October 10 -11, 2008

Wyndham Hotel and Conference Center,

Miami, Florida

I had the distinct privilege to attend the Second Fonkoze USA Haiti Solidarity Conference held October 10-11, 2008. I went as a representative of the Haitian Timoun Foundation (HTF), a non-profit organization committed to raising up the children of Haiti through investment in poverty eradication, public health, education, and leadership development. We were afforded the opportunity to present at the conference on an upcoming campaign, entitled – “It’s Not Your Birthday”, a project aimed at partnership with Fonkoze’s “Chemin Lavi Miyo” Project or “Pathway to a Better Life.” The CLM Project is a dual project of the World Bank and Haitian Timoun Foundation directed at implementing strategies for the poorest of the poor in Haiti that will lift them up out of extreme poverty and steward them to a place where they have the resources, material and emotional, for a fighting chance.

I did not attend the inaugural Fonkoze Solidarity Conference held two years ago, but I can say there was very much a sense of urgency at this one. Two very distinguished voices in the Microcredit Finance world joined the conference as keynote speakers. Alex Counts, President and Chief Executive Officer of Grameen Foundation USA, and Syed Hashemi, Director of BRAC Development Institute, both provided us with a framework on why Fonkoze’s CLM project represents a pivotal time for microfinace in the world. I left the conference with a single message: If the CLM project can work in Haiti, then it can work anywhere.

CLM is not one more cookie-cutter approach to eradicating extreme poverty. While many of the same conditions exist in Haiti that exist in Bangladesh, Haiti is not Bangladesh. Haiti presents certain geographical challenges that Bangladesh does not. This requires a different approach to caseworker staffing and strategy. Bangladesh also does not have nearly the odds stacked against it as Haiti. For many, Haiti is categorized as either a “failed state” at worst or a “fragile state” at best. I will not go into the details of why Haiti has been given either distinction, but I will say that for as long as the World Bank has been in the business of outlining the specifics of failed and fragile states, Haiti has been the only country in the world that has been in the top ten every year.

In many respects, Haiti is Custard’s last stand for microfinance’s place in the marketplace of ideas where extreme poverty eradication is priority number one. If the poorest of the poor can be lifted out of poverty and given a fighting chance here in Haiti, then it can happen anywhere. While a similar project like CLM did not have the intended results in Somalia, we cannot afford to let CLM be one more failed project in the fight against extreme poverty eradication.

I had the opportunity on Tuesday to travel with 22 other representatives from the Haitian Timoun Foundation to Boukan Khare in the Central Plateau, a very important battleground for Fonkoze’s CLM project, and I met with family after family, that have hope for the first time in their lives. I saw homes that will not be swept away by the rain. I saw livestock that provide enterprise and commerce. I saw latrines that are safe and clean. I saw children in school. I saw single mothers with heads held high and immaculate personal care. I heard stories of poor families who are now invited to birthdays and first communions because people finally see them. They are no longer invisible.

Projects like CLM aren’t simply about money or sustainability. They are projects that are about social capital and a place to stand.

The price for the CLM project is currently $1000 per family. For $1000 a family can be lifted out of extreme poverty and given a chance. Through a partnership with the World Bank and Haitian Timoun Foundation, 150 families are now enrolled in CLM. The Haitian Timoun Foundation has committed $5,000,000 by 2012 to the CLM project which will raise 5000 families out of poverty and put them on the “pathway to a better life.”

The first step towards the goal of 2012 is a campaign called “It’s Not Your Birthday!” Beginning with faith-based communities across the Unites States, we are asking people of faith to cut out the spend-a-thon that occurs around Christmas time, and to redirect that money to the CLM project. The very conservative estimate of what American’s will spend on Christmas gifts this year is $996. For $1000 an individual or family can give the gift of life to a family living in Haiti, pulling them out of extreme poverty and giving them a chance at life. We’re not asking that people don’t celebrate Christmas; only that they celebrate it differently. Americans do not need more “stuff.” What we do need is the opportunity to stand with those living at the fringes of society, and the recognition that we can invest in other human beings in a way that quite literally can change the world one family at a time.

The challenges that face Haiti are quite complex, but the thing that remains simple amidst such complexity is one simple truth - Haiti needs us, and we need Haiti. This is not rocket science. The greatest fear for us all, religious and non-religious alike, is not that we don’t know what to do as it concerns the poorest of the poor in Haiti; it is that in knowing what to do we will actively and/or passively refuse to do it. Whatever we ultimately do or don’t do, we dare not create the rationalization that there is nothing that can be done for the poorest of the poor in Haiti.

I join an entire throng of individuals, communities, and organizations that cannot and will not ever give in to the notion that Haiti is beyond the threshold for eliminating extreme poverty. Indeed, Fonkoze, Haitian Timoun Foundation, and a whole host of others will spend themselves and their treasuries in ushering in a Pathway to a Better Life.

We cannot afford – emotionally, economically, anthropologically, or spiritually – to fail in Haiti, and so we won’t.

“Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, [humankind] will have discovered fire.” Teilhard de Chardin

Fonkoze USA Haiti Solidarity Conference

October 15, 2008

John Bost, Executive Direction for Partnerships

The Haitian Timoun Foundation (HTF)

http://www.hopeinhaiti.org