Annual Report 2022
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 à 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
2022 Was a year of prolonged transition for our Foundation. Of the 2 students still in our program by the beginning of 2022 1 graduated in April in communication and journalism. We enabled him to do a short traineeship after his graduation, to help him to set up a professional future. By the end of 2022 we have still one student left in our program: she is (dependent on the safety situation in Haiti) expected to graduate around August 2023
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 and possibly more members of the Ile à Vache community will find an income.
In cooperation with our ex-student/trainee (until August) who graduated in business administration we continued to look for the best opportunity to start a business that will provide for work for our ex-students. After considering several proposals he wrote we finally have been able to start with a very promising initiative. He will fulfill a central role in this startup.
2022 in hindsight
- In 2022 Bithovens St Firmin continued to be our local collaborator for the educational part of our program. He fulfilled his tasks to our satisfaction. Because of huge inflation in Haiti the costs of telephone credit increased, and for that reason we increased the compensation from USD $ 15,- to USD $ 22,- per month. Meanwhile, due to the fact that we are fading out this part of our program, and the fact that from the beginning we aimed to discontinue our project after 5 years (that became already 8), his tasks are diminishing, which of course he regrets.
- At least 1 of our remaining 2 students was supposed to graduate in 2022. And in spite of all the counterforces (pandemic, earthquake, riots, unsafety) by April 2022 he graduated in communication and journalism. We enabled him to do a traineeship during 1 month after his graduation. There remains now 1 student (Wideline in pedagogics) in our program. We hope she will be able to graduate in 2023, although again there can happen delays (school closures) because of the riots and structural unsafety in the country.
- We provided our student Wideline with a smartphone to enable her to continue studying online when her school is closed. And we paid for the repairs of her laptop.
- Overall: From the in 2015 tested group A, all students that were waiting for admittance in our project have joined. No more students have been admitted since 2019. All together in 2022 1 student graduated, bringing the total to 17, 1 continues her studies.
- Since the main goal of the Foundation is to offer vocational schooling to young people from Île à 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 (our last student still attending school) during an extra 8th year (2023).
- When necessary, we reimburse the housing costs and of course we pay monthly food and drinks. Since basic living costs have increased considerably in Haiti, we put the monthly fee up from USD $ 60,- to USD $ 75,-.
- 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 of the equipment remains to be a big challenge. The refill bottles have to be ordered in and transported from abroad, which takes time and money. Due to the very unsafe situation in Haiti delivery of these orders turns out to remain complicated and frequently not possible at all. Many companies do not deliver anymore in Haiti. We ordered a new printer and ink and toner refills (sufficient for at least 1 year of refills) in the USA in the spring of 2022. We had organized for transportation by a sailor who had the intention to go there the same spring. But due to the big safety challenges in Haiti, and some technical problems he decided to cancel the trip. We tried our best to find an alternative, but at this moment Haiti has such a bad safety profile, that hardly any boat goes there anymore. Sending the equipment by courier would cost a fortune. Finally, we found a very courageous sailing project (International Rescue Group) that has the intention to sail to Ile à Vache in April 2023. He will finally transport the packages for us. As we speak this still has to happen, but there is good hope that he will deliver. Another problem is the current supply of the cybercafé. We paid for a battery to be used for current supply by solar panels, but not all equipment can be served from this power source. For that reason, they have to rely partly on the very unreliable regular current supply in Haiti.
- We made an inventory of those former students that wanted to start a small enterprise. Six of them came up with (very rudimentary) plans. Our first experience (with the Cybercafé, see above) taught us that starting up a business 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, save money for re-investments or for bad times etcetera. We are very happy that one of our students, Ubain Pierre, graduated in business administration. We offered him a traineeship to help us figure out how to set up 1 or more small businesses that have a commercial future and that will offer jobs to (some of) our graduates. During his traineeship (which was stopped by August 2022) 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 in 2020 he saw extra opportunities, since a big part of the town of Les Cayes had to be reconstructed. But we were not able to get the finances ready in time for this initiative. So, we went on to look for other opportunities, with less financial and logistical risks, and a broader social and economic impact.He finally came up with a solid plan to found a banana (plantain[1]) plantation in the relatively safe surroundings of Ile à Vache. A terrain (with water availability) was rented and 2400 sprouts were bought and planted with our financial assistance. We provide herewith for basic and healthy food in the Haitian diet, so there will always be demand for the harvest. Besides, plantains are not severely threatened by diseases, they grow and bear fruit fast and they multiply themselves regularly, so that the perspective is that the investment we did will pay out soon and be sustainable. About the cultivation there is a lot of knowledge locally available and also our graduate in agronomics is connected to the plan, to provide for more specialized knowledge.We have invested in this plan, and as soon as (after about 1 year) income will be generated a part of that will be reinvested in the business, possibly also to diversify production and a part can be used for new startups. Step by step, when we see good economical results and when our business administrator proves he will be working for and with those ex-students that are interested in participation in the project, we will make the funds of our Foundation fully available locally for this project. Our role will become more that of consultants in the background. Finally, the Foundation could be dissolved.
