worse, there are days when they don’t have anything to feed them.

The couple are farmers, and they earn what they need to farm their own small plot by working in their neighbors’ fields. They can sell a hard day’s work for 200-250 gourds, which is less than $2.

Roseline was excited right away by the training she participated in at the very beginning of the program. She was especially struck by what she learned about farming peppers, something she’s never tried to grow. “They said I can just put the seeds in water to see whether they are good. Good seeds don’t float.” She wants to start growing peppers right away. It does not take much to plant a small garden, and she can sell what she grows at the market.

She plans to use the resources that the program will make available to invest more in her garden and to start raising livestock. She thinks that if she takes good care of goats, they will multiply. Eventually she’ll be able to sell of some goats to buy a cow and then, farther down the road, maybe some land.

Maude and her husband Brunel live in Gwo Moulen as well. She moved there when she and Brunel first got together about six years ago. They are in a house on land that belongs to her father-in-law. She’s originally from Do Bwa Wouj, a market community located about an hour’s hike eastward along the ridge.

The couple has three children. They were able to send the two older ones to school this year, but there’s a catch. They bought the uniforms and the supplies, but they were not able to save up the school fees. Recently, the principal sent the children home until their tuition has been paid.

She and Brunel support the family as day-laborers. They sell a day’s work in their neighbors’ fields for just under $2 each. “It’s enough to feed us,” Maude explains, at least when the folks who hire them pay. Sometimes, however, days can go by. And she adds, “On days when we can’t find work, we have nothing to eat.”

She’s been thinking about how to use the funds the program will provide her for investment, and she feels sure of one thing. She cannot try small commerce. If she tries to sell something in Gwo Moulen, people will expect to buy on credit and then they won’t pay. So she’d rather get livestock. “M ka chanje bèt.” That means that she can take care of animals: goats, pigs, even chickens. She hopes that the animals will eventually make it possible for her to buy some farmland so that she and Brunel can work their own land rather than their neighbors’.

Germanie Antoine lives just off the road that leads from Savanèt eastward towards the Dominican border. When she and her husband, Jeangard, joined the program, they were just getting by. The family of four lived in a single small room that they rented. Its roof was no good. The family and everything they owned would be soaked by every rain.

Things were a little better during the annual avocado season. She had neighbors willing to sell her their harvest on credit. “They knew me and they knew my father. If I didn’t pay them, they knew where to go.” She’d haul the avocados away for sale down the dirt road that passes through her neighborhood, at the Dominican border, and then return home to pay what she owed.

But the rest of the year, she, Jeangard, and their two young children lived mainly off whatever he could earn as a day-laborer, helping skilled construction workers by mixing or hauling cement. “I had nothing. No livestock. I didn’t have a chicken. I didn’t have even a single chicken feather to clean out my ears.”

When she joined the CLM program, she asked for goats and small commerce, but she did not make much progress with her goat. The program gave her one, and it had a first litter of two, a buck and a doe. When it was time to register her boys for school, she sold the buck to pay their tuition. The young doe was stolen shortly after that. The first goat became pregnant again, but died suddenly, just before it should have given birth.

Her case manager encouraged her to think about the small commerce she’d like to establish, and they came up with a plan. “You could have a suitcase of money at home and not know what to do with it. The CLM team gives you advice. Even if you have nothing, they can help you succeed.”

The business model they came up with was straightforward. Germanie would buy groceries on Thursdays at the large market in downtown Savanèt. “I put them on display at the market, and sell what I can there. I bring home whatever’s left, and sell it from my house the rest of the week.”

She started with the money that the team transferred to her for small commerce, but she soon added to the business with credit from her savings and loan association. She now has about 20,000 gourds in the business. “I cannot buy for all that money every week, but, when I am short, people sell me the rest on credit. They know I can pay.”

The business took off. It helped her manage her household expenses, and did much more. She repaid the loan easily. She used her income to make weekly contributions to a sòl, a traditional Haitian savings club, and to her association as well. She bought another goat, which has already produced offspring twice, three small goats in total.

When she, her husband, and her case manager saw that her husband was not getting any work, they came up with a plan for him as well. They took proceeds from her business so that he could start a business of his own. He buys Dominican plantains at the border, and he brings them back for sale to Savanèt. His customers are mainly wholesalers, who bring them for sale to Mibalè.

With them both now bringing in steady income, they have been able to accomplish a lot. First, they bought a very small parcel of land close to the room they had been renting. Then, they managed all they they had to do to build a home on it. By this time, each had family in the DR, and they got help from her brother and others who were anxious to know that they had moved into their own home.

And their income is growing. When her turn came to receive the money from her sòl, Germanie added to it with a new loan from her savings and loan association, and the couple bought a used motorcycle. They rent it to a taxi driver, who pays them a fixed sum every week.

Johanna Josue joined the CLM program as part of the same group that Germanie was part of. The two women are just about a month from graduating.

Johanna and her husband had been living in the Dominican Republic with their sons, but she had no legal status, so she was always at risk. She and her husband decided she’d return to Savanèt with their boys. He sent money for her to rent an apartment, but he found another woman shortly after that and then stopped sending support Johanna and the children. When Johanna no longer heard from him at all, she asked folks whom they new back in the DR, and she heard that he had moved on to Brazil.

Initially, Johanna struggled. She supported the boys as best she could as a day laborer. She would look for work in her neighbors’ fields or doing someone’s laundry. For the most part, she was able to keep them fed. When she joined the program, she reported that they occasionally went a day or more without a meal, but only rarely. But she could send just one of her three boys to school. She didn’t have the money to send the other two.

Like Germanie, Johanna asked her case manager to provide goats and small commerce. She, however, took two goats, rather than one, and left less of her transfer for commerce. But shortly after one of the goats had its first offspring, thieves took all three.

Like Germanie, however, her small commerce is what has really helped her succeed. She tried several businesses — school supplies, laundry soap, cosmetics — looking for what worked best. She eventually found a body lotion that sells very well. She buys it in large quantities in Laskawobas, then brings it home for sale. Most days, she sells it from a small stand on the side of the road, but on Saturdays she walks around the area, selling it from a basket she carries on her head. “It sells much better when I walk around with it.”

Her business model is odd. She travels to Lascawobas only every couple of months and buys her merchandise. It then takes her two months to sell out. She would like to have a commerce that turns over more quickly, but, she says, “you have to do what you’re comfortable with.”

She earns enough to manage her household expenses, to buy shares each week in her savings and loan association, and to contribute to her sòl. She contributes 2,500 gourds to the latter every week. The sòl is important. She uses its pay-out to buy the merchandise, so as long as she contributes consistently, she can spend the rest of what she earns.

Like Germanie, Johanna too needed a place to live. Thanks to conversations between her, her case manager, and a member of the committee of leaders who support the program in her neighborhood, she had the chance to buy a small piece of land. The committee member was willing to sell it for just 75,000 gourds, and he and his wife agreed that Johanna could build on it and then move in right away, rather than having to wait until she finished paying. Johanna’s sister lives in the Dominican Republic. She saw that Johanna had managed to build a small house that she shares not only with her boys, but with the two women’s mother, too. She paid Johanna to add another room to the home that she can stay in during her occasional visits. Johanna eventually added a third room herself, too.

Johanna wants to do more. She has been accumulating livestock. The program helped her replace the goats that were stolen with two more. One of these has had a kid, and the other is pregnant. She has also been purchasing poultry. Eventually, she would like to build a room out of block to add to her new home.