By Anthony Barich
THE International Society of St Vincent de Paul is building a team to help Haitian locals establish small self-sustaining businesses to recover from last January’s devastating earthquake.
Singaporean Michael Thio – elected as the Society’s President General on 28 May, told The Record during a 1-3 August visit to Perth that Haiti is the international organisation’s biggest project at present.
Following the magnitude 7 earthquake on 12 January, the Vincentian family is identifying families with small businesses through its Microcredit Financing Project to effect systemic change to help the poor escape the poverty cycle, and “give them the tools to earn their own living”, Mr Thio said.
The system initiates “self-help projects”, helping poor locals grow small businesses in village markets.
He told The Record that the Society started using the system in 2008 for third-world countries as a joint project between organisations within the Vincentian family including Congregation of the Mission priests, Daughters of Charity, the Society of St Vincent de Paul, the Ladies of Charity lay group and Vincentian international youth.
This has already been successful in other regions the Society has established them in, he said, as small business owners have started employing other poor people, which is subsequently causing systemic change in their lives.
“This system helps the poor earn their own living, thus transforming them into a much happier people and restores the dignity of the human person,” Mr Thio told The Record.
“This is God’s right given to everyone, to live in dignity.”
A team is currently being assembled to start by Christmas, which will spend six months in Haiti establishing this microcredit system in collaboration with Fonkoze USA, an American-sponsored company that is Haiti’s “Alternative Bank for the Organised Poor”.
The team will be led by a lay American coordinator to be appointed within weeks who will be based in Haiti by Christmas and will be fluent in the Haitian French language and its local dialect.
Fonkoze was founded in 1994 by a Haitian Catholic priest Fr Joseph Philippe, who started the institution to help the poorest Haitians to participate in the economic development of the country.
His target group was women, because, he said, “women are the backbone of the Haitian economy and the doorway into the family unit”, according to the company’s website.
The company serves more than 45,000 women borrowers, most of whom live and work in the countryside of Haiti, and more than 200,000 “savers”.
When the earthquake hit, the Society was already present in the country, Mr Thio said, and “sprang into action”. It has since helped about 3,000 Haitians, he said.
The Vincentian family – including the US St Vincent de Paul Society and the Daughters of Charity religious congregation – immediately identified the two main priorities for the reconstruction phase, education and healthcare.
The Daughters of Charity, who had existing schools in Haiti, ran the education programmes and healthcare centres, while the Society helped reconstruct houses for those affected by the earthquake and supplied funds for poor students to attend school.