My life as an RSCJ began with 33 years of teaching and administering in several of our schools in the United States, teaching all ages from 1st to 12th grade, charged with the Lower, Middle, Upper Schools successively and ending this period as Director of Studies. Changes began shortly before Vatican II, not all at once, but gradually. It was a time of expanded vision, reflection, study of contemporary theology, history, literature, philosophy, and documents of Vatican II.
All this led to a new and growing awareness of a world of suffering and injustice and an understanding of the mission of Jesus as expressed in Luke 4:18-19:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He has anointed Me to preach
the Gospel to the poor.
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To preach deliverance to the captives and
recovery of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty those who are oppressed,
To preach the acceptable time of the Lord.”
I felt a responsibility and need to respond to this call to serve the needs of the most poor and needy of God’s people.
There followed a year of study and preparation for working with the disadvantaged, the marginalized. After that I was asked to serve as Principal at a very poor elementary school in East Harlem, New York City, then as Director of religious education for inner city parishes in Albany, New York, and later as Director of the Refugee Resettlement Program for the diocese of Albany. This last position led to great concern for Central American refugees fleeing from the violence and persecution there during the 1980’s, and finally to participating in a delegation to Nicaragua with Witness for Peace, the group that was captured by the Contras in Costa Rica while sailing in a Flotilla for Peace on the San Juan River. I later joined Witness for Peace as a long-term volunteer in Nicaragua for almost a year.
On returning to the United States, I taught English as a second language to Central American refugees and later opened a regional office for Pax Christi USA, the national (and international) Catholic peace and justice movement. My participation in a delegation to Haiti in 1992 with Pax Christ USA soon after the first overthrow of Aristide drew me strongly to the brave and suffering people of Haiti, and following other missions there to promote peace and to monitor elections, I was allowed to return to Haiti indefinitely, studying the language, Haitian Creole, volunteering with Lafami Selavi, the orphanage founded by Aristide, and with Witness for Peace.
After two years in Haiti, in 1996 I came to know Fonkoze, Haiti’s Alternative Bank for the Organized Poor, then in its early beginnings, and discovered what a tremendous gift God had given to the poor of Haiti. The name “Fonkoze” is a combination of three Haitian Kreyol words meaning “The Shoulder-to-Shoulder Foundation” But really, what IS Fonkoze? Put simply, to me Fonkoze is God’s good news to the poor of Haiti. And why? Because Fonkoze works. In a place where scarcely anything works, Fonkoze works. How do we know? Because it is still there – after not 1, nor 2, nor 3 years but after ten years. Because it is still fulfilling the vision of its founder.
Fonkoze was founded by Father Joseph Philippe, CSSp,p 1994 and was registered as a foundation, or non-profit, by the government of Haiti in 1995. Father Joseph had a very clear vision of what he wanted. He wanted to give the poor the tools they would need to build a better life for themselves and their families. He wanted to give them the tools to empower themselves. These tools were to include financial services – savings accounts, access to credit, a place to change U.S. dollars that their families abroad sent home, a means of getting these dollars into the country for a fair price, none of which were then accessible to the poor. But he also wanted this bank to provide educational services – literacy training in a country where over 50% of the population is illiterate; business skills training; training in how to protect themselves against HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases – whatever training was needed to give them the chance to work themselves out of the desperate conditions in which they live.
What he wanted, and has built under the able direction of Anne Hasting, an American volunteer who left her successful management consultant business in Washington, DC, to undertake this radically different mission, was an institution on which the poor could rely far into the future. He wanted this institution to be accessible to the poor wherever they were – even in the most remote rural regions of a country with few roads, limited access to clean water and electricity, and virtually no communication infrastructure.
I was invited to work with Fonkoze briefly in Port-au-Prince and then to help with fundraising in the United States. I opened a local office, Fonkoze Metro DC, for this purpose and after two years moved to Kenwood where I started Fonkoze Albany For five years Friends of Fonkoze of have sponsored many events both to raise funds for Fonkoze and to increase awareness of people in this New York State Capital District about Haiti, its needs, its history, culture, and people. I have visited Fonkoze in Haiti many times and seen it expand from one office in Port-au-Prince to 24 branches throughout the whole country, from 9 employees to 320, from 173 savings depositors to 69,000; from a savings balance of $78,453 to $5,233,879, from 22 loan clients to 28,183, from 25,733 in loans outstanding to $4,992,265 and a loan loss rate of 0.95%.
During the political crisis of February 2004, Fonkoze’s Port-au-Prince office was closed no more than 2 days. After Hurricane Jeanne ravaged Gonaives, killing 3,000 people and leaving many more thousands destitute, the Fonkoze office there was back in operation in only 10 days. Despite the problems that seem to overwhelm it, in the past two years Fonkoze has convened a successful, groundbreaking Anti-Poverty Summit, mobilized a global partnership to eliminate extreme poverty in the Central Plateau, opened three new branches, begun a major effort to help our clients in the flood-affected areas of the country to get back on their feet.
How does Fonkoze not only survive but thrive in a land plagued by both political turmoil and natural disasters, a land where almost nothing works? Fonkoze’s mission is to sustain democracy through economic development in Haiti. It provides Haiti’s poor with the capital, the education, the technical assistance needed to succeed in business and thus to become self-sufficient. This is not a project. This is not a program. This is a commitment, a resolve to make real the vision of a lasting institution on which the poor can always rely. And that is the wonderful thing. Fonkoze works because its entire staff works tirelessly to achieve this end. That’s why I believe that Fonkoze is God’s good news to the poor of Haiti.
It has been a great privilege and gift from God and the Society which allowed me be the bearer of the good news of Fonkoze over the last ten years. For this I am profoundly grateful. I believe Fonkoze’s mission is rooted deeply in that of the Society and that of my own vocation– to manifest God’s Love and to do God’s work of Love and Justice, giving life and hope to the poorest of the poor in the poorest country in the western hemisphere.
http://www.fonkoze.org/
Anita von Wellsheim rscj
Province of the United States
|
