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Global Grassroots Leaders Gather in Haiti to Solve Extreme Poverty
October 6, 2004 [Port-au-Prince, Haiti] - Five seasoned practitioners from Asia, Africa, and Latin America will gather in Haiti in mid-November. Their assignment: Solve the problem of economic dependency for Haiti’s most vulnerable.
Fonkoze (pronounced Fon-koh-zay) and Zanmi Lasante (Partners In Health) are organizing the working summit to attack Third World problems with Third World experience. Fonkoze is Haiti’s largest microfinance institution. Zanmi Lasante is the leading non-governmental provider of rural primary medical care in Haiti.
Dr. Paul Farmer, founder of Zanmi Lasante, says: “I am tired of bringing people on the edge of death from tuberculosis, AIDS or other diseases to the point where they can become economically active, then watching them suffer because they have no way to make a living.” Farmer’s work in central Haiti is the subject of the bestseller Mountains Beyond Mountains by Pulitzer Prize winning author Tracy Kidder.
“We want to explode the myth that we don’t know how to end extreme poverty,” says Anne Hastings, Fonkoze’s director.
“We know it can be done because we do it every day,” adds summit participant Rabeya Yasmin, manager of BRAC’s program for the ultra-poor in Bangladesh. “In our program, 75% of participating women have achieved a sustainable livelihood over a 2-year period, at a cost of $291 per person.”
“Microfinance is a way out of poverty for those ready to participate,” says Hastings. “But those in extreme poverty are not yet ready. Getting them ready is our challenge.”
The summit’s concrete and interactive format will “immerse the practitioners in the reality of Haiti, then quickly bring them out of that and into intensive working sessions, drawing on their deep experience in radically different cultures,” says Hastings.
“We’re pushing the boundaries of problem-solving methodology, by fostering intensive cross-cultural interaction among expert practitioners. The purpose is to design the programs that will transform the most destitute from recipients of charity to independent heads of households.”
MEDIA - For more information, contact Sharmi Sobhan at:
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or +1 212-822-9553
To follow the summit online or to learn more about the organizers, visit Fonkoze: http://www.fonkoze.org/summit.htm
and visit Partners in Health:
http://www.pih.org