Fondespwa's Newest Members

We concluded our interviews by seeing the last group of women which totalled about 45. As with all of them, they have their stories of added hardship due to divorce, husband abandonment, debilitating illness, death of their children, their savings and business lost when their houses burned down and on it goes. The fact they already live an arduous life does not make them immune, in the least, that they face the same disappointments, setbacks, frustrations and travesties that we in the "developed' countries do. They may be materially poor but are rich in will power, courage and faith. In the afternoon, we met with all the entrepreneurs whom we had selected and were interested in Fondespwa. On this occasion many came on time. We began with some energetic singing, prayer and then attendance taking. The contract was read through again for the fourth or fifth time and then questions were invited. There were a good number. I thought the women were angry on a number of occasions with points on the contract, but Renee, Founder of Mission of Hope, stated they were just speaking among themselves in their usual animated fashion. I still can't tell the difference. Even in one of the interviews, I believed this woman was livid with me and when she was finally done I looked at my translator waiting to hear that what we were proposing was unethical and extremely detrimental to the women of Haiti. Frankly, I was expecting my first voodoo curse. What she said, however, was Fondespwa is exactly what they need and was thanking me profusely for establishing this in Grand Goave. I still think she was angry but my interpreter simply did not want to insult me. The women, then broke into their self selected groups of 5 to 7. From there, we told them tomorrow bring their ID so we could begin to process their passbooks. It was a 3 hour session, that was hot and humid, but everyone was pleased with the end result. So, after almost 4 weeks of meetings, multiple interviews, group and individual sessions, a host of questions and answers, Fondespwa has added 155 new members.