Gerbelin Brevil has long been a leader in Do Bwa Wouj, a market community near the ridge that separates Laskawobas and Savanèt, two communes in central Haiti. He’s a farmer, but people in the community look to him for leadership generally. “Someone who wants to try something up here probably needs to contact me.”

The CLM team was working in Pouli, a populous area at the base of the hill below Do Bwa Wouj. One of its staff members was a local man, and he made sure that the team was aware of the community up the mountain from the area where they were working at the time. He also gave them Brevil’s name as a contact for when they began to look at the area. “When the CLM team first came up the mountain, folks here didn’t even want to talk to them until they could say that they had spoken with me. I organized the first meetings. I even found them a house to rent so they had a place to stay.

Since Fonkoze first piloted the CLM program in 2007, it has been organizing committees of local leaders to support the work. Members of these committees are, in a way, selected by the program members. When women are first invited to join CLM, the same person asking them to join the program also asks them who there is in the community whom they can turn to when they have a problem. Some will tell you that they have no one, but many will cite a name or two. The team compiles lists of the names that come up most, and it invites them to serve on a committee that will support the program’s work.

Brevil was named by many of the members, and he was happy to serve, especially when he heard what the program would offer. “It seemed like the kind of thing that I would have wanted to do myself if I had had the means.”

CLM seemed different to him from other programs that he’s heard of. “It’s just different. First of all, they took the time to find the people who really need it. Second, they do everything they say they are going to do. Third, they don’t just give people stuff. They accompany them.”

He likes being part of a committee. “It teaches us things, and it becomes a source of motivation.” He is especially pleased with the savings and loan associations that he and his fellow committee members have helped the team establish for program members. “We need to keep the associations going even after the CLM team is gone.”

His committee has already accomplished important things for the program members, beyond helping them establish their associations. The committee kept one member from selling a pig at the local market without having discussed it with the team. He also talks of members who need lumber as support posts for the hut that encloses their latrine or for their new home and about how the committee has helped them get hold of such posts and of palm trees that can be made into planks to use as their homes’ walls.

But now he’s working on a more serious situation. One of the members in his neighborhood doesn’t have land to build a house on. She’s been living on a parcel that belongs to the Roman Catholic Church, and Brevil has taken on the job of negotiating with the sacristan, the chapel’s main authority, for the member to be able to build her new home on church land.

“We are the program’s eyes. Case managers see members once a week, but we are with them all the time. We keep track of what they do. We help them keep from wasting what they’ve been given.”

Back when Elsie was in the CLM program in 2013 and 2014, the staff discovered she had a problem. She was explaining to a manager why she could not send her second son, Kervenson, to school. She said he couldn’t ever sit on the benches because of back pain. Sitting down, he would support his weight on his hands as he slumped forward, lowering his head.

Back pain in a a boy just four or five years old didn’t make sense to the CLM team. So they looked for someone who knew more than they did. At the time, the new Partners in Health/Zanmi Lasante University Hospital in Mibalè was establishing a physical therapy clinic. CLM staff called the physical therapist who was working to organize it. He suggested the team bring Kervenson to the emergency room right away. The problem probably was nothing serious, but it could be Pott Disease, tuberculosis of the spine. Better to be certain.

When the team got Kervenson to the emergency room, things became much clearer, but in a surprising way. At least they did as soon as the medical staff there took Kervenson’s vital signs. Elsie’s belief that he had backpain was mistaken. Kervenson had never been able to make his mother understand what was really wrong with him. He was not old enough to know how to explain. And she had been taking him to various clinics for years without ever finding a solution.

Kervenson’s problem was not pain, it was severe shortness of breath. This was caused, it turned out, by a congenital deformation of his heart. He wasn’t getting oxygen. That showed up immediately when the university hospital nurses checked his vitals. Kervenson would need surgery.

