Policy Plan 2021

Policy Plan 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, 9736CK Groningen, The Netherlands

Postal address : Postbus 1485, 9701 BL Groningen, The Netherlands

Telephone: + 31 654786602

RSIN: 8555.41.143

The project in numbers

Tested in 2015	98
Qualified in group A	20
Group A (adjusted¹) by 2020	18
Admitted  2015/2016	6
Admitted 2016/2017	3
Admitted 2017/2018	4
Admitted 2018/2019	3
Admitted 2019/2020	2
Total admitted by December 2020	18
Still awaiting admittance group A	0
Graduates 2016	3
Graduates 2017	4
Graduates 2018	3
Graduated 2019	3
Graduated 2020	1
De facto graduated by end 2020	14
Expected graduates 2021	2 or 3
Total graduates by 2021	16/7
Expected graduate by 2022	1 or 2
Total to be graduated by 2022	18
Group B 2015 (not all qualified)	44
Group B adjusted by final 2018	29¹

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    1Due to migration, death, illness, not yet finished secondary school, study does not fit in our goals

Who, what, where, how?

• A.      Our goal is to fund as of 2015 during 5 years, the vocational schooling of maximum 10 students per year. We decided to keep up our program for the academic year 2020/21 for those students that are already in. This concerned – due to delays because of the pandemic and the riots – altogether 5 students. By the end of 2021 3 or 4 of them will be graduated (of which 2 already got their diploma’s in December 2020 and January 2021) 1 Or 2 will graduate in 2022.
• B.      Funding is mainly found in our personal social network. Though we would be grateful to find also institutionalized sponsors (like schools and enterprises) that are willing to financially adopt one or more students, it appears that this is very difficult. We tried this several times, but failed so far. Of course we will grab any opportunity to broaden our financial basis, and we will keep on looking for this kind of sponsors, but on the other hand we have to be realistic about on what we spend our limited time and energy. So in the first place we focus on keeping those sponsors we have.
• C.      A second mission, that is directly connected to the first one, will get more attention in the years to come. We want to help our graduates to become self employed, which we consider with our actual knowledge of Haitian society the only way for them to create a perspective on a more or less regular income and independency. The initiative of a general business plan has to come from themselves on our invitation. We can help them subsequently to turn this into a real business plan, that will be used to find sponsors, loans and (micro-) credits for their project. The plan should be
• 1.      realistic (taking into account Haitian possibilities and limitations),
• 2.      it should be based on some kind of a marketing research to convince sponsors of its future creditworthiness,
• 3.      it should preferably use skills they acquired during their training and
• 4.      it should lead to some sort of regular income.                                                                                                                                 We will advise and train them in the development process and try to find sponsors and/or (micro-) credits. The first startup took off in 2020 and functions as our pilot in order to learn how to start a small business in Haiti. Some of our sponsors already committed themselves to this new branch of our project.
• D.    In order to make this aforementioned transition in the coming year we must adjust the goals of our foundation. The intention was to realize that in 2020, but as all our activities have been delayed,  this one has suffered the same fate. We will work on it again in 2021. The change will include a formulation like: “The Foundation not only aims to offer young people from Ile a Vache vocational training,  but also to do everything (in the material sense and immaterially) that will be helpful to make them establish their own small business to enable them to earn a reasonable income with their acquired skills and become independent in due time.” The intention is to make this transition again work during 5 years.
• E.      A setback in finalizing our vocational training branch and in the development of the startups, is the fact that our local collaborator, Edisson, will migrate this year to Canada. With him we had a very tight cooperation (also while he himself is a partner in the cybercafé). He will transfer his responsibilities for our project to his younger brother Bithovens. But, although we have enough confidence in him, this brother has not the experience with the setup of a small business as Edisson has. This means that we have to build up this part of the project once more. We have to explore if this will be possible. For that reason we have to take extra time for the preparations of the now startups.

