Providing impoverished Haitian women with small business loans

the problem:

A long-time advocate of women’s rights, I am aware that it is often the women of the underdeveloped world that suffer most. Our Haitian counterparts are habitually devalued, subjected to rape and abuse, and all-but-excluded from the workforce. For a woman to go unmarried past her early twenties or to be left a widow almost guarantees her a life of hand-to-mouth living.
For many single, Haitian women, the only way to provide for themselves and their children is to find manual labor working on local farms for what exchanges to about 55 cents a day. Employment is usually offered on a day-to-day basis, so these women wait in the marketplace all day to get picked up by an employer. Some days they walk home empty-handed.
Although Haiti has received more international aid than any other nation, much of this money is simply pocketed by corrupt government officials; still more is mismanaged; and most of the remainder is focused on the more valued male population. Another problem is that much of the aid is given in the form of handouts—creating a dependency mentality I’ve seen evidenced time and again. Handouts lift next to no one out of extreme poverty.

vital stats:

people impacted:

people involved: