Part of CARE's longerterm assistance in Haiti has been helping people move out of camps, and in some cases into transitional shelters like these. © Meldride Beliade / CAREAt the top of a mountain in Léogâne, Haiti, Tiawa has an extraordinary view. Unfortunately, much of that vista is scarred by destruction. Haiti’s devastating 12 January, 2010 earthquake destroyed 80 to 90 percent of the buildings in Léogâne, according to official estimates. It was the area hardest hit.
In Tiawa, the quake gave rise to an impromptu camp of 1,500 people; people who had lost members of their families, and nearly all of their possessions. Right away CARE began supporting families with emergency relief supplies. Now CARE is helping them make the transition from recovery to rebuilding.
Today the camp’s population is steadily dwindling. Many residents have rebuilt their homes. Others have moved to shelters built with assistance from CARE or other aid groups.
Integral to CARE’s five-year, $100 million plan to help Haitians rebuild their country are initiatives to help people develop their own economic opportunities once they’ve moved out the camps.
Self managed saving
Last autumn, CARE launched the first Village Savings and Loan Association in Tiawa. VSLAs are self-managed savings groups. CARE teaches participants, the majority of whom are women, who save and loan money in small groups.
Members borrow money from the savings fund to pay household expenses and to start small businesses. The loans are repaid with interest which is shared among group members. Participants earn a greater rate of return on their savings than they would in a bank, while building connections with neighbours. VSLA loan repayment rates are near 100 percent.
Crucially, VSLAs also elevate the status of women in their communities, demonstrating how the economic empowerment of women helps not just themselves, but everyone around them, including men and boys.
Women gaining autonomy
The Tiawa VSLA groups grew out of a gender-based violence counseling and support group CARE launched after the earthquake. After helping women survivors cope with the aftermath of gender-based violence, CARE is helping them take the next step by offering a way for the women to weave their own economic safety nets. CARE’s objective is to help women, and therefore their families, gain autonomy.
Although all of the money in a VSLA comes from the participants, CARE is facilitating VSLA growth in Tiawa and elsewhere in Haiti by fostering connections with responsible local businesses.
And to make sure their growing savings are stored safely, CARE plans to partner with a local mobile phone provider to allow members to securely store and transfer money electronically, eliminating the need for group members to hold large stores of cash.
It does its own marketing
Though the VSLA model is new to the earthquake zone, it is not new to Haiti. Prior to the earthquake, CARE helped groups of women start VSLAs in Grand Anse, in the southwestern corner of the country. When survivors from other parts of Haiti poured into Grand Anse after the earthquake, the families with women who participated in VSLAs were better able to cope.
“Parents had to accommodate and feed their [returning] children and grandchildren,” said Léonne Rochas, a regional VSLA chairwoman in Grand Anse. “The financial autonomy they gained from VSLAs helped them a lot.”
The original Haitian CARE facilitiated VSLA groups in Grand Anse are now rapidly expanding.
“We don’t advertise this product. It does its own marketing,” Rochas says. “The women around us have seen how savings have gained us more respect in our families and communities. We are role models now.”
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