FROM THE SLUM TO THE JOB MARKET: Empowering the Haitian Youth to Escape Violence and Rebuild the Country (Port-au-Prince, Haiti)

Guillaume Kroll*, MS in Global Affairs, New York University International House, New York City

“Peace means being able to live in a non-violent environment, in good relations with your community, without the fear of criminality around you. This can only be achieved should your have the opportunities to make a decent living, so as to sustain yourself and provide for your family”.

Background Information

The earthquake that hit the Republic of Haiti on January 12, 2010 had catastrophic consequences for the country and its inhabitants. It is estimated that 316,000 people died, 300,000 were injured and at least 1,000,000 were made homeless. The infrastructure too was seriously affected: 250,000 residences and 30,000 businesses collapsed or were seriously damaged. A few months later, a cholera epidemic was identified, along with a growing number of cases of diarrhea, acute fever, and severe dehydration. This was too much to cope with for a country with weak institutions: the economy plummeted, corruption rocketed, and social services were virtually put to an end. The response of the international community was massive, yet chaotic. Damaged infrastructure, including communications systems, made aid distribution particularly difficult, which sparked outbreaks of violence around the country. Today, three years after the disaster, Haiti is still recovering. Progress has been very slow, and the economy is still lagging behind other low-income developing countries. Meanwhile, 80% of the population live under the poverty line and 54% are in abject poverty. The Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook reports a shortage of skilled labor, widespread unemployment, and more than two-thirds of the labor force without formal jobs.

Among those affected by the earthquake and its subsequent incidents, the youth remain a highly vulnerable population. In a broken economy, prospects are bleak for Haitian young people, which constitute more than half of the country’s population. As a result, lots of them have felt into criminality and violence – joining one of the many gangs that run the streets of Port-au-Prince. In light of those observations, Ketly Astier, a Haiti-born Belgian lawyer, decided to set up a vocational education center next to Cité Soleil, Haiti’s largest and most dangerous slum. Her rationale was twofold: providing training to underprivileged young Haitian on the one hand, while contributing to the urge for skilled building workers in the country on the other. By training the Haitian youth on construction trades, the Center of Varreux offers young Haitians the opportunity to become financially independent and to take their destiny in hand. With a diploma in their possession, the youth have no more need to recourse to violence and criminality in order to sustain themselves and provide for their family. Today, three years after its creation, the Center hosts about 1,300 students ranging 16 to 24 years old. It offers a training curriculum in carpentry and electrical wiring. It is composed of two workshops of 150 and 200 m2, four classrooms, a room for the teachers, and a brand-new information center with computers linked to the Internet.

Project Plan, Implementation, and Expected Outcomes

When the first 540 students graduated last year from the Center of Varreux, a lot among them were lost and confused. Some were unable to market the skills they had acquired towards potential employers. Other were keen to set up a small business but had no idea about how to proceed. As a result, lots of students remained unemployed after graduation. The whole mission of the Center was in jeopardy. This is where Davis Projects for Peace come in. The seed funding from Davis Projects for Peace will help at bridging the gap between education and the job market for the graduates of the Center, so as to offer them the tools to find an appropriate job or set up a small business on their own. Thereby, the project seeks to ensure that students can become financially independent and escape poverty, criminality, and violence for good. This objective is to be achieved through the launch of a “career kickoff and entrepreneurship starter kit”, to be developed in New York during the Spring 2013 semester prior to departure and implemented in the field during the month of June 2013.

The kit will be composed of: 1) A paper version, to be distributed to all graduates, containing all the material necessary to find a job (how to write a resume, how to present yourself to an employer, where to look for job offers, etc.) and to set up a small organization (checklists for registering a small business, legal matters, strategic planning, etc.). 2) Four training sessions (two about career kickoff and two about entrepreneurship) taught by on-site instructors, with the objective to ensure a good understanding of the material comprised in the paper version. 3) Two one-on-one career counseling sessions with on-site instructors, to be held before and after the training period.

The kit will be developed and perfected in close partnership with the staff of the Center of Varreux, so as to make sure that it is relevant to the local context. During our time in Haiti, we will conduct interviews and meetings with potential employers so as to know better what they are looking for, and get insider tips on how one can get a job to their company. Finally, we will pilot the kit with the students and seek their feedback. The output of the project will be the “career kickoff and entrepreneurship starter kit”, available for use at the information center of the Center of Varreux, and ready to be replicated to other training schools.

Prospects for Future Impact

Sustainability is key for the success of this project. We hope to have a lasting impact on the lives of the youth enrolled in the Center and potentially beyond. Indeed, should the starter kit model prove successful, it could be replicated in other training centers across the country. This approach to post- disaster recovery and peacebuilding does work. It has been adopted by the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), which has strived to get underprivileged youth out of the slums, train them, and help them find a job. By taking on this successful approach for a small- scale, very concrete, and specific project, we are confident that we will be able to provide the Haitian youth with the opportunity to become financially independent and escape violence, thereby allowing them to “live in a non-violent environment, in good relations with their community, without the fear of criminality around them“.

* Guillaume Kroll is currently pursuing a MS in Global Affairs at New York University. He holds a MA and a BA in Business and Management from HEC – University of Liege, Belgium. His experience in international development spans from working at the office of the President of the United Nations Economic and Social Council in New York to pursuing field research on microfinance in rural Malawi for Innovations for Poverty Action, an American NGO at the forefront of the fight against global poverty. He is the Vice President of the Society of International Business and Development. His experience in business, entrepreneurship, and development economics will be highly valuable to the implementation of the project. His knowledge of French, experience working in a low-income developing country, and his cultural awareness are key assets that make him a strong candidate for the 2013 Davis Projects for Peace Initiative.