A micro-credit program and banking system for more than 200,000 women in Haiti has come to the rescue of the overall economy in the wake of the devastating earthquake.

At a time when Haitian commercial banks remain closed, Fonkoze, the Haitian branch of the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, mobilized over one weekend to get funds to its members in rural towns as well as Port-au-Prince.

Between 2 a.m. and 2 p.m., last Saturday, January 23, Fonkoze brought in two million dollars in cash from their U.S. bank and distributed it by helicopters to regional offices in the most remote parts of the country.

That got money flowing again. The cash came from Haitians working abroad who had sent funds — called remittances — to their relatives.

Also known as Haiti’s, “Alternative Bank for the Organized Poor,” Fonkoze found a way to get money to its members through the 34 of its 41 branch offices still open after the earthquake. It had a lot of help in high places: the U.S. Secretary of State, top Treasury and Defense Department officials, the Federal Reserve, the Agency for International Development, the United Nations, the Inter-American Development Bank and more.

The operation read like a cloak-and-dagger saga. Anne Hastings, the CEO of Fonkoze Financial Services, was point person on shaping the unorthodox solution. It involved many conference calls to Washington, New York and Miami, as well as intricate strategies with managers on the ground in Haiti who would get the money to the women.

By Friday, January 22, the plan was ready. Remittances from U.S.-based Haitians deposited in Fonkoze’s accounts at City National Bank of New Jersey were sent to JP Morgan Chase in Miami, converted into cash — and packed in office supply boxes. An armored vehicle then transferred the boxes to Homestead Air Force Base.

A C-17 plane, diverted from Langley Air Force Base, landed at Homestead at 3 a.m. Saturday, took on the camouflaged cargo of cash, and flew to Haiti, where the major airport at Port-au-Prince has been under U.S. military control since the earthquake.

Once there, Hastings and two other Fonkoze executives inspected the cash cargo — and called the Pentagon to say so far, so good. Under a military escort, the Fonkoze vehicle loaded with the boxes of cash awaited the two helicopters that could fly the money to 10 designated drop-off locations.

Fonkoze’s Jean-Guy Noel rode with the helicopters as they began deliveries before dawn. Seven hours later, all the cash had been delivered and the helicopters were back in Port-au-Prince. By early afternoon, the cash had been distributed to the 34 Fonkoze branches. Almost immediately, the Fonkoze managers began giving Fonkoze members cash from their relatives, a financial lifeline at a time when the formal banking system is in shambles and remittances sent through it from overseas Haitians remain locked up.

Jennifer Harris, a member of the policy staff of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a memo to Pentagon officials released by Fonkoze, spelled out the implications of the combined State-Defense operation.

“Fonkoze has by far the deepest reach into the country’s rural poor, a remittance network that would take years to recreate from scratch. As people continue to migrate from Port-au-Prince, Fonkoze’s branch network will become even more essential,” she said. “Perhaps most important, unlike the commercial banks, Fonkoze has re-opened many of its branches and has continued to pay out remittances using its cash on hand.”

In essence, she said, the unconventional operation “may well have stabilized the banking system for the country’s most vulnerable population.”

Fonkoze has been operating in Haiti for 15 years. Ninety-nine percent of its members are women. By midweek, it expects all but three of its branches to be open. In the heavily damaged capital city, Fonkoze managers set up shop at a makeshift office in the courtyard next to its damaged headquarters—as hundreds of Haitians lined up to get the money due them.

In addition to micro-lending programs, Fonkoze sponsors major literacy, health care and micro-insurance programs. Its remittances and savings accounts serve more than 200,000 people, making it a significant part of the country’s financial system. Relatives of Fonkoze members working abroad use its conduits to send back money — “that taxi driver in New York City who wants to send fifty dollars to his mother,” says Leigh Carter, Fonkoze USA fundraiser — amounting to $57.7 million last year.