- Because these developments are still in their initial stage, we paused our fundraising 2022 a little, since we wanted to offer our sponsors a clear plan about our new intentions and the first results. We will resolve the fundraising in 2023, to collect enough money to make the banana plantation and its (hopefully) spin offs, a healthy and independent business.
- Our initiatives are only possible because we have a group of very loyal contributors, who continue to sustain our project. So again in 2022 we were able to collect € 7000,00, which was (together with the money we already collected in 2021) enough to cover the costs, also the costs that will be payable in 2023. Part of the expenses of 2022 have been for the new start up (€ 3900), while the money we already provided for earlier plans, that have not been executed (in 2021), has also been used now for the banana project.
- Our intention was to adjust the articles of association of our foundation to better facilitate this new direction. Because we are still awaiting the first results of the new initiative this has not yet been realized.
Finance
For the year 2022, we had available € 9.000,-- from donations, of which by December 2022 we spent around € 6500,-- for our students and the new startup, which leaves € 3500,-- 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 1 student still to graduate in 2023 this will make up a major part of our expenses for the course of 2023 - we have now to count on US $ 500 – 600 per person.
The financial year 2022 has been closed with a result of €1592,--.
Our business administrator kept the money we transferred already in 2021 on his
bank account, to be available as soon as we agreed on a feasible and promising
business plan. In the meantime, our collaborator for the educational branch of
the project, Bithovens St Firmin, is still working with the bank account that he
opened in the name of himself and his sister.
Remarks about our project
- We put the perspective on work high on our list. After 7 years running our project, in which 17 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 (unemployment, more than 2/3 of the labor force has no formal job resulting in about 60% of the population living under the poverty line by estimates of 2012[2], which has only become worse since), purchasing power is very low, so small businesses will always be quite vulnerable, unless they provide for basic commodities. 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 add to the realization of our goals by helping our ex-students to set 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 pilot 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. These run 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 (we later provided money for batteries for a solar panel to help this solve), 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 starting up (small) businesses, will be much more complicated than we expected it already to be. When you have never lived with any long-term perspective (due to poverty, an entirely dysfunctional government and regular natural disasters) 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, where nothing is ever guaranteed and every day raises new questions about how to survive. 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 bringing our project to a next level. Together with him we figured out the best way to set something off, that will have a bigger economic impact not only for our ex-students, but for (a part of) the community in Ile à Vache. Also, we want our initiatives to be sustainable. Given the deplorable safety situation in Haiti, and the fact that from the government nothing is to be expected, we came to the plan to invest into basics: plantains are in the Haitian diet a basic and healthy food, plantains are strong and with no great risk for diseases, they renew themselves, in about 1 year after planting you can harvest, we don’t need (raw) materials from far away and the knowledge for the production is locally available. So, this is the business that we choose to set up. It should become the economic basis for diversification of products, and it can provide for money to invest in more local businesses. Our former business administration student will lead this business and its further development towards diversification and growt. Our intention is, once when it is clear that this initiative will hold and blossom in the future, to enable it to function independently in order that we can become consultants in the background. Finally, our Foundation itself even can be dissolved.
- 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 mobile data credit of our collaborator, in order to facilitate regular communication with the student, the school and us. During a part of the year 2022 we offered our ex-student a traineeship, for which he received a financial compensation. Our collaboration continued after the traineeship was stopped in August 2022, now that he is our on spot collaborator and coordinator in the set op of the banana plantation. We have a private financial arrangement with our local collaborator for the educational branch, Bithovens St firmin. This is organised entirely outside of the budget of the Stichting Studiehulp Kay-Kok.
