the clients

Our organization has four different programs, which are diagrammed nicely here. Chemen Lavi Miyò (CLM – Pathway to a Better Life) and TiKredi (Little Loans – the program that I will be helping to direct) are grouped into one department, creatively named CLM/TiKredi. These two programs are different from our other programs for a number of different reasons, ranging from sources of funding to management structure, but the biggest difference between CLM/TiKredi and the others is the type of client we seek out. Our clients fall unequivocally into the category of “extreme poverty,” and the programs are designed specifically to help them out of their current situations.

When the organization was first established, CLM and TiKredi didn’t exist. It was thought that microcredit could reach all members of society, regardless of their economic status. Indeed, the idea of microcredit is to offer financial services to people who are otherwise too poor to have access to traditional services like bank lending. However, after a few years of practicing traditional microcredit techniques, the organization observed that the poorest members of Haitian society were still not successfully integrating into the program.

If you’d like to read more about the specific programs, the link above has all the information you might need. What it doesn’t have, however, is the process we use to select the clients with whom we work in CLM/TiKredi. Besides the fact that it’s what I have been doing for the past week or so, I think it’s fascinating. Here’s what we do:

1) Select an area to work in. Often times this is decided for us, as both CLM and TiKredi are mostly funded by outside sources and the donors choose where they want to work. I am currently working in an area, the central plateau, where the MasterCard Foundation has generously donated five million dollars.

2) Do a Participatory Wealth Ranking (PWR). Here’s what I think is the most innovative part. Once you have an area selected, you divide it up into sections of between 50-100 houses. Then, you invite community leaders (teachers, pastors, priests, mayors) as well as a handful of other local residents to a meeting. Together, with the community members, you draw a map of the area with all of the houses on it. Then, as a group, you go through the map and rank each house according to its level of respective wealth based on criteria you have previously established with the group. There are five possible levels. Of course, depending on the area, the criteria for each level are different. In some areas, the richest family might own a ton of land and 40 cattle (although where I am, this isn’t likely). In others, the richest person might have a couple of cows and a handful of goats.

3) Do housing verifications. After you’ve done a PWR, you make a list of all the houses and their respective levels of wealth. Then, you visit every house that falls into either of the two poorest categories. On these visits, you sit down with the female head of household (i.e. the person that is responsible for giving food to the children) and have a conversation. It is through this conversation that you get all the information you need to establish whether the woman should participate in CLM, TiKredi, or a more advanced lending program. First we look at the house: What is it made of? Do they own a bed? Do they have a radio? Is there a latrine? Then, we talk about their assets: Do they own land? How much? What about animals? After that, we ask about money: Do they make a little money? Does their husband contribute? When they go to the market, how much money do they spend? Do they have a brother in the Dominican Republic who sends them money? We ask about the kids: How many are there? How old are they? Do they go to school? Finally, we ask about food: Do you have enough food to eat? Is there any variety in your diet? Are your kids losing weight?

Here’s what a CLM/TiKredi client looks like: She lives in a mud/rock house, and she and her husband might not own it. If she has a bed, it’s a little twin bed with a metal frame. There’s no radio, no electricity, and no latrine. She gets her water from a stream. If she owns any land, it’s hardly anything at all and at most she has a couple of chickens running around any maybe a pig or a goat. A woman who qualifies for CLM probably has no money at all and doesn’t have any capacity to do business. A woman who qualifies for TiKredi might have a small business of buying up $15 of sugar and rice and selling it in smaller quantities for a slightly higher price. She definitely had her first kid before she was 18, and she probably had at least four or five after that. She probably can’t afford to send them all to school, if any. She has trouble feeding them each day.

4) Do a final verification. After our credit agents and case managers do a first verification, CLM and TiKredi directors do a final verification to make sure that the family does indeed qualify for either CLM or TiKredi.

It’s a meticulous process, and it’s time consuming. We are currently trying to find 1,000 CLM families and 2,000 TiKredi clients, just for this particular project. It takes weeks (months, really) of climbing up mountains and trekking through the mud just to find the families. However, if the whole thing is done right, all three thousand families will be better off than they were before we found them.

----------------------------------

In other Haiti news, here is an interesting article on the state of Haitian rice agriculture and what the international community might to do support it and Haiti as a whole, especially in its fragile post-earthquake state.

----------------------------------

In even more Haiti news, Brazil got eliminated from the World Cup today. Before a month ago, I might have thought this to be a non sequitur. Silly me. Turns out the vast majority of Haitians are either Brazil or Argentina soccer supporters.

**UPDATE: As I am writing this, either Ghana or Uruguay scored. The announcer is having a fit, but there is no way I’ll be able to extract the identity of the scorer from his flood of excited kreyòl.

----------------------------------

I hope to post pictures soon. My current internet situation is not very conducive to anything beyond text. In the mean time, Happy 4th of July!