It also serves as a vendor for three other remittance services that still operate after the earthquake: MoneyGram, CAM and Unitransfer. The process is a lifeline for a country where, in 2007, 79 percent of Haitians lived on less than $2 a day and 55 percent lived on half that.

Fonkoze’s micro-lending program has four different levels. The first step is for the poorest of the poor and may involve home repairs and health care, as well as building the confidence of the women as they plan to start a micro-enterprise. Next the women may qualify for small loans — perhaps only $25 — with a short repayment period, while they enroll in literacy classes. In Haiti, more than 50 percent of people are illiterate.

The third level is the core: a “solidarity” group in which friends take out loans together, then morph into credit centers of 30 to 40 women. These women can start out borrowing $75, but if they prosper they can borrow up to $1,300 for six months.

The fourth level focuses on business development. Some women in this group borrow up to $25,000 and are being nurtured to become part of the formal economy, creating jobs in rural areas where there are few employment opportunities.

It isn’t the first time that a micro-lending network of mostly women has taken a lead role in helping rebuild a country’s economy after a natural disaster. In Poland, after a devastating flood in the mid-1990s, the U.S.-backed Fundusz Mikro became the conduit for credit to small businesses, ultimately funneling more than $10 million to rebuild when the central government proved inept and also tone-deaf to the challenge.

Leigh Carter, who broke several vertebrae in her back getting out of the Fonkoze headquarters building during the earthquake and was airlifted out days later, is back at work in Washington. She says multinational economic and financial leaders already are talking to Fonkoze about ways to use their extensive network of micro-lending programs for programs to rebuild the Haitian economic base.

“People are coming to us saying ‘you need to expand your capacity,’” she said.

But first things first: the immediate priority had to be getting cash to its members, throughout Haiti, from their friends and relatives abroad, which in itself expands members ability to survive and rebuild.

Fonkoze has had strong success working with microfinance programs to improve lives of suffering women and their families. This program, Chemen Lavi Miyo, which means “Pathway to a Better Life” in Haitian creole, is testing a new approach to helping those living in extreme poverty to transition into a sustainable way of life. This highly structured and intensive program combines livelihoods and basic support with training and financial management so that at the end of just 18 months, participants will be equipped with the skills and a business plan to move themselves out of poverty. “What we want to demonstrate,” says Anne Hastings, director of the program, is that there is a “proven, replicable, methodology for accompanying people as they struggle to make their way out of these conditions into a …decent standard of living.” Fonkoze is now leading microfinance programs that will help rebuild Port-au-Prince since the devastating 10 January, 2010 earthquake that hit the capital and outlying areas.

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For more information on this topic:

• “A graduation pathway for Haiti’s poorest – Lessons learnt from Fonkoze,” Karishma Huda and Anton Simanowitz – The Mastercard Foundation, 29 September, 2009
• “The Haiti Earthquake: How microfinance is helping,” – CGAP – Consultative Group to Assist the Poor, World Bank Publications, 27 January, 2010
• “Reimagining Microfinance,” Alex Counts, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Stanford Graduate School of Business, 13 May, 2008
• “Gender and Microlending – Diveristy of Experience,” – Critical Half / Annual Journal 2004, Women for Women International

Journalist Peggy Simpson worked 17 years for the Associated Press, in Texas and Washington, D.C.; covered economics and politics for the Hearst Newspapers, served as Washington bureau chief for Ms. magazine and reported on East Europe as a freelancer during the 1990s. She has taught at Indiana University, George Washington University and the American Studies Center at Warsaw University. She currently is a freelance writer in Washington D.C.

This Women News Network news feature on Haiti is brought to you through a WNN partnership with the WMC – Women’s Media Center. Additional media materials for this article has been provided by Women News Network – WNN

Kiva is the world’s first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs around the globe.

The people you see on Kiva’s site are real individuals in need of funding – not marketing material. When you browse entrepreneurs’ profiles on the site, choose someone to lend to, and then make a loan, you are helping a real person make great strides towards economic independence and improve life for themselves, their family, and their community. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates and track repayments. Then, when you get your loan money back, you can relend to someone else in need.

