Jessica Laporte
August 9, 2014
On Tuesday we went back to Cite Limye to meet with women interested in becoming entrepreneurs with Kouzin Dlo. Olritch and members of PENAH invited 20 women to come hear about our business and the upcoming training. At first it looked like a small showing, but as is customary in Haiti most people showed up about 30 minutes late and a few more trickled in up to 45 minutes after we started. Carline demonstrated how to use Gadyen Dlo, explained how our business works and the role of the entrepreneur. After our first entrepreneur training, we decided to implement a policy that the women have to come with 100 goudes to buy chlorine at a promotional price so that they are ready to start selling chlorine once they finish training. Holding this meeting was a way for us to give the women a couple weeks of notice before the training to prepare and come with the money in hand. Price has been a sticking point in the first two communities on both the manager and entrepreneur levels, so we were surprised by the receptivity of the women to the wholesale and customer prices of the product.
Many of the women participated when posted questions about the product and asked clarifying questions about our business and their potential role before signing up. 13 out of 20 put themselves on the list to participate in the 3 half-days of training August 18th-20th and a few even asked if they could invite additional women. All in all, it was a successful meeting, in that we accomplished our short-term goals of conveying information about our business and inviting people to become a part of what we’re going. We’ll have to wait to and see how it helps or impacts the process of launching in Cite Limye compared with the first two pilot sites.