Haiti could not offer pediatric heart surgery. But Partners in Health had an answer. They were partnering with an American organization, the Haiti Cardiac Alliance. HCA would find a hospital in the States willing to organize the operation free of charge. The CLM team would only need to help Elsie and Kervenson get the passports and visas their trip would require. That took a number of trips from Mibalè to Pòtoprens. CLM hired agents to help with the Haitian passports, and they took the pair to Haiti’s immigration office. CLM staff then went to the American consulate with Elsie and Kervenson as well.

Kervenson and Elsie went to New Orleans. They were hosted by a Haitian-American family, and Kervenson got the medical care he needed. The photo is from their time in New Orleans.

When Kervenson returned to Haiti, his life was different. He had become healthy and playful. Previously, he had been badly behaved. Elsie had always been afraid to discipline him. But she cleared up his behavioral issues in just a few months after his return.

Ten years later, he lives along the road from Mibalè to Laskawobas with Elsie and her three other boys. He’s been seeing cardiologists in Haiti every couple of years since the operation. The team from the Haiti Cardiac Alliance had always said that he might eventually need a second operation.

In the last year or so, however, it has been harder and harder to get him seen. HCA first stopped working out of the hospital in Mibalè, and Elsie would have to take him to a children’s hospital near the new American embassy in Taba instead. But the deteriorating situation in Taba had already made the trip to the hospital there seem risky even before the gang control of the route between Pòtoprens and Mibalè became dangerous. 

Eventually, the CLM team contacted the Haiti Cardiac Alliance. They learned that HCA had a second partnership with a hospital in far northern Haiti. The team would just have to help Elsie make an appointment, then help with transportation. She, Kervenson, a CLM driver, and a member of the staff would spend a night at a hotel in Okap. They’d be able to return to Mibalè the next day.

Kervenson saw the cardiologist on April 2nd. By the end of the week, the HCA team had shared what seems like the best possible news. Kervenson’s heart functions normally. The lead doctor in Okap prescribed medications for intestinal parasites, but she said that the cardiologist’s report on the heart exams was good.  

CLM is a graduation program. That means that it is supposed to work in a manner that enables program members to function independently after 18 months. Though the team maintains friendly relations with former members, and though many of them will continue to call their case managers occasionally for advice, the main accompaniment that Fonkoze offers ends with graduation.

But there are exceptional cases, and Fonkoze is committed to staying with members for as long as it needs to. In Elsie’s case, that meant helping her get her son to a hospital in the States and then to another, ten years later, in Milo, in northern Haiti. For others, it has meant arranging cancer treatment in the Dominican Republic or facilitating access to adaptive materials, like wheelchairs or crutches. The CLM team is ready to help its members and its former members in whatever way they need it.

Lonise joined the CLM program in August 2022. She and her partner, Wilfrid, were sharing a rented room in Gwayav, one of the many small, rural neighborhoods of eastern Laskawobas. Her four children lived with them as well. The two younger ones are Wilfrid’s kids, but the two older ones are from a prior relationship. Louise feels lucky. Her older children’s father helps with their expenses, and Wilfrid treats those kids well too.

Before CLM, Wilfrid couldn’t be around very much. Lonise had never been able to earn money herself, and while she was nursing their baby, it would have been even more difficult to do so. Wilfrid supported the couple with frequent trips to the Dominican Republic. The border is nearby. He would work as a farm laborer, and then bring his earnings home.

When they joined the program, things began to change. The small weekly stipend that Lonise received gave them some cash to work with. She would use some to invest every week in the savings and loan association that the program established for her and the other CLM members in her area. Some of it could help with household expenses.

She asked the CLM team to give her goats, and they gave her two, and one had its first kid. “I never had goats before, and now I have three.” She hopes that, if she takes good care of the goats, they will continue to multiply, and she will always have animals she can sell when she needs to send her children to school.