Kiva partners with existing expert microfinance institutions. In doing so, we gain access to outstanding entrepreneurs from impoverished communities world-wide. Our partners are experts in choosing qualified entrepreneurs. That said, they are usually short on funds. Through Kiva, our partners upload their entrepreneur profiles directly to the site so you can lend to them. When you do, not only do you get a unique experience connecting to a specific entrepreneur on the other side of the planet, but our microfinance partners can do more of what they do, more efficiently.

Kiva provides a data-rich, transparent lending platform. We are constantly working to make the system more transparent to show how money flows throughout the entire cycle, and what effect it has on the people and institutions lending it, borrowing it, and managing it along the way. To do this, we are using the power of the internet to facilitate one-to-one connections that were previously prohibitively expensive. Child sponsorship has always been a high overhead business. Kiva creates a similar interpersonal connection at much lower costs due to the instant, inexpensive nature of internet delivery. The individuals featured on our website are real people who need a loan and are waiting for socially-minded individuals like you to lend them money.

One of these wonderful examples is happening in Nogales, Arizona, where an American and Mexican medical staff is reaching out to poor, Mexican families with disabled children. The doctors and staff of St. Andrew’s Children’s Clinic seem to be more concerned about children’s health and suffering than immigration issues:

“St. Andrew’s Children’s Clinic does not allow an artificial barrier to block the hope and compassion it offers the poor. The clinic is a non-denominational, non-profit organization whose mission is to provide free medical treatment for disabled children of impoverished parents from Mexico.”

The clinic was founded in 1973 and is staffed by volunteers from the United States and Mexico. Among our border states, St. Andrew’s is the longest-running health project in the country. The clinic is funded primarily through donations, which is sorely needed considering the range of serious, pediatric, health issues they deal with.

“The children, from ages 1 month to 18 years, have a myriad of medical problems, from spina bifida to cerebral palsy, from Down’s syndrome to speech and hearing problems, and more. X-rays, laboratory tests, prescriptions, orthopedic devices, and hearing aids are just some of the aids these children need right now, or over time.”

The clinic practices medicine “the old fashioned way:” with hand written medical records and face to face conferences. Instead of using donations for computer equipment and office-software, they are used strictly for the treatment and care of the children. Every, first Thursday of the month, two-hundred and fifty sick children and their families come to the clinic looking for help and healing. None of these families will ever receive a bill for the treatment of their child.

“The estimated dollar value of time donated each year to St. Andrew’s Children’s Clinic is approximately $1.5 million. On board most Clinic days are 2 orthopedic surgeons and several orthopedic residents and students, 5 pediatricians, 2 neurologists, 1 pediatric cardiologist, 6-8 medical students, 1 ophthalmology therapist, 1 equipment technician to fit wheel chairs, walkers, crutches, and other aids. Nearly 100 lay volunteers make the day run smoothly.”

In a time of selfishness and mistrust of strangers, it is a blessing to witness these physicians and lay persons who are willing to selflessly give of their time and money to treat and care for those who are in need. The doctors and staff of St. Andrew’s, as well as their contributors, are to be commended for their love, dedication and sacrifice, which blesses these children and their families!

If you would like to learn more or make a donation, then go to the site listed below:

http://www.standrewsclinic.org/about/about.htm

Shiva from India, after surgery.

Rarely do you find a charity that directs 100% of its donations to those in need… The Smile Train is one that does.

Unlike many charities that do many different things, The Smile Train is focused on solving a single problem: cleft lip and palate.

Clefts are a major problem in developing countries where there are millions of children who are suffering with unrepaired clefts. Most cannot eat or speak properly. They are not allowed to attend school or hold a job. And they face very difficult lives filled with shame and isolation, pain and heartache. (above: Shiva from India, before surgery)

The good news is every single child with a cleft can be helped with surgery that costs as little as $250 and takes as little as 45 minutes.

For more information, visit: The Smile Train