Trade Tools for Entrepreneurs in Haiti

The vocational training aspect of the Out of School Adolescents project partnership between ASAP and Catholic Relief Services had budget cuts. Community Facilitators were hired to give vocational skills training in carpentry, hair dressing and sewing. These facilitators were either school teachers or qualified practicing individuals from the communities where the project clusters are formed. Training was localized in the selected clusters to meet with the budget size. The training had been initially planned to run for 21 days but later during implementation the days were reduced to14 days to suit the budget size even with the Global Giving funding.

This approach is very suitable for our youth and adult Internal Savings and Lending (ISAL) members, as since 2002 they have been asking for skills training to boost their income generating activities (IGAs) by running them more skillfully. We have already started receiving request to expand this training to the community members(ISAL and non ISAL members ), local stakeholders and local schools where the trainings were held or those community members who heard about the trainings. The training was very practical and the trained youths have started to employ the skills they gained in their IGAs. The only limitation in this intervention was enough resources to buy start up kits for those who received the training.