Sending them to school this year was not a problem. When the CLM team established the savings and loan association, they planned for its cycle to end just before the beginning of school. These associations pay out everything that members have saved and all the interest that’s been earned on loans at the end of each cycle, so Lonise collected more than 10,000 gourds. It was enough to buy her children the things they needed to start the year.

She and Wilfrid have made good use of the program’s support for home construction. Their new home is nearly ready. It lacks only doors. They’ll soon be able to move from the rented room, and then they will be finished with paying rent. They have also installed a latrine, something they have never had before.

She and Wilfrid both wanted him to stop spending most of his time in the DR. He was willing to help her with her livestock and to earn what he could farming locally. But Lonise felt she needed a way to bring money into the household, too. She felt limited, however, because she was still nursing their child.

She wanted to establish a small commerce, but she had to stay around the home because she had no-one to look after her younger kids. So she thought about the kinds of things rural Haitian business people generally sell out of their homes, and she settled on two products to start with: sugar and ground, roasted coffee. She prepares the coffee herself, and sells it to neighbors who want to make their morning coffee.

She started the business with a 5,000-gourd loan from her savings and loan association, and it has taken off. She had no trouble repaying her loan. And she’s been able to invest some of her earnings back into the business, even as she’s used most of what she earns for household expenses. The business, she says, is now worth about 7,500 gourds. She’s added some products, and plans to add more. She wants to add rice and oil and a full range of basic groceries.

Rosemirline is just 18. She and her toddler live with her in-laws, the boy’s father’s parents, in Wòch Pab. Her sister-in-law, Rosemitha, a sixteen-year-old who also has a child, lives in the home too. Both Rosemirline and Rosemitha are program members. The heads of the household are not.

Rosemirline’s partner is a mason, but work for masons, especially young masons, can be hard to find in the best of times in Haiti, and these have not been the best of times. So he went to the Dominican Republic to seek farm work. He has been sending money to Rosemirline and their boy, but he cannot do so regularly. “He works way out in the countryside. He can’t always find someone to bring what he wants to send.” She thinks he’ll return soon, at least for a visit, because she needs his help to build their new home. They plan to put it on a small plot next to the house she is in right now. Her new latrine is already in place there.

With an infant in her hands, Rosemirline didn’t initially see how to start a commerce, so she asked the program just to give her goats. Her case manager Titon was able to buy three for her. Unfortunately two of them died shortly after she got them.

When livestock dies shortly after transfer, the team generally tries to replace it on the assumption that it may not have been as healthy as it appeared at purchase. Asset replacement has not yet started for the HTF cohort, however, and we do not yet know exactly what Rosemirline will receive to replace her goats. She and Titon will begin discussing it when he knows how much money is available for all the replacements needed.

In the meantime, Rosemirline would like to start a small commerce. It will be difficult for her to do so because she has no one to watch her boy, Jeanlixon. He is not yet two. What’s more difficult: Rosemitha counts on her to watch her boy, Odeson, too. He too is under two years old. Rosemitha found work as a maid in downtown Laskawobas.

If Rosemirline does start a business, it will have to be out of her home. She would like to sell rice, sugar, flour, oil: groceries in general. She thinks that she’d have customers. Her home is a little out of the way, but not too far. She knows such businesses are challenging. Neighbors will try to buy on credit, and it can be hard to get them to pay. But Rosemirline thinks she can manage.

She would be ready to start right now, but she doesn’t have the money. “Recently, things have been bad.” Ever since her weekly stipend ended, she’s been short on cash. She has had trouble making the weekly deposits she is supposed to make in her savings and loan association.

She could borrow it from the association anyway. She’s saved more than enough to qualify for a small loan, but she took out a first loan of almost 10,000 gourds to help her partner go to the DR. He sent the money for the first reimbursement, but she cannot borrow again until she has repaid the entire loan.

