Annual Report 2021
Stichting Studiehulp Kay-Kok
Board: Mw. J. du Bois-Minholts, president
Mw. L.M. Kuijer, secretary
Mw. R. van der Kroef, treasurer
Website: http://ileavache.blogspot.com/
Email address: reinhildevdk@gmail.com
Bank : NL06TRIO 0391025457
Address: Jensemaheerd 147, 9736 CK Groningen, The Netherlands
Postal address : Postbus 1485, 9701 BL Groningen, The Netherlands
Telephone: + 31654786602
RSIN: 8555.41.143
The Foundation
aims to raise money to offer adolescents from the village of Kay-Kok, Ile a
Vache, Haiti the opportunity to attend to vocational training thus enabling them
to earn an income.
Stichting Studiehulp Kay-Kok is enrolled in the Foundations and Associations
Register of the Dutch Chamber of Commerce and is recognized by the Dutch tax
authority as a charity organization (ANBI).
Preface
2021 Was a year of transition for our Foundation.
Our collaborator Edisson St firmin, who took over the tasks of his late mother, got the possibility to get a job in Canada. For this reason he had to leave Haiti and transferred his activities for our Foundation to his youngest brother, Bithovens.
Secondly, because of the pandemic, new riots and the big earthquake in August, the schools have been closed again for a considerable time, so our students again met with delays and we had to extend the educational part of our activities for some extra time.
Because, as we already mentioned before, too many graduates from our program are not able to find regular jobs we decided not to take in new students but to aim at creating one or more bigger startups, in which in due time several of our graduates will find an income.
In the fourth place, one of our students graduated in business administration, and we are very happy we offered him a traineeship and to give him a central role in our plans for the small business startup.
2021 in hindsight
1 We had been aware already since the start of the year that our local collaborator Edisson would be leaving Haiti in order to earn a regular income in Canada. This was of course a reason of some concern, since he was fulfilling his job meticulously and to our big satisfaction. Fortunately there was time enough to train his youngest brother, Bithovens, to take over his tasks for our project. When Edisson could finally leave for Canada, in September, we were very glad that Bithovens was ready to replace him. And again we have not been disappointed: Bithovens is performing very well.
2 A very big shock (literally and figuratively) went through Haiti when the southern part of the country, and more specifically the surroundings of Les Cayes, the city where our students are attending their schools, was hit by a major earthquake on the 14th of August. The damage was (again) enormous and an extra setback was caused by the fact that Haiti is more and more being ruled by gangs and pirates, especially since the murder on president Jovenel Moise on July 7th. This meant that relieve materials could hardly be transported from the capital Port au Prince to the south.[1] Although the schools closed down in the aftermath of the earthquake we continued to pay the students their monthly money.
3 2 Of our remaining 4 students were supposed to graduate in 2021. And in spite of all the problems (pandemic, riots, violence) by mid 2021 they graduated, in agronomics and in business administration respectively. There remain now 2 students (Wilnick who is studying communications and journalism and Wideline in pedagogics). We hope they will be able to graduate in 2022, although again there were delays in 2021 (schools closed) because of the pandemic, the riots and the earthquake. As mentioned before, we decided not to take in new students anymore, but to set up 1 or more small businesses in which our graduates can find an income in the future.
4 We provided our student Wilnick this year with a smart phone in order to enable him to do his work as a journalist (to take pictures and to record interviews) and Wideline got a laptop in order to follow online courses.
5 Overall: From the in 2015 tested group A, all students that were waiting for admittance in our project have now joined. No more students have been admitted since 2019. All together in 2021 2 students graduated, 2 continued their studies.
6 Since one of the goals of the Foundation is to offer vocational schooling to young people from Île a Vache during a period of 5 years (starting in 2015) as of 2020 the project is closed for new admittances. We have sufficient financial room to phase out (with those students still attending school) in order that for those who started their courses in 2019, an extra 7th (2021/2022) will be added. Even with the delays because of the closure of the schools we will continue to support those students that have already been admitted to our project until all of them will have acquired their diplomas.
7 The remaining students have found suitable housing, and we reimburse the expenses.
8 This year our startup Cybercafé Ideal Multi Service continued its services as far as possible. It appears that the supply of ink/toner refills and the technical maintenance remains to be a big challenge. The refill bottles have to be ordered in and sent from abroad, which takes time and money. Due to the pandemic, the very unsafe situation in Haiti and the earthquake delivery of these orders turns out to remain complicated and frequently not possible at all. Many companies do not deliver in Haiti. Maintenance of one of the printers is still delayed, due to the fact that transportation to Port au Prince for repairs is not or hardly possible.
9 We made an inventory of those former students that wanted to start a small enterprise. Six of them came up with a (very rudimentary) plan. Our first experience (see above) learned us that starting up something in Haiti is not an easy ride. And we became aware that most of the wannabe entrepreneurs had in fact no idea about how to run and plan a business, let alone how to organize the repayment of loans.
We are very happy that one of our students, Ubain Pierre, graduated in business administration. We started to offer him an traineeship to help us figure out how to set up 1 or more small businesses that have a commercial future and that will offer (some of) our graduates jobs. He performed a feasibility study and did research for a business plan. We have been looking specifically to opportunities in de building and construction branch, because several of our graduates are trained in that branch. It turns out that, apart from his professional competences, Ubain has a good eye for business opportunities, and on the other hand he sees the challenges of setting up a business in Haiti with Haitians. After the earthquake he figured extra opportunities, since a big part of the town of Les Cayes has to be reconstructed. At the moment we are working on more specific plans. The goal is to start on short term (first half 2022) with something small, that we can extend. Ubain will also educate the other graduates in being small entrepreneurs.
