Job Creation

Objective

In response to the Interim Government of Haiti's call for donor support to achieve economic recovery, the Job Creation program was launched to enable the creation of short to medium-term employment and income generation. The program extends over a diverse range of sectors including the environment, productive infrastructure, communications, technologies, manufacturing, construction, art and handicraft, agribusiness, commerce, and micro-business. Target activities are implemented throughout the country both in rural and urban areas by different partners.

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Activities

Garbage collection and the rehabilitation of a landfill. This activity is expected to create about 10,000 person/months or 1,200 short term jobs in the Metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince . Partner: Community Housing Foundation (CHF).

Solid (metal and plastic) waste collection and cleaning of drainage canals in the Port-au-Prince area. The activity will contribute to create the equivalent of 1,200 jobs. Partner: Haitian Environmental Foundation (HEF). 

Sanitation, road repair and environmental protection in some secondary cities and surrounding areas . These activities will target the equivalent of 10,234 jobs both in urban and rural areas. Partner: Development Alternative Inc. / Hillside Agriculture Program (DAI/HAP).

Provision of loans. Under a Development Credit Authority (DCA) mechanism, through the USAID Hillside Agriculture Program, two financial institutions give loans that are partially guaranteed by USAID to small, micro and medium-sized businesses in sectors that have the potential to create productive employment and income in the short to medium-term (two to three years) period. The guarantee program includes a technical assistance component to strengthen the institutional capacity of the guaranteed parties and provide support to borrowers. It is expected that this program will create about 600 medium-term jobs in productive sectors. Partners: SOFIHDES and SOGEBANK.

Microfinance services . USAID has supported the expansion of microfinance services in Southern Haiti through a capitalization of the leading micro-finance institution in the area. Partner: FINCA/Haiti:

Recycling of materials. The collection and processing of recycled materials is expected to provide 1,875 short-term jobs and create rapid employment by facilitating the placement of immediate and large orders for crafts produced from the recycled materials. This effort will be implemented through a one-year program entitled: HEART (Haitian Entrepreneurs and Artisans Restore Trade). Partner: Aid-to-Artisans (ATA).

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FY 2004 Results

CHF: Emergency trash collection generated 200 short-term jobs.

HEF: Results will be reported in FY 2005.

DAI/HAP: 10,000 short-term jobs were created in rural areas.

DCA: Results will be reported in FY 2005.

FINCA: In the first month of the program, FINCA opened two new offices in the Southern Department, increasing its client base and disbursing 962 new loans.

ATA: In FY 2004, ATA has facilitated the creation of approximately 2,700 short-term and 950 long-term jobs.

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Hillside Agriculture

The Hillside Agriculture Program (HAP), launched in August 2000, serves Haiti 's poorest farmers, approximately 70% of who work on severely eroded hillsides. The HAP program is designed to increase farmer productivity and raise incomes by promoting environmentally-friendly tree crops with export cash potential. HAP intervenes in strategic production areas in order to provide intensive and quality support to progressive and model farmers. To date, program participation has reached some 69,000 farmers who report income increases of 10-30% a year. An important component of the program is the Coffee Rehabilitation project that helps coffee farmers cultivate, process and market “Haitian Bleu” gourmet coffee, which commands premium export prices.

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Activities

The program focuses on the following areas:

•  Production and marketing of traditional export crops (coffee, cocoa and mango);

•  Provision of technical and financial support to the Federation of Associations Cafeieres Natives (FACN) to increase their coffee production and export capacity; and

•  Establishment of appropriate credit mechanism to provide agricultural loans to farmers' organizations and cooperatives.

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FY 2004 Results

•  Total value of agricultural sales amount to $1,136,000, slightly above the target; and a total of 69,000 farmers benefited directly from the marketing program.

•  Project-assisted organizations sold over 340,000 dozen mangos in 2004 (up from 311,000 dozen in 2003). Income from these sales has risen by 17% and has resulted in increased willingness of farmers to invest in new mango trees.

•  Coffee exports from the Federation of Associations Cafeieres Natives (FACN) reached an all time high in both value and quantity for the second year in a row. FACN's sales revenues topped the mark for the first time at $548,747.

•  Working through the agricultural marketing guarantee facility provided by HAP, the non-governmental organization lender FONKOZE made $488,000 in agricultural loans to farmers' organizations. The HAP/FONKOZE mechanism has proven to be a useful catalyst of credit to small farmers' agricultural cooperatives, a sector largely thought to have been unbankable.

Microfinance

Objective

USAID's microfinance program seeks to economically empower Haiti 's small and micro-entrepreneurs by providing financial and technical support to a network of institutions and organizations involved in microfinance. Haiti 's micro-entrepreneurs, the overwhelming majority of them women, represent a significant portion of Haiti 's vast informal economy. Activities focus on increasing the outreach of micro-credit, the delivery of financial services to small and micro-entrepreneurs, and the use of best practices by microfinance institutions (MFIs) to achieve long-term financial sustainability.

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Activities

Four program components strengthen the financial system serving small and micro-entrepreneurs by:

• Identifying and promoting best practices such as standardized methodologies for loan management, creating a system for sharing credit history information, promoting relationships between commercial banks and non-bank intermediaries, and creating regional bodies to service local organizations.