Edner Louis is a single father. He lives with his four children in a beat-up shack in Pouli. It is a single room, about ten feet by five or six, with walls of rotting palm wood planks and, in places where the palm wood has rotted away entirely, sheets of tach, the large, fibrous seedpods of palm trees which serve as a poor-quality but flexible building material for the poorest of Haiti’s rural poor.

They have only been living there a couple of months. Remarkably, their previous home was, in some ways, worse. Edner and his family joined the CLM program in 2022. He and his partner Merline were living with four children in an ajoupa in Pouli, an agricultural area just southeast of downtown Laskawobas. 

Ajoupa are tent-like structures, shaped like prisms, with a central beam usually held up by posts that angle up to them, forming a triangle with the ground. In the Central Plateau, they are generally covered with tach. They tend towards the ramshackle, but that wouldn’t generally matter very much because they are usually just temporary dwellings. A farmer will throw one up in a field they are working in if the field is inconveniently far from home. It gives them a place to stay when there are large tasks to accomplish in the field.

But especially poor families can find themselves making an ajoupa a permanent home, and that is what happened to Edner and Merline. They had no place of their own, but Edner worked as a field hand for a wealthier neighbor. He watched some of the man’s animals, and he did chores in the man’s fields. The neighbor allowed the family to live in his garden shed. “It wasn’t a good house, but it was what we had,” Edner explains.

Edner tried to start small businesses several times while he lived in the ajoupa. He would sell kerosene or rum and cigarettes or gasoline. But Merline couldn’t stay at home all the time, and neither could he. If the kids wandered off while their parents were out and about, his merchandise would disappear. Their ajoupa had no secure door and no place to hide anything.

And that wasn’t all they would lose. 

The tach covering their home couldn’t stand up to serious rain. The whole family would be drenched by each downpour, as would all that they had. The couple owned a bed, but rains gradually rotted out the wood. They had important papers, like birth certificates, but no place dry to store them. Edner lost his certificate to rain, but he also lost the one for one of his kids. The other were reduced to barely-legible pieces.

One day, for reasons he still cannot explain, he saw that his home’s owner was starting to hire other men to do the work Edner would normally do. The man never said anything to Edner, but Edner knew that he needed to look for another place to live.

Edner talked with a friend he often worked fields with, and the friend was willing to have Edner and his family move into the shack that sits on his land. At the time, the CLM team was in the process of distributing the materials that members would need to install a latrine, which included four sheets of roofing tin. Edner borrowed the roofing intended for his latrine to cover his new house. Now at least some of it is rain-proof.

This is where Edner’s story gets complicated. Around this time, Merline started working as a maid. It gave her a small, steady income, and soon she had left her family and moved in with another man. Shortly after that, she disappeared. We do not know why. Rumors say that she moved to the Dominican Republic, but Edner and the children have had no word of her. Without steady work from his landlord he can count on, Edner has been hustling, getting day-labor in local fields to keep the children fed and in school. He and the kids take good care of their goats, but they still have just the two that the program gave them.

He would like to open a small commerce. He has experience. And normally he would be able to take a small loan from the couple’s savings and loan association to get started. But Merline took out a loan before she left him, and she moved away without paying it back. Unless he can pay it back, he won’t be able to get a loan himself. So for the time being, he is reduced to farm labor. Fortunately, there is a lot of work available this time of year.

And he has begun to talk with his friend about the land the shack is on. The man is willing to lease it for three years initially. That’s enough time to make it worth Ender’s while to build his CLM-supported house in the space. They have agreed to postpone talk of Edner’s eventually buying the parcel, but the friend has said he might eventually be open to that, too.

Johanne and her husband were Haitians living in the Dominican Republic. Their three boys were living there with them.

She didn’t have the documents to give her legal status. The family had ongoing expenses, and she could not find work to help cover them. So the couple decided that she would return with the boys to Savanèt, where she was born and raised. Her husband stayed in the DR. He helped her rent a room for 7,500 gourds, about $50, per year. But she says that he soon found another women back where he lives, and has shown no further interest in her or their children.

