New Book Addresses Extreme Poverty in Haiti, How Women's Education Can Help

It can be challenging to imagine extreme poverty, but about two million rural Haitians live on less than $1 per day. For these families, being poor has become a way of life. This is especially true of Haitian women who are so focused on ensuring their children are fed, that they lack the time to properly plan for their futures.

However, experience has shown that families can change their circumstances for the better when given proper support. Such support includes medical care, learning how to establish sources of income, and close accompaniment. When women have the opportunities to succeed, their children and communities thrive as a result.

Enter Fonkoze (meaning "shoulder to shoulder"), Haiti's largest microfinance institution. It currently serves over 60,000 borrowers and provides savings accounts for more than 200,000 Haitians. Also meet Steven Werlin, author of To Fool the Rain: Haiti's Poor and their Pathway to a Better Life (Ti Koze Press, January 2017), and communications and learning officer of Chemen Lavi Miyò (CLM)-a Fonkoze program that aids extremely impoverished women. For over ten years, he has been working as part of Fonkoze's team to spread its mission, which seeks to enable all Haitians to take part in the nation's development.

In To Fool the Rain, Werlin presents the riveting true-life experiences of the many women impacted by Fonkoze and its Chemen Lavi Miyò program, including the stories of Mirlene, Micheline, Josamène, Monique, Rose Marthe, Alta, and other participants, who have benefited in many ways from this remarkable program.

"Even after over ten years of experience in Haiti, I couldn't have imagined the poverty I confronted when I first started working for the Chemen Lavi Miyò program," Werlin says. "At the same time, what should have been a source of grave discouragement, became a source of optimism as I saw family after family change their own lives."

Steven Werlin, a faculty member at Shimer College, in Chicago, since 1996, first began traveling to Haiti the same year to learn from literacy programs abroad. In 2005, he settled in Kaglo, a small village in the mountains above Port-au-Prince. Since 2010, he has been working for Chemen Lavi Miyò, or CLM, Fonkoze's program for the extreme poor. He currently acts as CLM's communications and learning officer.

To Fool the Rain: Haiti's Poor and their Pathway to a Better Life (Ti Koze Press) is available on www.fonkonze.org and will be available at all major outlets as of January 2017. More information about Steven Werlin can be found at www.stevenwerlin.com, Facebook, and Twitter.

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