Our plan on the financial level is to invest a part and to make the other part available as a loan, that will be paid back to the Stichting Studiehulp Kay-Kok in order to re-use that money for new startups.
10 Because of these new developments, we postponed our fundraising for 2021/2022 a little, since we wanted to offer our sponsors a clear plan about our new intentions. It was only by the last weeks of 2021 that we started our fundraising, which of course is being continued in 2022.
11 All our initiatives are only possible because we have a group of very loyal contributors, who continue to sustain our project. So again in 2021 we were able to collect € 6000,00, which was (together with the money we already collected in 2020) enough to cover the costs, also the costs that will be payable in 2022. Part of the expenses of 2021 have been for the new start up (€ 5200). But to be able to finance our new plans, we will need to find other contribuants, since the initial costs will exceed our usual expenses. We have already some investors waiting, but we are working to find more.
12 Our intention was to adjust the articles of association of our foundation to better facilitate this new direction. This has not yet been realized.
Finance
For the year 2021,
we had available +/- € 8.000,-- from
donations, of which by December 2021 we spent around € 5000,-- for our students
which leaves € 3000,-- for the second half of the academic year. Based on our
experiences so far the cost per person per year could be maximized on € 1600,--
(+ $ 1700, --). Experience learned that graduation- and diploma costs every
year make up a larger part of the expenses in the last year of the student.
With 2 students to graduate in 2022 this
will make up a major part of our expenses for the course 2021/22, we have now
to count on US $ 500 – 600 per person.
The financial year 2021 has been
closed with a negative result of € 2400, due to the money we already
sent in order to make the first steps with the startup we plan to realize in
2022.
We helped our trainee to start a new bank account. In the mean time our
collaborator, Bithovens is still working with the bank account that we opened
in the name of his late mother and his brother.
Remarks about our project
1. We put the perspective on work high on our list. After 6 years running our project, in which 18 students graduated, we have to conclude that finding a job in Haiti, even with a good starting qualification in hand like our students have, is very hard.
Since poverty in Haiti in very widespread (more than 40% of unemployment, 2/3 of the labor force is underemployed resulting in about 60% of the population living under the poverty line by accounts of 2016 and 2017, in the mean time these figures will have become even worse, because of the riots, the pandemic and the earthquake in 2019/20/21[2]), purchasing power is very low, so small businesses will always be quite vulnerable.
Certainly waiting for a job leads to nowhere. Starting up a small business is nearly the only way in Haiti to reach some kind of income, apart from emigration. For this reason we decided to help our ex-students by setting up small businesses. For this we had available some earmarked money in 2018 with which we have been able to fund a substantial investment in our first startup, the cybercafé (copy shop, internet café, general service point for administrative activities and maybe in due time even more).
After more than 1 ½ year of preparations and waiting for the society to calm down this first startup took off in May 2020. As already mentioned there have been many challenges on her way. From closure of the most important clients, the schools (due to the pandemic and later to riots and the earthquake) via electrical current supply problems, to maintenance of the equipment and supply of toner, ink and other commodities that are not available in Haiti.
This first initiative provides us with some knowledge and experience to figure out that this will be much more complicated than we expected it already to be. When you have never had any long term perspective (due to poverty and mismanagement by the government) you have learned to improvise to survive, and that is where Haitians are absolute champions in. But to plan and to organize continuity, in short, to manage a business, how small it may be, asks for other skills. And that kind of skills are hard to acquire in a country like Haiti.
To encounter these challenges we are happy that in our own group of graduates we count somebody who graduated in business administration. He appears to be just the right person at the right moment for our project. We need to set up a system for providing loans to these startups and to find, apart from the one investor we already have, more investors. Because the income they earn from a small business will be very modest, it is important to count with the fact that these loans can only function when they are long term loans with very low costs: binding the people to tight repayment conditions will lead to big disappointments on both sides. For this reason everything has to be based on a solid and real business plan, learning from our first experience, listening very good to our trainee, making him train the wannabe entrepreneurs intensively and last but not least: a lot of mutual trust.
2. The Board nor any other person involved in the Stichting Studiehulp Kay-Kok receives remuneration or compensation for their work from the funds of the foundation. Our onsite collaborator receives for his work nor a reward nor compensation from the Foundation. We only compensate the cost of data credit of our collaborator, in order to facilitate regular communication about the project.
We have an private financial arrangement with our local collaborator Bithovens St firmin. This is organised entirely outside of the budget of the Stichting Studiehulp Kay-Kok. There is at this moment 1 exception on this rule. We have now, for a limited period of time our trainee, who we pay a modest amount for his services so that he can spent all his time to our project. The intention is that he will be able to make an income from the startup very soon.
[1] We organised privately, in cooperation with the Dutch Foundation ‘Vrienden van Haiti’ a fundraising for food help. The money we collected was doubled by the Dutch NGO ‘Wilde Ganzen’ and this enabled us to help 20 families that were closely connected to our students with basic food packages for about 1 month of nutrition. The food was bought locally in Les Cayes.
