Documenting "Pathway to a Better Life" in Haiti

October 9, 2009    

CGAP has produced a new film about Chemen Lavi Miyò, Fonkoze's program that uses the graduation model to reach women living in extreme poverty in Haiti. The film follows case managers in Haiti's central plateau as they work with new members of Chemen Lavi Miyò, (the Creole name for the program means "Pathway to a Better Life").

"I had just assumed that we were reaching the poorest people," says Anne Hastings, Director of the Haitian microfinance institution, Fonkoze: "But I discovered when we finally had the opportunity to do the research that in fact we were not." Eradicating extreme poverty needed a more radical approach. And so Fonkoze created Chemen Lavi Miyò, a program that deliberately targets the poorest, more vulnerable, and isolated women - people with few assets, little income, poor housing - and no hope.

The graduation model is a new approach to sustainable development for the poorest of the poor first developed by BRAC in Bangladesh. 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 are equipped with the skills and a business plan to move themselves out of poverty. CGAP and the Ford Foundation have adapted the model, and nine pilots are now underway in Ethiopia, Haiti, Honduras, India, Pakistan, Peru, and Yemen.

The case managers "accompany" the women now in the early stages of their journey out of extreme poverty - a time of great change in their lives. Zetrenne Joseph, a grandmother who is caring for two grandchildren after their parents died, tells us that she no longer needs to beg in the local town to feed the kids. Elmina Bousquet was forced to give up two of her nine children to servitude in Port-au-Prince because she was unable to feed all her children. As a result of the program, she's been able to bring the two girls, aged 12 and 13, back home.

We witness the proud moment when a group of graduates from the program--women who completed the first round last December--make their first independent repayment on a mainstream microfinance loan from income they have earned on their businesses. And Merline Thomas, a "CLM graduate" who finished the program in December 2008, sells her produce at the local market. Above all, we observe the remarkable transformation in the lives of these women, and in their hopes and plans for the future.

After a series of pilots in three regions of Haiti, the program is now ready to scale up in the central plateau, largely because of the high standard of health care offered in that region through a partnership with Paul Farmer's Zanmi Lasante, Partners in Health. "My ambition is that we eliminate this kind of poverty in Haiti because it is possible," says Hastings. "And then we document for the rest of the world that it can in fact be done." She wants to scale up the program to reach every single village in Haiti, and to demonstrate to the world that "it isn't rocket science to eliminate this kind of poverty. It doesn't take a genius to implement this model. It just takes dedication to working with this population group."