Objectives 2021

• Objective in 2021 is to continue with the 4 remaining students from Kay-Kok, Ile a Vache to their vocational training courses in the city of Les Cayes. By the autumn of 2021 2 or 3 of them will be graduated. We will continue with the last 1 or 2 students for another academic year to finish their studies in 2021/2. Since we have some bigger sponsors that already committed themselves for a few more years, we are confident we will be able to accomplish that part of our mission.
• This means that we will not start up a new group of students in order to close our educational program by 2022. Though in our original tests we had more groups formed, we believe that the achievement to help all qualified people from the best tested group A, is the right moment to end the educational branch of our project.
• Since helping young people of Ile a Vache to establish a basis of regular income has been the underlying intention from the start of our program, we think, that instead of financing more young people to get a diploma with no perspective on work, we better start now to help the ones we invested already in to become independent.
• As to the housing: we stop the rent of the house by April 2021, since by then 2 of the 3 students living there, will be graduated. We encourage and help the remaining student to find his own place to stay. For those finding a place themselves we cover a fixed amount of expenses.
• From the inventory of our (14) graduates in 2020 it appeared that the majority has not found a fixed income. Some have migrated to Chili and the Dominican Republic, but that has not basically made a difference in their economical situation. 6 Of these students have  informed us they are interested to set up a small enterprise of their own.  
• To prepare for the set up of more startups and to adjust the official goal of our Foundation in this direction.
• To explore the possibilities to set up our own small micro credit facility for our ex-students in order to enable them to start their own small businesses.
• To explore the possibilities to transfer the small micro credit affair to become part of our first startup (the cybercafé/service centre) in the end; with which we hope the cybercafé to become in due time a kind of community service point (as already foreseen in the original business plan). 
• Work out a new way of cooperation with our new local collaborator, Bithovens St Firmin.

Finance

For the academic year 2020/21, we had available + € 9700,-- from donations, of which by December 2020 we spent around € 4300,--. Based on our experiences so far the cost per person per year should be set on € 1600,-- (+ $ 1700, --), which leaves € 5400,-- for the second half of the academic year of which about 50% has already been paid for. The expenditures for the academic year 2020/2021 (partly the extended year 2019/2020) are thus covered.

We want to collect an amount of € 4.000,-- through the focused approach of individual supporters/sponsors (small businesses, Dutch schools and individuals) for the year 2022. This amount should be sufficient to cover the tuition, living, housing, graduation etcetera for the 1 or partly 2 remaining students ( € 1600-2400,--) in the academic year 2021/2022, to setup 1 startup and to keep a reasonable buffer (together 2.400 -1600,--).

Remuneration policy continued

The Board nor any other person in any way involved in the Stichting Studiehulp Kay-Kok receives remuneration or compensation for their work from the funds of the foundation. Our onsite collaborator or his representative receives for his work nor a reward or compensation of the Foundation (see also under "our local collaborator” in the Annual Report). He only gets $ 15,-- per month to cover the costs of data credit in order to keep up our regular and intensive communication.

 

 

Ketia Alexandre says thank you to the sponsors

 Good day Stichting Studiehulp Kaykok!

Today it is a pleasure for me to explain how delighted I feel to thank you for all that you have given me throughout my life. During the study period I was very happy thanks to your support and your collaboration. I don't know how much I could thank you for all you've done for me, because God put you on my path to help me learn a trade in my life. I would not have achieved this without your help; I would be ungrateful if I did not give thanks, you will be rewarded for what you did for me since  god will give you more than that in return.

 For me it was really good because now I am learning a trade to face life, from all the family I thank you for your help. I thank the group that is doing a good job to help the young people of Ile-a-Vache move forward, let God watch over you and protect you, I love you so much.

I wish you a prosperous life in every way and my family thank you very much.

God bless you.

Ketia Alexandre  

 

Ketia, we wish you all the best in your life, may all your dreams come true! We were happy to contribute to your future

Again we have been able to help somebody

 

Graduation celebration Figaro Pierre

Figaro Pierre writes to all sponsors of the project:

"Good evening to all the people of the Stichting Studiehulp Kai-kok project. I greet you in the name of the Lord. I am Pierre Figaro, a student graduated in bookkeeping and accounting. I thank all the members of the project who have made the decision to establish such an organization in lle-a-Vache in order to help young people to have a profession to earn a living. My admittance in this project was a deliverance because I had no other opportunity to learn a trade. Thanks to the Stiching Studiehulp Kaykok project I am proud to be an bookkeeper/accountant now, and as such I am available to serve my community. Before I joined the project, life was complicated for me but now I have a lot of hopes, I have my diploma and I am looking for work everywhere. I thank the persons in charge of the Stichting Studiehulp Kaykok project in lle-a-Vache for your what you are doing and for taking care to organize us well during our travels in the project. And a big thank you to all the sponsors and the foreign supporters for your support. Thank you, God bless you,

