Parents Economic Empowerment Initiative

Mirebalais, December 28, 2010 - Developing a plan that can help parents from the FATEM school network to find ways to meet the basic needs of their children, is one of our objectives for the coming year. In an effort to materialize our dream to see these parents, generally poor, in a position to have the means to generate and accelerate revenues, we have put in place a structure to support agricultural microcredit that can curb the misery to which these underserved parents seem to be linked. After extensive studies, obviously guided by Agronomist Nixon Dorilas, we identified a group of 40 people, including mothers and fathers of some of our students, to experiment with the plantation of beans in the locality of Marché-Canard, Section of Gascogne in Mirebalais.

Three hundred eighty thousand gourdes (380,000.00 gourdes, or about US$9,500) is the amount that was disbursed for this project, including the agronomist’s fees. Each participant in the program receives a loan of between five thousand gourdes (5,000.00) and ten thousand gourdes (10,000.00), depending on the amount of land they have available for the experimentation. Unlike microfinance institutions, the loans which FATEM awarded to the farmer parents are interest-free and will be repaid in three (3) installments, the last one being due on June 30, 2011.

A formal agreement has been developed by FATEM and was subsequently signed between a FATEM representative and each of these farmers. The road is long, but with determination and vision, FATEM will eventually find a way to reduce the poverty that haunts the region by focusing heavily on quality education based on the principle of a “school without wall”, a school open to the future.