Program Bolsters Business in Haiti

Twenty Haitian business owners have graduated from a Partners Worldwide business-training program offered in Leogane, Haiti, which was the epicenter of a devastating earthquake in January 2010.

Partners is a business-development ministry that is affiliated with the Christian Reformed Church. The Christian Reformed World Relief Committee (CRWRC), the CRC’s international disaster aid and development agency, has been working extensively in the Leogane area to assist people who lost homes and loved ones in the earthquake.

Daniel Jean-Louis, a Partners Worldwide staff member who has taught university business courses, conducted the 12-week business-training program in Leogane.

In a story posted on the Partners website, Jean-Louis speaks about the results of the program: “Participants now know how to set their prices, and understand the ways in which they can make a profit or not.”

At the graduation, one business owner said that the training program taught him basic concepts of business that he had never grasped before.

Meawhile, Partners reports that more than 350 entrepreneurs and international organizations attended the second “Buy Haitian, Restore Haiti” conference.

Held in Port-au-Prince in January, the conference connected people and groups that share the vision of creating 100,000 jobs in Haiti by 2020.

At the conference, Evelien de Gier, owner of a housing production company, spoke alongside a reprensentative of CRWRC, which has committed to purchasing housing units made by the Haitian company in its post-earthquake disaster response.