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Anne Hastings receives the Women Together Award at the United Nations
On Monday May 19th 2008, Anne Hastings, Director of Fonkoze was presented with the "Women Together Award" at the United Nations headquarters in New York recognizing her relentless work to alleviate extreme poverty for the women of Haiti through Microfinance. Past recipients have included Kerry Kennedy and Hillary Clinton; Nobel Peace Prize winners: Muhammad Yunus, Wangari Maathai and Shirin Ebadi; actor Angelina Jolie, singer, Shakira and fashion model Karolina Kurkova. Along with Fonkoze's Director, other 2008 recipients included: the former President of Ireland Mary Robinson, Naturalist Joan Goodall and Oceanographer Sylvia Earle.
Anne Hastings has been the Executive Director of Fonkoze since May 1996. Under her leadership, the institution has grown from 2 volunteer employees to over 750 full-time employees and is now the largest Microfinance Institution in Haiti. Fonkoze now has 36 branches throughout rural Haiti, with over 165,000 clients, more than 50,000 of whom have microcredit loans. In July 2004, Fonkoze spun off its financial services component to form a commercial financial institution. Ms. Hastings also serves on the board of directors of that institution.
The foundation for which she still is Executive Director is now devoted to monitoring the impact of microfinance on the lives of clients, eliminating illiteracy among its clients, incubating new branches that reach ever poorer and more rural clients with microfinance services, and continually testing and developing innovative new products for the clients of both the commercial entity and the foundation.
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. Anne holds a PhD from the University of Virginia. She completed research fellowships at the Brookings Institute and the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, both in Washington, DC.
Anne is the recipient of other awards, including the 2005 Pioneer in Microfinance Award of the Grameen Foundation USA. In 2006, she was honored in the First Annual Chiapas Project Recognition Dinner in Dallas, Texas. In May 2007, she received an honorary Doctorate in Business Leadership from Duquesne University.
Fonkoze is proud of this week’s recognition by U.N. Women Together Award and wants to congratulate its Executive Director Anne Hastings.