•  Developing new financial products and securing the support of other donors for microfinance;

•  Providing capital for increased lending and collateral guarantees for increased MFI access to commercial bank credit (to be used for further lending as well); and

•  Improving the policy environment for MFIs by supporting the creation of self-regulating bodies and coordinating donor funds to address key policy issues.

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FY 2004 Results

•  As of September 2004, the outstanding loan portfolio of the eight principal micro-credit providers directly assisted by USAID reached 62,891 – almost eight times the number of loans outstanding at the end of FY 2000. When all USAID-assisted MFIs and cooperatives assisted by USAID are counted, outstanding micro-credit loans jump to more than 80,000.

•  More than 85% of these MFIs' clients are women entrepreneurs.

• The program's investment in loan guarantees leveraged almost $1 million in outstanding micro-loans extended by five commercial banks and non-banking institutions.

• Although micro-credit loan repayment rates slid a bit over the past two years due to the protracted economic downturn, the system remained strong. Today, four USAID-assisted MFIs have maintained their operational self-sufficiency, three of which are achieving financial self-sufficiency.

•  The pioneering success of the USAID-assisted Banque de l'Union Haïtienne (BUH) in micro-finance, demonstrated such strong market potential that Haiti's two largest commercial banks soon followed with affiliates wholly-dedicated to micro-credit in joint ventures with international finance institutions and other partners. Last year, a third commercial bank launched its micro-credit operations, this time as a unit within the bank (similar to BUH). Commercial bank investment in micro-credit now amounts to some $8 million.

• The National Association of Haitian Microfinance Institutions (ANIMH) —created though USAID assistance in FY 2002 to propose and advocate for policies, laws and regulations conducive to the development of the sector—has launched a comprehensive institutional assessment exercise for its 18 members (up from 13 in FY 2004), promoting performance standards and developing a Customer Liability System.

•  The program now operates throughout the ten departments of Haiti.

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Supporting Haitian Artisans in Private Enterprise (SHAPE II and HEART)

Objective

For decades, Haiti 's reputation as a major source of craft products for world markets was unparalleled. Unfortunately, the political turmoil and embargo of the early 1990s brought both exports for crafts and tourist markets to a halt. Since 1999, the Supporting Haitian Artisans in Private Enterprise program (SHAPE II) has been working as a catalyst to reinvigorate craft industry as a source of employment for Haiti 's poor. SHAPE II has a special commitment to developing opportunities for a diverse range of businesses, including small-scale producers in poor communities, to participate in local and international trade. In addition, to take advantage of Haiti 's selection as a featured country at the 2004 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, funds were added to allow Aid-to-Artisans (ATA), an NGO which has experience with previous Folklife Festivals, to undertake efforts to promote sales of Haitian artisan products. In response to the need to create rapid short-term employment, ATA received funding in September 2004 for a one-year program. The Haitian Entrepreneurs and Artisans Restore Trade (HEART) program focuses on creating immediate short-term and, to a lesser extent, longer-term employment opportunities.

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SHAPE II Activities

Since 1999, USAID and ATA have carried out the following activities:

•  Assisted local businesses in developing and designing more than six hundred new products for specific local and overseas markets;

•  Brought products to the attention of international buyers via trade shows, direct marketing, and buyer visits;

•  Assisted local businesses in improving production capacity to reduce production costs, streamline efficiency, and increase quantities produced;

•  Improved access in Haiti to raw materials needed for craft production for competitive, large-scale markets;

•  Assisted commercial buyers in connecting with appropriate production businesses and intermediaries needed to support the increase of trade; and

•  Trained local entrepreneurs in basic business principles, production management, and advanced business dynamics of working with international markets.

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HEART Activities

•  Started a materials recycling program to create short -term, labor-intensive jobs through the collection and processing of recycled materials;

•  Will provide approximately 1,875 short-term jobs by using funds in the poorest areas for the collection of recyclable waste. Additional jobs will be created through the production and sale of craft using recycled materials; and

•  Developed a program to create rapid employment by offering international buyers shipping incentives to facilitate the placing of immediate and large orders .

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FY 2004 SHAPE II Results

In FY 2004, the total number of short-term production jobs (jobs lasting less than three months) created by SHAPE II was raised by 3,268, of which  1,235 were created in the last quarter (July to September, 2004). Through September 30, 2004 , the cumulative number of artisan associations or enterprises involved in SHAPE II program activities was 215 , and the SHAPE II program has generated approximately $1,087,365 in new business for Haitian businesses, most of them small-scale producers in poor communities. Since its inception, the SHAPE II project has involved 3,023 Haitian artisans in its activities, 1,224 of whom are women ( 40 %). The program has created 18,345 short-term production jobs and steady employment for approximately 2,000 artisans.  Major U.S. retail companies, including Pier 1, TJ Maxx, Ross, Smith & Hawken, Orvis Catalog, the San Diego Zoo, and Aveda are now purchasing products in Haiti as a result of SHAPE II. Wholesale buyers selling to a clientele of more than 8,000 retail stores across the U.S. are also now purchasing products in Haiti.

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FY 2005 HEART Results

In the four months since the start of the program, ATA has facilitated the creation of approximately 2,700 short-term and 950 long-term jobs. (See Job Creation One Pager for additional information).

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