Pierre Figaro"

Today we congratulate Ketia Alexandre

Today we congratulate our student Ketia Alexandre, who graduated in as an agronomist, a profession that is very much needed in Haiti. Due to the schools closing becaue of the political situation in Haiti in 2019 first and then because of the pandemic in 2020, it was for her no easy ride to finally reach this milestone. 

 

 

Ketia (we see her here together with her mom), we are very proud of you and so glad that you finally made it to your diploma. Haiti can use good and professional agronomists very well! Good luck in the future

 

Today we congratulate Figaro Pierre

 

Today we congratulate our student Figaro Pierre, who graduated in bookkeeping & accountancy. Due to the schools closing becaue of the political situation in Haiti in 2019 first and then because of the pandemic in 2020, it was no easy ride to finally reach this milestone. 

    

Figaro, we are very proud of you and so glad that you finally made it to your diploma. Haiti can use good and professional bookkeepers and accountants very well! Good luck in the future

   

A happy face in difficult times

 Wilnick Joseph started his studies communication and journalism a year ago. He wants to become a journalist, a very important profession in a poor country like Haiti. 

We try to provide our students during their studies with tools they will need to perform their profession. For Wilnick this means obviously that he needs a computer. So when school asked the students to come with their own computer, we were happy to be able to find a nice laptop for Wilnick, thanks to Keijzer Computers in Port au Prince. 

Here we see Wilnick with his laptop: ready for the next steps in life!

Schools open up again

Schools

After being closed since April as of the beginning of August the schools of our students are opening up again. Because life for people in Haiti only gets tougher these days, we decided to continue paying them during this period half of the usual amount of the money we use to pay in normal times for food and drinks. Since they went back home they did not need the whole amount, but by providing half of it, we tried to help their families that, because of lock downs, were not able to earn money as usual.

While the schools started already later than normal, due to the riots in Haiti last year, the students effectively only went to school between December and April. Three of our students were due to graduate in July and August, which was delayed as well. They are now planned to graduate between November and February. How things are organized for the 2 students who were in their first year is not clear as yet. 

We hope everybody will be able to pick up their schooling and we wish all students a productive and healthy extended academic year 2019/2020. 

 

Start ups

 

We already mentioned the opening up of our first start up: the cybercafe. As usual in Haiti things are not as easy as they should be, so there were several challanges to conquer:

• Because of the lockdown of the schools business was not building up as fast as expected - students are an important part of the clientele 
  
• They ran out of toner, and then it appeared that transportation of refill kits for the laserprinter from the USA was impossible because of services suspended due to Covid19
• For this reason we were obliged to buy an inkjet printer in Haiti. 
• With clientele picking up, more ink was needed for the inkjet, and now it appeared that a refill service for that was not anymore available in town, so this had te be ordered from elsewhere in Haiti, but delivery times were much longer than usual because of Covid19. For this reason the cybercafe had to temporarily close again. From the beginning of September we expect them to be in business once more.

In the mean time we are calling for plans from our other former students to set up a small business. We will lend them the money to startup. We received already 4 plans, most of them to set up a little shop. We are observing that the plans are intelligently trying to find an unique selling point or some other way to start with a promising formula. With every one we will work out a small business plan and a path to pay off their debt. In the mean time we learn about the challenges to set up a smal enterprise in Haiti from the experiences of the cybercafe, which we can and will use for the next projects.

 

Latest News

 

On August 23 Haiti was hit by the tropical storm, called Laura. Fortunately this time the south of the country was not in the route, so damage was not big this time. Hopefully things stay quiet for the rest of this hurricane season.

 

Call for donations

As you see our Stichting Studiehulp Kay-Kok is still very much alive and kicking. So we would be very glad if our sponsors that did not contribute so far, would be willing and able to do so once more. At the upper left side of this post you can find how to make your contribution to our project. On behalf of the students and the start ups we want to thank you for that.