Women’s Empowerment
DESPRI’s women’s Self-Help Group (SHG) methodology aims to strengthen the economic, social and political fabric of rural communities. A Self-Help Group is comprised of 20 local women meeting weekly, who create their own membership rules and make regular contributions to a lending fund used to provide loans to members. Leadership is rotational, and groups elect representatives to advocate for the groups on the Association and Federation levels.
The SHG structure which DESPRI and its partner AMURT accompanies in the Northwest of Haiti has reached up to 230 groups and a total of 4,600 women, meeting weekly to address a host of challenges. This movement has authentically shifted the dynamics of power in the region, granting women a profound sense of identity, solidarity, and empowerment to lead transformative change within their communities.
Financial Inclusion
Our Financial Inclusion program focuses on building the capacities of the Self-Help Group (SHG) members to manage by themselves savings and loans products and services, and to successfully run small businesses. Since 2014 close to 5,000 women from vulnerable socio-economic backgrounds have organized themselves in Self-Help Groups currently managing by themselves the equivalent of more than 300,000 USD in self-generated funds. This money is constantly recirculated and supports short-term as well as longer-term micro-loans which benefit new members every week, building the leadership and financial skills and literacy of thousands of women
Our first formal Caisse Populaire (Popular Bank) launched in April 2023 in the South Department with more than 600 members, 75% of whom are women SHG members. Since its start CAPODESPRI has grown to manage more than eight (8) million gourdes and has successfully granted 175 loans resulting in the creation of several long-term businesses including 2 agricultural processing companies with large female management.
Women’s Rights & Leadership
Our Self-Help Group methodology has resulted in organizing close to 5,000 women in isolated rural communities in savings and loans groups, associations, and a Federation. These structures have effectively become a lobbying force for women’s rights, and the positive transformation of women’s lives has shifted the gender balance in their villages and has had a ripple effect on tens of thousands.
Groups of 20 women meet every week to resolve shared and individual problems and manage their own savings and loans. They elect 2 representatives to represent the group on the next level called Association. An Association has 20 members representing 10 SHGs, and meets once a month to address larger issues which impact the larger community. Its members elect 2 representatives to represent it on the 3rd level, the Federation. The Federation meets to discuss issues pertaining to women’s rights on the Communal level, in effect becoming a powerful force for social and political change, and a strong lobbying voice that is legally structured and connected directly to the grassroots structures it represents.
The impact of these structures has been concrete and measurable through indicators such as reduction of gender-based violence (72% compared to the baseline), and improved literacy rates (78% of women are now literate compared to 42% when the program started).
