Hastings Anne
Organization: Fonkoze
Year Founded: 1995
Country: Haiti
Website: www.fonkoze.org
Fonkoze’s founder believed that an MFI must do more than simply provide a client a loan. For 16 years Fonkoze has served clients with a full-range of financial and training services with the goal of accompanying clients as they make their way - step by step - out of poverty. Focus: Microfinance, Education Geographic Area of Impact: Haiti Model: Hybrid Non-Profit Number of Direct Beneficiaries: 200,000 (2009) Annual Budget: US$ 7,700,000 (2009) Percentage Earned Revenue: 68% (2009) Recognition: Regional Social Entrepreneur of the Year, Latin America, 2010 Background Sixteen years ago Haiti was a country in the midst of a struggle for freedom and equality. Its first democratically elected president was living in exile and the country was ruled by a military regime. The organized rural and urban poor – the hundreds of grassroots leaders that worked tirelessly in the late eighties and early nineties for democracy in Haiti – were the targets of repression. Thousands were killed during this time, and many more were living in hiding or constant fear of reprisal. Although the majority of poor people in Haiti knew how to organize themselves politically, they knew little about how to organize themselves economically. The poor had no access to banks or financial services they needed in order to rebuild their lives and their country from the ground up. The poor needed a bank of their own. Innovation and Activities Fonkoze is “Haiti’s Alternative Bank for the Organized Poor.” It is the largest microfinance institution in Haiti, serving more than 47,000 women borrowers and more than 200,000 savers. With its network of 41 branches covering every region of Haiti, it is the only MFI that is truly national in scope. Fonkoze is a full-service MFI, providing savings, loans, money transfers, and microinsurance services to its clients, as well as business skills and health education. Fonkoze seeks to empower rural Haitians to build and diversify their income, learn new skills, and follow a "staircase out of poverty" - a model Fonkoze developed to ensure services reach the poorest in Haiti. The “staircase” is a set of four, tiered programs that begins with asset transfer and other services for the ultra-poor, and culminates in a tier that offers business development individual loans. To date, 75 percent of Fonkoze’s ultra-poor program participants have graduated into a small loan microfinance program. Fonkoze takes a rigorous approach to social impact monitoring and evaluation. In 2005 Fonkoze established a Social Performance Management and Market Research Department. The department is charged with tracking poverty level changes of clients over time, researching client needs and experience with a particular focus on satisfaction and retention, and recommending improved or new services to upper management at Fonkoze. The key to the department is the Social Impact Monitors who work full-time in ten branch offices and collect information first-hand from Fonkoze’s clients. The Entrepreneurs Before coming to Haiti, Anne had fifteen years of experience in providing strategic management services to executives and in managing young organizations for high performance and steady growth. In 1995 she sought a career change and a contact at the Peace Corps told her about Fr. Joseph Philippe. He convinced Anne to send her resume directly to Fr. Joseph. Anne soon found herself face-to-face with the Haitian priest. In the first fifteen minutes of their conversation he convinced her that he had more vision than all the top executives that had been her clients in D.C. Anne has been working as the Director of Fonkoze ever since. Fr. Joseph Philippe, founder of Fonkoze, is a member of the Spiritan Catholic Holy Order. He holds a masters of divinity degree with special studies in liturgy and politics from Catholic Theological Union, Chicago. He has also studied credit cooperative management at the Centre Lebret in Paris, and attended training in banking administration at Fairfield University in Connecticut. He is also the founder of the Peasant Association of Fondwa and the University of Fondwa. His main work is to empower the poor to transform their lives.
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