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Haiti update: MasterCard grant backstops recovery partnership A $4.5 million grant from The MasterCard Foundation will form the base of a partnership with MEDA and its longtime ally, Fonkoze, to spur economic recovery in Haiti. The new effort will restore Fonkoze’s destroyed headquarters and enable its poorest clients to build new livelihoods, benefitting 70,000 clients. Fonkoze is Haiti’s largest microfinance organization with a mission to build the country’s economic foundation for democracy. Its more than 40 branches serve some 225,000 borrowers and savers, most of whom are impoverished women in rural areas. These clients depend on Fonkoze for financial services ranging from
the exodus of refugees from Port‑au‑Prince. “The MasterCard Foundation’s timely contribution will help Fonkoze emerge from this tragedy as a stronger organization,” says Anne Hastings, CEO of Fonkoze. “We now have the flexibility to provide clients with needed services, which will empower them to sustain their livelihoods well into the future.” The program will provide enterprise training, a livelihood asset (such as a goat or a chicken), a small short‑term stipend and one‑on‑one mentoring to 1,000 extremely poor women. Another 4,000 women will qualify for the small loans and associated counseling needed to create or rebuild small businesses. Commercial and agricultural endeavors such as these are the backbone of Haiti’s supply chain, delivering food and goods between rural areas and cities. Restoring the businesses of women traders is, therefore, critical to the country’s
small business loans to savings accounts, and for complementary educational and health services. Following the earthquake, Fonkoze lost five employees. A third of its employees were left homeless and more than half of its branches were damaged or destroyed, including the institution’s headquarters. Nearly 8,000 clients lost their homes, businesses or both. The support from The MasterCard Foundation will strengthen Fonkoze’s core operations. It will also expand two existing programs that will help 5,000 women create new livelihoods in two areas that have been greatly stressed by economic and social pressures due to
long‑term recovery. “Fonkoze has a proven track record of serving Haiti’s rural poor,” says Reeta Roy, president and CEO of The MasterCard Foundation. “We are investing in an institution that is vital to rebuilding Haiti from the ground up.” To supplement this work, Fonkoze is testing a “catastrophic microinsurance” product, which will provide clients indemnity for basic needs, loan repayment and new, interest‑bearing loans to restart their businesses. This product reflects Fonkoze’s belief that clients must be educated and prepared to protect themselves against future disasters and economic shocks. MEDA, which has worked with Fonkoze both as an investor and as part of its governance, will manage the funding from The MasterCard Foundation and provide ongoing progress reports and select advisory services. Fonkoze will concurrently track the quantitative and qualitative suc-
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Experts weigh in on nixing the niceties Is “terminal niceness” a raging problem in your company? Winds are blowing in the business press about the pitfalls of being too nice. The new chief executive of Xerox, Ursula Burns, was recently quoted in The New York Times as saying she hopes to eradicate the affliction of being too nice. What she really seems to mean is lack of candor, which is only arguably a feature of “being nice.” She prefers The Marketplace May June 2010
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employees who are bold and frank, which does not necessarily mean they’re “not nice.” Others in the field have since been, well, emboldened to take on the problem of passive-aggressive behavior and the Trappist vows of silence that can sometimes be incorrectly interpreted as niceness. “While no one likes to work with a tyrant,” says The Globe & Mail, “management experts agree that being too nice
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