When her rent was about to come due, the owner decided to double it to 15,000. There was no way for her to pay. She had just moved back to the region, and owned almost nothing. Her only source of income was occasionally doing laundry for neighbors. She looked around, and eventually found a room she could rent for just 4,000, though it is only for six months. She moved in with the boys and her mother, who helps manage the house.

She asked the CLM program for goats and small commerce. She knew she needed to create regular income to feed her boys because she has no land to farm. So, she asked for just one goat, which left her 8,000 gourds to invest in merchandise.

She and her boys take good care of the goat, and it has already had its first kid. When she began to think about investing in commerce, however, she hesitated. She realized that 8,000 gourds was more than she knew what to do with. She didn’t want to waste it. So she took 5,000, put it together with a pay out from her savings club, and bought a second goat. If she keeps succeeding with the goats, she would like to buy a cow.

She then took 3,000 and invested it in detergent and laundry soap. That sold well, but when the price of detergent rose, she switched to school supplies. She makes weekly contributions to a savings and loan association, and used a first loan from the association of 5,000 gourds to add some cosmetics to her business. “Hair jell sells the best.” When she finishes repaying that loan, she’ll take another. She would like to add detergent, laundry soap, and basic groceries to the business next.

With her rent due in the next couple of months, she is anxious to get into her own home. At first she thought it would be impossible. She owns no land. But that is where Webert is helping out.

He is a local carpenter and a preacher at her church. He also serves as a volunteer on the committee that the CLM team organized of local leaders willing to give the program and its members their support. Webert offered to sell Johanne a small plot of land for 75,000 gourds. That would be impossible for her except that Webert is willing to let her take possession of the land and build her house on it without any downpayment whatsoever. He discussed the decision with his wife, who agrees with it, but they have had to ask Johanne and her case manager not to let anyone else know. They’ve told people in their community that Johanne has paid some of the money already.

Johanne will be able to invest earnings from goats and from her growing business into the land. It will come slowly, because she also has to take care of her boys. But Webert and his wife are willing to wait.

Rosemène Elsaint lives in Gwayal, one of the small neighborhoods in Pouli, a broad area of southeastern Laskowobas. She has seven children, and about four years ago they returned to her mother’s house. Her husband had died, and she did not know what else to do.

Her family had been living in Delma, the populous residential town immediately north of Pòtoprens. Her husband worked construction, sometimes as a mason and sometimes as a supervisor. She managed a small grocery business, though she would also go to the countryside to purchase loads of produce at harvest and bring them to Pòtoprens for sale. The family was living reasonably well. Her commerce was reliable, but any time she needed extra cash, she could count on her husband to add to what she had.

After her husband passed away, her business had to bear the burden of all her household expenses, and it quickly evaporated. Back at her mother’s home, she joined a traditional Haitian savings club, called a “sòl.” Its members would make weekly contributions, and each week one member would receive the whole pot. Her friends saw her problems, and they helped her by letting her take the pot first each time through the cycle. Her sòl was thus an interest-free loan. She came to depend on the money to keep a small business afloat. She’s buy produce from farmers, and sell it in retail-sized lots. “I walk around the neighborhood selling, carrying my merchandise in a basket, and I’d sell in the market two days a week.” It helped her keep her seven children fed. By this time, her mother too was more of a dependent than a source of additional support.

She chose to invest the resources that CLM provided in goats and chickens, and her case manager bought her two goats. The chickens she purchased with the rest of the money died. The larger of the two goats is now pregnant.

The program also established a savings and loan association for her and other members, and she’s making good use of it. She no longer depends on the kindness of the fellow members of her sòl. She runs her business with money she borrows from the association. Her first loan was for 4500 gourds, a little less than $35 at the current exchange rate. She paid it back easily and took a second for 12,000. “When I have more money, I can buy more merchandise and make more money.”

