U.S. lawyers work with non-profit microfinance organisation providing crucial loans to Haitian farmers affected by the disaster.
Haiti's massive earthquake didn't just destroy its capital Port-au-Prince, the devastation has also had a major impact on farmers in the countryside, say two U.S. lawyers providing pro bono help in the country.
Andrew Richards and Ralph Delouis went to Haiti earlier this year to help expand a non-profit microfinance organisation providing crucial loans to farmers affected by the disaster.
The January 12 quake killed 300,000 people and left more than 1 million homeless in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere where over half the population lives on less than $1 a day.
Before the quake many subsistence farmers used to rely on remittances sent back by family working in the capital. Not only have these stopped, but many farmers now have more mouths to feed after relatives lost their homes and jobs.
The microfinance organisation, which provides small-scale farmers with loans of $200-$400, saw increased demand for help after the disaster.
Farmers have very little access to credit in Haiti where commercial banks are loath to invest in agriculture because of the risks involved.
Although the microfinance organisation had been operating informally for several years, it wanted to be recognised as an official banking institution so that it could access funding from international donors.
Its goal is to increase its funding from $200,000 to $1 million, Richards said.
"They felt that for the sake of transparency and being able to approach Western funding sources as a credible institution they should be incorporated and chartered," he added.
During a trip to Port-au-Prince in June, the lawyers helped put together a banking charter and an application to the Central Bank of Haiti.
The organisation's new status will enable it to help around 2000 Haitians working in the food and agricultural sectors, providing loans that can be used to buy seeds, fertiliser and equipment.
GROUND ZERO
Richards and Delouis, lawyers at the New York office of McCarter & English, were recruited for the case by the International Senior Lawyers Project (ISLP), a New York-based group which provides pro bono assistance to governments and non-profit organisations in the developing world.
Marie-Claude Jean-Baptiste, project manager for Haiti programmes at the ISLP, said many of the beneficiaries of the microfinance project would be rural farmers who had stopped receiving remittances from their families in Port-au-Prince and other cities affected by the earthquake.
"Usually, they would put away the best crops for the next planting season," said Jean-Baptiste, a Haitian-born attorney.
"They had to use this to feed neighbours and family members who had come from Port-au-Prince. They needed more finances to purchase new crops."
For Delouis, who is Haitian-American and visits Port-au-Prince at least once a year, the trip was particularly poignant. The quake killed an uncle and a cousin and destroyed the family home.
Delouis described the experience of being back in Haiti as "very tough on the eyes".
"Through my various trips I had been able to witness the growth of the country and so to see things go back to ground zero was really hard," he said.
His mother and brother had arrived in Port-au-Prince shortly before the quake struck and for two days he did not know whether they were alive or dead.
"I was really nervous ... because the epicenter, Petionville, is not very far from where my family is," he recalled.
"With the phone lines down everyone was calling but couldn’t get through. I just had to wait and hope for the best."
A family friend eventually reported they were safe.
Even though five months had passed since the earthquake, the two lawyers found it difficult to move around the capital because of the amount of rubble everywhere.
Holding meetings with their client and with officials from the Haitian Finance Ministry and Central Bank was also a challenge because few buildings in Port-au-Prince were intact.
The microfinance organisation, which does not want to be identified, had had to move from the city centre to one of the suburbs because its office had been destroyed.
"They were working out of a house. They had a tent set up outside," Richards recalled. "The minister of finance that we met was working out of a very small temporary building. It was very crowded and everyone was jammed in there."
Richards developed an interest in microfinance while volunteering with the U.S. Peace Corps in Cameroon from 2003 to 2006. He worked there as an auditor and consultant to a dozen microbanks.
Since returning to the States, Richards has advised financial institutions wanting to invest in microfinance programmes and is now co-head of McCarter and English’s social investment practice.
The two lawyers are confident that the microfinance project will have a long-term impact, especially given the growing emphasis on decentralisation in Haiti.
"Part of the complexity of Haiti’s current situation is that so much is centralised in the capital," said Delouis. "A lot of the time people in the rural sector are forgotten. The main focus of our client is bringing some attention to the people who have been forgotten."
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