Development programs often help a community advance, but leave behind the very poorest. These are precisely the people that Beyond Borders wants to reach.

To do so, we are inviting families, churches, and schools to invest in an approach proven to help the very poorest families lift themselves out of extreme poverty and stay out.

The Graduation Model is an asset-building approach pioneered in Bangladesh and first introduced to Haiti in 2008 by Fonkoze, Haiti’s largest micro-finance lender.

You can transform the life of a family in rural Haiti by sponsoring their participation in the Graduation Model.

In 18 months time, your sponsorship will ensure that a destitute and dependent family is able to live independently and with dignity, and keep their children living at home and enrolled in a quality, nearby school.

Here’s how it works:

To equip families to develop the means to provide for themselves, they receive two income-generating assets: either livestock to raise and breed, or funds to launch (or relaunch in some cases) a small business.

To ensure that each family succeeds in becoming economically independent, they receive:

regular training on how to manage their new assets,
help establishing a community-based savings account to use for future expenses, including emergencies,
weekly coaching visits from a dedicated caseworker to reinforce skills, build confidence and prepare them to handle any challenges, and,
access to healthcare to help keep the family healthy so they are able to keep working.

To continue to grow their new assets, each family will develop a business plan with the help of their caseworker during the remaining months of the program.

Your generous sponsorship makes it possible for families to learn small business skills so that they can earn a living, provide for themselves, and keep their children in school and at home, where they belong.

Your sponsorship also supports weekly visits with family life coaches for families that focus on training and reinforcement of critical topics ranging from nutrition, to health and sanitation, to small business management, to animal husbandry.

Health

Along with repairing and rebuilding dilapidated homes, your sponsorship ensures that a family has proper sanitation. Destitute families often practice open defecation because they lack the means to construct even a simple latrine. Waterborne disease is a leading killer in Haiti, especially among children. Your sponsorship supports the digging and building of a sanitary latrine for a family. This new latrine will greatly reduce the risk of contracting a gastrointestinal illness or a deadly bacterial disease like cholera.

When you sponsor a family they’ll attend weekly meetings conducted by Beyond Borders that cover a variety of health topics, including:

Health care before and after birth
Sanitation and latrines
Parasites
Vitamins
Vaccinations
Signs and treatment of malnutrition

Hunger

Having a more secure income allows families to enjoy a greater variety of food and a more balanced overall diet. This leads to improved health, lower medical expenses and less time lost from school for children. Your sponsorship provides families with a weekly stipend to help ensure that they don’t go hungry.

Economic Livelihoods

Having little or nothing to start with, your sponsorship allows families to work with a life coach to identify and track specific, achievable economic goals, such as developing savings to purchase and raise goats, or raising and selling piglets from a pregnant sow, for example, so that later they can invest in an animal of greater value, like a mule or a cow.

Building on economic success is a huge boost to a family’s self-confidence and self-esteem within their community. This self confidence is a vital resource that will sustain them as they face future challenges.

Families meets regularly with other sponsored families to allow them to encourage one another and to build bonds of solidarity that will help sustain them after they complete the program. Soon, each family will join a community-based collective savings groups.

These collective savings groups not only promote solidarity among neighbors, but also provide each family with a greater measure of security that they never had before. It provides a resource in case of an emergency and helps families to increase their purchasing power to be able to invest in and grow their young businesses.

Thank you for your care and concern for vulnerable families in Haiti, and your interest in becoming a family sponsor. Through your sponsorship, you’ll give a family a path to a much brighter future, filled with dignity, hope, and opportunity.

To learn more or to become a family sponsor, write David Diggs at david.diggs@beyondborders.net

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