She doesn’t feel as though she’s made real progress yet. Her business is more or less what it was when she used the sòl. “At least I have some goats now.”

But she has a plan. She wants to return to being a Madan Sara. That is what Haitians call the merchants who buy commodities wholesale in the countryside and ship them for sale to the cities. She thinks she’ll need about 30,000 gourds to start.

Jocelyne Michel lives in Montas. She lived in a house on her father’s land, but couldn’t get on with her sister-in-law. She chose to rent a plot for her home down the road. “I get along with my family, but it was much too hard when we lived right next to each other.” She’s been renting the same spot for six years for 5000 gourds a year. She and her children’s father separated long ago. “He wasn’t any help. He would waste any money I managed to save. He lives with another woman now.”

She would support her kids with a business that changed depending on the season. During harvest, she would buy produce from the farms along the mountainside just south of her neighborhood, and bring it to market for sale. When there was no produce to be found, she’d buy flour, oil, and seasonings, and make fried dough to sell by the side of the road.

But with all five children depending entirely on her, and school fees increasing over the years, her business was dwindling. By the time the CLM selection team came through her neighborhood, she had just enough capital left to buy a mamit or two of flour at a time — that’s a standard Haitian dry measure, about the size of a coffee-can — just enough to make a day or so or snacks. “I couldn’t save anything anymore, and it was hard to pay for school.” She was buying for 500 gourds at a time, so she only made about 200 gourds each time.

Like Rosemène, she’s made good use of her savings and loan association since she joined the program. She used a first loan of 5000 gourds to reestablish her snack business on better grounds. She was able to buy an entire sack of flour, which meant that she had less frequent need to travel downtown to buy. Travel costs are very high in Haiti right now, so saving multiple trips makes a big difference. She paid back that first loan and had enough left over to buy a small pig, even though the business was also funding household expenses.

She immediately took out a second loan, this one for 10,000 gourds. But she knew that she could not just keep growing her snack business, so she added a second business. She bought eight sacks of charcoal for cooking and sold them at considerable profit. “When I was with my husband, it was hard to lay my hands on just 100 gourds because he wasted it all. Now I’m getting ready to borrow 15,000.” She plans, for now, just to keep growing her charcoal business.

She likes her association. “It helps us save.” She’s not sure yet what she’ll do with her savings after the association’s year-long cycle is over, but she’ll have that money, and may have goats she can sell, so she’ll need a good investment plan.

Roseline Jean was born and raised in Gwayal. She and her husband had three children, but the man died in 2018, while she was pregnant with their third. After he died, she supported herself and her kids with small commerce. She counted on neighbors to lend her the couple of thousand gourds she’d need to buy produce, which she brought to market and sold in small piles. She made her purchases directly from farmers on Tuesdays and Fridays, and she brought her merchandise to market on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

She was able to keep her children fed most of the time. She could even send them to school thanks to a school director who allowed her to pay their tuition a little at a time. Before her husband passed away, he helped out by farming. When he died, she lost that source of income and had to sell the couple’s land to pay for his funeral. Even then, she still had debt, which she paid by taking work as a maid.

She had to move in with a second partner just to get herself and her children out of the street, but this second man works in the Dominican Republic, so she doesn’t see him much and he doesn’t help very much either. “He took me with my children, but I don’t have a child with him yet, so he isn’t very motivated.”

She chose to receive goats from her case manager, and though one of them died, the other is now pregnant. She is taking care of herself and her kids with a business she established with money she borrowed from her savings and loan association. She borrowed 5000 gourds, and now sells fried snacks. She made the first repayment, but has two more to go.

She is struggling. Her baby caught typhoid, and it both cost her some money but also kept her from working for a few days.

She is not sure yet how she will grow her business if this first one continues to succeed. But she hopes to use her business and her livestock to eventually buy a cow because a cow is the first step towards buying a pice of land. She would like to have her own land again.